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Histories and backtracking

It had been noted in earlier Okapi experiments that some users, perhaps feeling that their search was not proceeding in a fruitful direction, would abandon their current query and start again by entering exactly the same terms. It was thought that the desire to go back and change direction might be supported more usefully by saving the entire query ``state'' periodically (e.g. immediately after a search when the current query and hit-list were in step), and providing users with an explicit backtracking option.



PAYNE A
Wed Jul 3 14:11:32 BST 1996