Expanding a hypertext information retrieval system to incorporate multimedia information

The integration of hypermedia with information retrieval is usually used to overcome user disorientation problems. However, previous approaches have generally considered only text retrieval, and if real content-based multimedia information retrieval capabilities are used, effectiveness and efficiency are very low when compared with text retrieval. This paper describes the development of a hypermedia information retrieval system that uses automatically-created text descriptors to obtain multimedia information retrieval capability, using text retrieval techniques. There are two main aspects under consideration: (1) automatic creation of text descriptors for multimedia documents, using information taken from the hypermedia network, at the document and abstract classification level; and (2) integration of open hypermedia systems, in this case the Microcosm system, with text information retrieval tools to allow multimedia retrieval using text descriptors. At the end of this paper, we present some conclusions about the effectiveness of such a system, and improvements are suggested for further research