Automatic method and system for formulating and transforming representations of context used by information services

Abstract

An information retrieval system for automatically retrieving information related to the context of an active task being manipulated by a user. The system observes the operation of the active task and user interactions, and utilizes predetermined criteria to generate a context representation of the active task that are relevant to the context of the active task. The information retrieval system then processes the context representation to generate queries or search terms for conducting an information search. The information retrieval system reorders the terms in a query so that they occur in a meaningful order as they naturally occur in a document or active task being manipulated by the user. Furthermore, the information retrieval system may access a user profile to retrieve information related to the user, and the select information sources or transform search terms based on attributes related to the user, such as the user's occupation, position in a company, major in school, etc.

The invention is claimed as follows: 
     
         1 . A method for formulating a context representation, the method comprising:
 selecting at least one keyword from a plurality of text items;   determining a task associated with the plurality of text items;   selecting at least one query transformation rule from a plurality of different query transformation rules based on the plurality of text items and the task;   generating the context representation by applying the at least one query transformation rule to the at least one keyword, the query transformation rule causing the at least one keyword to be replaced by another keyword;   generating a search query based on the context representation; and   storing search results associated with the search query in a memory.