Homer: a pattern discovery support system

Traditional research in information retrieval concentrates on retrieving documents. This paper introduces the idea that valuable information exists within a document col- lection as thematic patterns that can be found without looking at individual documents in the collection. This information is valuable in its own right and as an aid to the IR process, and is often not contained in any of the collection’s documents. This paper introduces a pattern discovery support system, Homer, which aids users' search for patterns and some compelling anecdotal evi- dence.