WEBSOM - Self-Organizing Maps of Document Collections

Timo Honkela, Neural Networks Research Centre, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland,
Samuel Kaski,
Krista Lagus,
Teuvo Kohonen
Email: timo.honkela@hut.fi


Abstract:

Searching for relevant text documents has traditionally been based on keywords and Boolean expressions of them. Often the search results show high recall and low precision, or vice versa. Considerable efforts have been made to develop alternative methods, but their practical applicability has been low. Powerful methods are needed for the exploration of miscellaneous document collections. The WEBSOM method organizes a document collection on a map display that provides an overview of the collection and facilitates interactive browsing. Interesting documents can be retrieved by a content addressable search of interesting map locations. The interesting locations could also be marked as filters for collecting interesting new documents.

Paper in PostScript


WSOM'97