Personalization in Text Information Retrieval: A Survey

Jingjing Liu

Abstract:

Personalization of information retrieval (PIR) is aimed at
tailoring a search toward individual users and user groups
by taking account of additional information about users
besides their queries. In the past two decades or so, PIR
has received extensive attention in both academia and
industry. This article surveys the literature of personalization
in text retrieval, following a framework for aspects or
factors that can be used for personalization. The framework
consists of additional information about users that
can be explicitly obtained by asking users for their preferences,
or implicitly inferred from users’ search behaviors.
Users’ characteristics and contextual factors such as
tasks, time, location, etc., can be helpful for personalization.
This article also addresses various issues including
when to personalize, the evaluation of PIR, privacy, usability,
etc. Based on the extensive review, challenges are discussed
and directions for future effort are suggested.