Abstract: Apparatus for assisting a user to add a new node to an ontology stored in an ontological database especially for use in a just in time information retrieval system. The apparatus comprises analysing means for analysing one or more documents and/or groups of documents associated, by the user, with the new node to be added to the ontology, to generate a characteristic vector for the or each associated document or group of documents, preferably using a latent semantic indexing method. The apparatus further includes a classifier for performing a classification step using the or each characteristic vector to obtain one or more indications of possibly closely related nodes and thereby to identify the parent node or nodes of at least one or more of the possibly closely related nodes.

Abstract: An apparatus is provided for use in scheduling events on behalf of a plurality of participating physical entities. The apparatus comprises evaluating means and scheduling means, the evaluating means being arranged to evaluate a received event request containing information about the event and to generate an input to the scheduling means with respect to one or more physical entities identified in the received event request. The evaluating means is arranged, on behalf of physical entities identified in the received event request, to calculate a value for each of a plurality of predetermined measures, including a measure of the importance of the requested event to an identified entity, using an appropriate rule set for each measure, and using a further rule set, to combine the calculated values and so derive and output a value representative of the overall degree of support by the identified physical entity for the requested event, for input to the scheduling means.

Abstract: An apparatus and method are provided for determining a level of expertise applicable to a particular document and for using this determined level of expertise in an improved information retrieval arrangement. A trainable document classifier is used to identify an applicable level of expertise using a metric indicative of the commonality, as measured with reference to a reference corpus, of terms comprised in a given document, trained using a training set of documents comprising, for each of a plurality of predetermined levels of expertise, a representative sample of documents and their respective metric values. An information retrieval apparatus is arranged to identify documents relevant to a specified category of information and to select from documents so identified those having a level of expertise, determined by the trained document classifier, matching a specified level of expertise for a target user in respect of that category of information.