Abstract
Most information retrieval technologies are designed to facilitate information discovery. However, much knowledge involved finding and re-using previously seen information. Stuff I’ve Seen (SIS) is a system designed to facilitate information re-use. This is accomplished in two ways. First, the system provides unified access to information that a person has seen, regardless of whether the information was seen as an email, appointment, web page, document, hand-written note, etc. Second, because the information has been seen before, rich contextual cues and visualizations can be used in the search interface. In addition to list views of results, we have explored a timeline visualization which incorporates personal landmarks and a summary overview for identifying patterns. The system has been deployed internally to more than one thousand users. Both qualitative and quantitative aspects of system use and our experiences in deploying it will be reported.

Biography
Susan Dumais is a Senior Researcher in the Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group at Microsoft Research where she works on algorithms and interfaces for improved information access and management. Prior to joining Microsoft Research in 1997, she was at Bellcore and Bell Labs for many years. She has published widely in the areas of human-computer interaction and information retrieval. Her current research focuses on personal information retrieval, user modeling, text categorization using inductive learning techniques, and collaborative information retrieval. Previous research included well-known work on Latent Semantic Indexing (a statistical method for concept-based retrieval), combining search and navigation, individual differences, perceptual learning and attention, and organizational impacts of new technology.
Susan is Past-Chair of ACM’s SIGIR group, and serves on the NRC Committee on Computing and Communications Research to Enable Better Use of Information Technology in Digital Government, and the NRC Board on Assessment of NIST Programs. She is on the editorial board of: ACM:Transactions on Information Systems, ACM:Transactions on Human Computer Interaction, Human Computer Interaction, Information Processing and Management, Information Retrieval, Hypertext, Encyclopedia of Information Retrieval, and Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, and is actively involved on program committees for several conferences. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Washington, and has been a visiting faculty member at Stevens Institute of Technology, New York University, and the University of Chicago.
Additional information is available at: http://research.microsoft.com/~sdumais