The field of Information Access concerns helping people find, use, understand, and create the information they need, often using computer systems as tools. Information can be found in many forms and media, although much of our research has been concerned with text in general, not focusing exclusively on the Web.
Text analysis and user interface technology must be combined with an understanding of how users work with information and computer tools when building systems to support information access.
Currently, these pages provide additional information about some of the ideas discussed in the Scientific American article Interfaces for Searching the Web by Marti Hearst. There is a great deal of research in Information Access at Xerox PARC, of which this pages show only a small sample.