Organizing domain-specific information on the Web: An experiment on the Spanish business Web directory

  • Authors:

  • Wingyan Chung;Guanpi Lai;Alfonso Bonillas;Wei Xi;Hsinchun Chen

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Operations and Management Information Systems, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Kenna 323, Santa Clara, CA 95053, USA;Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Department of Management Information Systems, University of Arizona, 1130 East Helen Street, McClelland Hall 430, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA;Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Department of Management Information Systems, University of Arizona, 1130 East Helen Street, McClelland Hall 430, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA;Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Department of Management Information Systems, University of Arizona, 1130 East Helen Street, McClelland Hall 430, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA;Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Department of Management Information Systems, University of Arizona, 1130 East Helen Street, McClelland Hall 430, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Web directories organize voluminous information into hierarchical structures, helping users to quickly locate relevant information and to support decision-making. The development of existing ontologies and Web directories either relies on expert participation that may not be available or uses automatic approaches that lack precision. As more users access the Web in their native languages, better approaches to organizing and developing non-English Web directories are needed. In this paper, we have proposed a semi-automatic framework, which consists of anchor directory boosting, meta-searching, and heuristic filtering, to construct domain-specific Web directories. Using the framework, we have built a Web directory in the Spanish business (SBiz) domain. Experimental results show that the SBiz Web directory achieved significantly better recall, F-value, efficiency, and satisfaction rating than the benchmark directory. Subjects provided favorable comments on the SBiz Web directory. This research thus contributes to developing a useful framework for organizing domain-specific information on the Web and to providing empirical findings and useful insights for end-users, system developers, and researchers of Web information seeking and knowledge management.