Towards a geometrical model for polyrepresentation of information objects

Abstract

The principle of polyrepresentation is one of the fundamental recent developments in the field of interactive retrieval. An open problem is how to define a framework which unifies different aspects of polyrepresentation and allows for their application in several ways. Such a framework can be of geometrical nature and it may embrace concepts known from quantum theory. In this short paper, we discuss by giving examples how this framework can look like, with a focus on information objects. We further show how it can be exploited to find a cognitive overlap of different representations on the one hand, and to combine different representations by means of knowledge augmentation on the other hand. We discuss the potential that lies within a geometrical framework and motivate its further development.