Advantages of Query Biased Summaries in Information Retrieval
Anastasios Tombros
Computing Science Department, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8RZ,
Scotland
Mark Sanderson
CIIR, Computing Science Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst,
MA, U.S.A.
Abstract
This paper presents an investigation into the utility of document summarisation
in the context of information retrieval, more specifically in the application
of so called query biased (or user directed) summaries: summaries customised to reflect the
information need expressed in a query. Employed in the retrieved document
list displayed after a retrieval took place, the summaries’ utility was
evaluated in a task-based environment by measuring users’ speed and accuracy
in identifying relevant documents. This was compared to the performance
achieved when users were presented with the more typical output of an IR
system: a static predefined summary composed of the title and first few
sentences of retrieved documents. The results from the evaluation indicate
that the use of query biased summaries significantly improves both the
accuracy and speed of user relevance judgements.
SIGIR'98
24-28 August 1998
Melbourne, Australia.
sigir98@cs.mu.oz.au.