Modelling personalisable hypermedia: The Goldsmiths Model

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of how hypermedia systems such as the WWW can be endowed with features which allow the personalisation of the interaction process between the hypermedia and the user. The approach taken is unique in formally modelling a rich set of abstract user-initiated personalisation actions which enable individual users to come closer to satisfying their specific, and often dynamic, information retrieval goals. The model proposed is descriptive, rather than prescriptive, and is cast at a level of abstraction above that of concrete systems exploring current technologies. Such an approach, it is hoped, will allow for user and system-initiated personalisation actions to be studied with greater conceptual clarity than is possible with technology-driven experimentation. This paper also describes the development of a personalisable hypermedia system called PAS. Developed at Goldsmiths College, University of London, PAS embodies the main concepts underlying the model proposed