User-Oriented Document Clustering: A Framework for Learning in Information Retrieval

Jitender S. Deogun, Vijay V. Raghavan

Abstract: In information retrieval, cluster analysis is an important tool employed to enhance both efficiency and effectiveness of the retrieval process. Most clustering algorithms have difficulty in reflecting the closeness of documents as perceived by the user. A two phase scheme for document clustering, whose results reflect the “conceptual” clusters that are perceived by the user of the retrieval system, is proposed. Since the clusters obtained by this scheme are not characterized in terms of the document representations, a strategy for cluster searching is also developed. Both the proposed document clustering scheme and document searching strategy are experimentally evaluated using a test collection from the SMART system. The preliminary experimental results obtained are very encouraging.