Abstract: Method for obtaining contextual information about an item based on information taken from or influenced by other items according to the relationships said item shares with other items, including the steps of (1) determining direct and indirect information of items, where the direct information includes generating a plurality of sets of structures, each structure relating to information about items and types of relationships between them, and each set consisting of common types of relationships between items, (2) determining direct and indirect relationships between items, where the direct relationship is selected from a set of potential relationships, (3) identifying classes or types of relationships that infer information about an item, (4) specifying correspondence between different types of relationships, and (5) combining the direct and indirect information of an item to establish its contextual information.