Research Projects NTT-MIT Research Collaboration: a partnership in the future of communication and computation

Haystack: Per-User Information Environments

MIT9904-08

Start date: 07/99

David Karger
MIT LCS

Kazuhiro Kuwabara
NTT

Project summary


Most current information retrieval tools take no account of the individuals using them. We are studying interfaces and retrieval tools that gather, remember, and respond to the background knowledge, preferences, and information structuring behaviors of its individual users.

Project description


 

The Haystack project is investigating the ways in which electronic infrastructure can be used to triangulate among the different knowledges of an individual, of collegial communities to which we belong, and of the world at large. Its infrastructure consists of a community of independent, interacting information repositories, each customized to its individual user. It provides automated data gathering (through active observation of user activity), customized information collection, and adaptation to individual query needs. It also facilities inter-haystack collaboration, exposing (public subsets of) the tremendous wealth of individual knowledge that each of us currently has locked up in our personal information spaces. The Haystack-NTT project involves augmenting its customization, learning and adaptation, and inter-haystack communication.


Demos, movies and other examples


The principal investigators


Presentations and posters


This presentation was given at the LCS 35th anniversary celebration, and outlines the key concepts underlying Haystack.

This poster describes an early vision of Haystack.


Publications


Shnitser, Svetlana, "Integrating Structural Search Capabilities Into Project Haystack", June 2000. (238K)

Chien, Wendy, "Learning Query Behavior in the Haystack System", May 2000. (197K)

Adar, Eytan, David R. Karger, and Lynn Andrea Stein, "Haystack: Per-User Information Environments," Conference on Information and Knowledge Management , Kansas City, Missouri, November 1999.

The following document is available only to members of the NTT-MIT collaboration.
"Integrating structural search capabilities into Project Haystack"

The following document is available only to members of the NTT-MIT collaboration.
"Scan Your Life: Integrating OCR Into Your Personal Haystack!", Adam Holt, MEng Thesis Proposal.

Proposals and progress reports


Proposals:

NTT Bi-Annual Progress Report, July to December 1999:

NTT Bi-Annual Progress Report, January to June 2000:

NTT Bi-Annual Progress Report, July to December 2000:

NTT Bi-Annual Progress Report, January to June 2001:

NTT Bi-Annual Progress Report, July to December 2001:

NTT Bi-Annual Progress Report, January to June 2002:

NTT Bi-Annual Progress Report, July to December 2002:

 

For more information