@InProceedings{Amati&96:PAKM,
  title =  "{An Integrated System for Filtering News and Managing
                 Distributed Data}",
  author =   " Amati, Gianni and {D'Aloisi}, Daniela and Giannini, Vittorio and
                 Ubaldini, Flavio",
  booktitle =    "Proceedings of the First International Conference on
                 Practical Aspects of Knowledge-Management (PAKM '96)",
  address =      "Basel (CH)",
  month =        oct,
  year =         "1996",
  url =          "http://airone.fub.it:8080/projects/pakm96.ps",
  abstract =     "With the development and diffusion of the Internet
                 worldwide connection, a large amount of information can
                 be delivered to the users. To avoid their being
                 overflowed by the incoming data, methods of information
                 filtering are required. Thus, there is the problem of
                 determining what information is relevant to the user
                 and how this decision can be taken by a supporting
                 system. Parametric and qualitative descriptors of
                 user's interest must be generated. This paper presents
                 two approaches. The first concerns an information
                 filtering system based on an adaptation of the
                 generalized probabilistic model of information
                 retrieval. The user profile is a vector of weighted
                 terms which are learned from the relevance assessment
                 values given by the user on the training set. Positive
                 terms are considered relevant to the informative need
                 of the user, negative ones irrelevant. The relevance
                 values are interpreted as subjective probabilities and
                 hence are mapped into the real interval [0; 1]. ProFile
                 is a filtering system for the netnews which uses this
                 model with a scale of 11 predefined values of
                 relevance. ProFile allows the user to update on-line
                 his profile and to check the discrepancy between his
                 assessment and the prediction of relevance of the
                 system. The second concerns the InfoAgent, a system for
                 supporting users in retrieving data in distributed and
                 heterogeneous archives and repositories. The
                 architecture is based on the metaphor of the software
                 agents and incorporates innovative hints from other
                 fields: distributed architectures, relevance feedback
                 and active interfaces. The system has a cooperative and
                 supportive role: it understands the user's needs and
                 learns from his behavior. Its aim is to disengage the
                 user from learning complex tools and from performing
                 tedious and repetitive actions.",
}