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We live in an information age that requires us, more than ever, to represent, access, and use information. Over the last several decades, we have developed a modern science and technology for information retrieval, relentlessly pursuing the vision of a "memex" that Vannevar Bush proposed in his seminal article, "As We May Think." Faceted search plays a key role in this program. Faceted search addresses weaknesses of conventional search approaches and has emerged as a foundation for interactive information retrieval. User studies demonstrate that faceted search provides more effective information-seeking support to users than best-first search. Indeed, faceted search has become increasingly prevalent in online information access systems, particularly for e-commerce and site search. In this lecture, we explore the history, theory, and practice of faceted search. Although we cannot hope to be exhaustive, our aim is to provide sufficient depth and breadth to offer a useful resource to both researchers and practitioners. Because faceted search is an area of interest to computer scientists, information scientists, interface designers, and usability researchers, we do not assume that the reader is a specialist in any of these fields. Rather, we offer a self-contained treatment of the topic, with an extensive bibliography for those who would like to pursue particular aspects in more depth. Table of Contents: I. Key Concepts / Introduction: What Are Facets? / Information Retrieval / Faceted Information Retrieval / II. Research and Practice / Academic Research / Commercial Applications / III. Practical Concerns / Back-End Concerns / Front-End Concerns / Conclusion / Glossary
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
Daniel Tunkelang's book is a concise introduction to the area of faceted search, its foundations in information science, current research, and practical concerns. The book starts with a whirlwind tour of information science from Aristotle's classification to Google's PageRank algorithm. The first part ends with a very short section on faceted search. At this point, faceted search seems so basic and obvious that you wonder why it has only been widely accepted in the last decade. The answer comes in the next chapter, which explains why faceted search is computationally demanding. The last part of the book mentions a number of practical issues in connection with organizing the data, efficient processing and the design of an effective user interface.
The book is rather short (79 pages, including glossary, author's biography, references, 23 screenshots and 7 blank pages), but it does cover the main points and is very clearly written. It is a pleasant and easy read, it took me less than 3 hours to read from cover to cover (your mileage may vary). It is surprising that Tunkelang, with his extensive experience in this area, does not have more to say about the subject. Maybe his position as Chief Scientist of Endeca does not allow him to go into more detail and give away more of the methodology how to actually build a successful faceted search solution.
The book is great as a first introduction to the field, but I would be looking forward to an expanded second edition.
The book is rather short (79 pages, including glossary, author's biography, references, 23 screenshots and 7 blank pages), but it does cover the main points and is very clearly written. It is a pleasant and easy read, it took me less than 3 hours to read from cover to cover (your mileage may vary). It is surprising that Tunkelang, with his extensive experience in this area, does not have more to say about the subject. Maybe his position as Chief Scientist of Endeca does not allow him to go into more detail and give away more of the methodology how to actually build a successful faceted search solution.
The book is great as a first introduction to the field, but I would be looking forward to an expanded second edition.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Good, but short
21 July 2009
Format:Paperback
This booklet is a short (70 pages) introduction to the topic of Faceted Search. The book reminded me watching an episode of "Lost" - I enjoyed every minute of it, but for every question it answered, it opened up two more...
The book starts with an insightful introduction to information classification and retrieval. It explains why the Faceted Search paradigm is so useful, and why it so much better than what preceded it. This was probably the best introduction to faceted search I have ever read, well written and fun to read (you can probably read the entire book in one afternoon).
But once you finish reading the introduction chapters, you realize that most of the book is over, and you still haven't read any details on how faceted search is actually implemented or best used in practice. These practical concerns are briefly surveyed in 20 pages, but this means that extremely interesting topics that each deserves a whole chapter, are often briefly mentioned in one sentence. If the author accompanied each of these sentences with a reference to a full research paper discussing this topic, it would also have been great, but a lot of statements are made in this booklet without being qualified by a reference, unfortunately.
One of the best insights I found in this book was in page 12-18: that ranked search is much better (and much more common) than set search, and yet faceted search only works well with set search. I waited throughout the book to see how the author proposes to treat this elephant in the room, and was disappointed when he only returned to this subject briefly in page 63, where he says that techniques which are useful for general search because they improve recall (e.g., query expansion), only hurt faceted search. Unfortunately, he doesn't offer any solution. Maybe there is no known solution - this is after all a young research field.
To summarize, this book is a fantastic *start* of a book about faceted search, but I would have loved for it to contain much more substance.
The book starts with an insightful introduction to information classification and retrieval. It explains why the Faceted Search paradigm is so useful, and why it so much better than what preceded it. This was probably the best introduction to faceted search I have ever read, well written and fun to read (you can probably read the entire book in one afternoon).
But once you finish reading the introduction chapters, you realize that most of the book is over, and you still haven't read any details on how faceted search is actually implemented or best used in practice. These practical concerns are briefly surveyed in 20 pages, but this means that extremely interesting topics that each deserves a whole chapter, are often briefly mentioned in one sentence. If the author accompanied each of these sentences with a reference to a full research paper discussing this topic, it would also have been great, but a lot of statements are made in this booklet without being qualified by a reference, unfortunately.
One of the best insights I found in this book was in page 12-18: that ranked search is much better (and much more common) than set search, and yet faceted search only works well with set search. I waited throughout the book to see how the author proposes to treat this elephant in the room, and was disappointed when he only returned to this subject briefly in page 63, where he says that techniques which are useful for general search because they improve recall (e.g., query expansion), only hurt faceted search. Unfortunately, he doesn't offer any solution. Maybe there is no known solution - this is after all a young research field.
To summarize, this book is a fantastic *start* of a book about faceted search, but I would have loved for it to contain much more substance.
It's just a quick survey
7 July 2011
Format:Paperback
This book does what it says... it's a synthesis of information. It's a scant 94 pages that feel more like 60, and can likely be read (slowly with understanding) in an afternoon. The first two sections of the book seem to be a history of information retrieval casually based around the topic of faceted search. As the other reviewer mentions, there is little actual practical information here... with the exception of a few suggestions to reduce information overload giving guidance on what metadata is most useful used as facets.
Again, there's nothing earth shattering, but it does point to a number of good pieces of literature and papers in the reference section, and it's much shorter than reading Marti Hearst's book entirely (though if you have, you can probably skip this).
Again, there's nothing earth shattering, but it does point to a number of good pieces of literature and papers in the reference section, and it's much shorter than reading Marti Hearst's book entirely (though if you have, you can probably skip this).
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