This is a three-year standard award. The ultimate goal of the Universal Information Access project is the full democratization of information and knowledge access, by removing -- or greatly lowering -- educational, linguistic and socio-economic barriers to effective information access and use. Progress towards this goal requires us to address the following challenges: (1) Translingual information retrieval, in order to access documents across language barriers, and across same-language jargon barriers, (2) Multi-level summarization, customized to the user's profile and information needs, (3) Automated hierarchical categorization, via high-dimensionality statistical learning methods, (4) Detection and tracking, of new topics and events of interest to each user as they unfold, and (5) Information validation as a function of source reliability and inter-source consistency. These capabilities will be integrated seamlessly into an information navigator's workstation, using a common underlying object model and a user-centric interface for visualization and management of information. These methods will be evaluated both with respect to quantitative metrics and with respect to user feedback from realistic tasks. Universal information access requires more than search engines and web browsing. For instance, much useful information may exist in languages other than English, or may come from sources of unknown reliability. Moreover, rapid analysis of information requires customized summarization, anti-redundancy filters, and hierarchical organization. Advances in these areas are beneficial to all disciplines which must cope with large volumes of rapidly growing information, such as scientific research, crisis management, international business, and improving our educational infrastructure. The proposed research, in addition to its clear impact on democratizing information access, should provide significant advances in: Information Retrieval, Machine Learning, Digital Libraries, and user-centered Information Management.
