Rihab Ayed¹, Farah Harrathi², M. Mohsen Gammoudi² and Mahran Farhat³, ¹University of Carthage, Tunisia, ²University of Manouba, Tunisia and ³University Tunis El-Manar, Tunisia

Users in Information Retrieval are formulating since many years their queries in a bag of words that should be understandable by the system. The problem of ‘bag of words’ format is that it can cause the deformation of the user’s information need. A question is raised in this paper to discover if there is a more faithful and richer way to users to formulate their idea of search. This paper proposes an approach for users to model their queries in Information Retrieval (IR) based on the use of a brainstorming technique (Mind Mapping). The choice of the query representation model is based on assertions concerning Human Mind and habits of thinking. In this approach, an interpretation is suggested for the use of Mind Map, based on the relative importance weight of terms. Preliminary experimentation on a Medical corpus (CLEF2009) showed the accuracy of our approach.

Information Retrieval, Query Formulation, Idea, Associations, Mind Map