This book introduces a new approach to designing E-Librarian Services. With the help of this
system users will be able to retrieve multimedia resources from digital libraries more
efficiently than they would by browsing through an index or by using a simple keyword search.
E-Librarian Services combine recent advances in multimedia information retrieval with aspects
of human-machine interfaces such as the ability to ask questions in natural language they
simulate a human librarian by finding and delivering the most relevant documents that offer
users potential answers to their queries. The premise is that more pertinent results can be
retrieved if the search engine understands the meaning of the query the returned results are
therefore logical consequences of an inference rather than of keyword matches. Moreover
E-Librarian Services always provide users with a solution even in situations where they are
unable to offer a comprehensive answer.
