The design and functioning of an information system improve to the extent that the system can handle the questions people ask. Surprisingly, however, researchers in the cognitive, computer, and information sciences have not thoroughly examined the multitude of relationships between information systems and questions -- both question asking and answering. The purpose of this book is to explicitly examine these relationships. Chapter contributors believe that questions play a central role in the analysis, design, and use of different kinds of natural or artificial information systems such as human cognition, social interaction, communication networks, and intelligent tutoring systems. Their efforts show that data structures and representations need to be organized around the questioning mechanisms in order to achieve a quick retrieval of relevant useful information.

"...the volume is ambitious....this volume offers some interesting and certainly wide-ranging perspectives on family research..."—Contemporary Psychology"Lauer et al. have focused on ground that is important to cover....And the book has covered this ground successfully, which will ensure its usefulness both for future experimental study and for future implementations of questioning and answering systems."—Computational Linguistics"...the articles in this book are consistently well written and informative. The strength of the book lies in the breadth of the background of the contributors and the variety of their contributions. This book should prove interesting to those who view accounting as the dissemination of information, including the many facets related to providing that information."—The Accounting Review