Data Personalization: a Taxonomy of User Profiles Knowledge and a Profile Management Tool

xxxxThe goal of data personalization is to facilitate the expression of the need of a particular user and to enable him to obtain relevant information when he accesses an information system. The relevance of the information is defined by a set of criteria and preferences specific to each user or community of users. The data describing the users' interests and preferences is often gathered in the form of profiles. The content of a profile varies according to the target application and to its context (databases, information retrieval, digital libraries, multimedia applications). This paper elaborates a taxonomy of the most important knowledge composing a profile and proposes a generic model that can be instantiated and adapted for each specific application. The model is supported by a profile management tool (PMT) which also allows matching of profiles, aggregation of profiles and knowledge derivation from profiles. The last section of the paper lists some research challenges related to data personalization as identified in the APMD project initiated within the French Research Program on Data Masses