Unstructured English Queries: How Users Request Information

Abstract

From the 1994 CAIS Conference:
The Information Industry in Transition
McGill University, Montreal, Quebec. May 25 - 27, 1994.

Presented with the task of locating needed information in on-line, full-text documentation, users must express queries in the language of the retrieval system. Many of these query languages are based on Boolean logic or restricted natural language syntax, and users find it difficult to express information needs. Experiments conducted at the University of Colorado asked participants to enter English queries to locate information needed to solve problems ranging from very specific to very general ones. No restrictions were placed upon grammar or vocabulary. The collected queries were very short, telegraphic in style, used few verbs, and contained frequently occurring terms from stored vocabulary. There were no statistically significant differences in query contents based upon a participant's knowledge of the topic or English communication skills.