Towards a General Theory for Information

The Web has grown considerably over the last few years, both in size and in nature. The usage of the internet as a source of information has grown considerably as well. However, finding the right information is not always straight forward. For example, how to go about finding out how many concerts the band Golden Earring gave in the year 1987, or finding out which webpages are inspired by Terry Pratchett's Diskworld novels? Even though much effort has been invested in this area, we feel that a solid, conceptual framework for information supply is still missing. In this paper we broadly define such a framework, and explain how it can be used in e.g. Web Retrieval by means of an example. We also explain which areas need more research and what can be expected in the (near) future