System and method for document collection, grouping and summarization

Abstract

System for generating a summary of a plurality of documents is provided. The system includes a computer readable document collection containing a plurality of related documents stored in electronic form therein, a plurality of forms of multiple document summarization engines, and a router for determining a temporal relationship of at least a subset of the documents in the collection and selecting one of the plurality of forms of multiple document summarization engines for generating a summary of the subset of documents based on the temporal relationship.

1 . A system for generating a summary of a plurality of documents comprising:
 a computer readable document collection containing a plurality of related documents stored in electronic form therein;   a plurality of forms of multiple document summarization engines; and   a router, the router determining a temporal relationship of at least a subset of the documents in the collection and selecting one of the plurality of forms of multiple document summarization engines for generating a summary of the subset of documents based on the temporal relationship.   
     
     
         2 . The system for generating a summary of a plurality of documents of  claim 1 , wherein the plurality of forms of multiple document summarization engines include a single event engine, a biography engine and a multi-event engine. 
     
     
         3 . The system for generating a summary of a plurality of documents of  claim 2 , wherein the router selects the single event engine if a predetermined number of documents in the subset of the collection are generated within a predetermined time period. 
     
     
         4 . The system for generating a summary of a plurality of documents of  claim 2 , wherein the router selects the biography engine if the documents in the collection are not generated within a predetermined time period and the number of capitalized words and the number of personal pronouns each exceed a predetermined threshold value. 
     
     
         5 . The system for generating a summary of a plurality of documents of  claim 1 , further comprising a document collection program, the document collection program being configured to search the content of a predetermined set of content sources to gather documents for the document collection. 
     
     
         6 . The system for generating a summary of a plurality of documents of  claim 5 , wherein the content sources are websites of content providers on the Internet. 
     
     
         7 . A computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user, comprising:
 gathering a plurality of articles from a plurality of content providers;   determining clusters of at least a portion of the articles;   selecting one of a plurality of forms of multiple document summarization engines for each cluster of articles based on the temporal relationship of the articles in each cluster;   generating a summary for each cluster of articles; and   displaying at least one summary to a user.   
     
     
         8 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 7 , further comprising generating labels for the cluster summaries related to the cluster content. 
     
     
         9 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 8 , wherein the step of generating labels further comprises extracting a set of keywords from the articles in the clusters. 
     
     
         10 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 8 , further comprising sorting each of the summaries into one of a plurality of categories. 
     
     
         11 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 10 , wherein the step of displaying the summary includes generating a display on a graphical user interface, the graphical user interface presenting the summaries organized in accordance with the categories and labels of cluster summaries. 
     
     
         12 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 11 , further comprising the step of displaying images associated with the summaries. 
     
     
         13 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 12 , wherein the step of gathering articles further comprises selecting images that are associated with the articles and wherein the selected images are the images displayed in association with the summaries. 
     
     
         14 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 12 , wherein articles are in the form of HTML content and the step of selecting images associated with the articles includes determining whether the image is within a common HTML cell as the content. 
     
     
         15 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 14 , wherein the step of selecting images associated with the articles includes determining whether the computer readable file format of the image file is representative of an image associated with the content. 
     
     
         16 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 15 , wherein the step of selecting images associated with the articles includes rejecting image files having an address of the image file that is indicative of advertising content. 
     
     
         17 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 7 , wherein the step of gathering articles further comprises the step of extracting the news articles from other content. 
     
     
         18 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 7 , wherein the step of gathering articles further comprises selecting images that are associated with the articles. 
     
     
         19 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 18 , wherein articles are in the form of HTML content and the step of selecting images associated with the articles includes determining whether the image is within a common HTML cell as the content. 
     
     
         20 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 18 , wherein the step of selecting images associated with the articles includes determining whether the computer readable file format of the image file is representative of an image associated with the content. 
     
     
         21 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 20 , wherein the step of selecting images associated with the articles includes rejecting image files having an address of the image file that is indicative of advertising content. 
     
     
         22 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 7 , wherein the plurality of forms of multiple document summarization engines include a single event engine and at least one dissimilarity engine for multiple document summarization. 
     
     
         23 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 7 , wherein the step of selecting one of a plurality of forms of multiple document summarization engines includes using a temporal relationship to determine whether the documents in a cluster relate to a single event. 
     
     
         24 . A system for document collection, grouping and summarization comprising:
 a document collection engine, the document collection engine being configured to be operatively coupled to a computer network to access a plurality of content providers;   a computer readable document collection database, the document collection database being operatively coupled to the document collection engine;   a cluster processing engine operatively coupled to the document collection database, the cluster processing engine grouping at least a portion of the documents in the document collection database into clusters having a plurality of related documents;   a plurality of forms of multiple document summarization engines;   a summarization router, the summarization router being interposed between the cluster processing engine and the plurality of forms of multiple document summarization engines, the summarization router determining a temporal relationship among the documents in the clusters and selecting one of the plurality of forms of multiple document summarization engines for generating a summary of the cluster based on, the temporal relationship; and   a graphical user interface, the graphical user interface being operatively coupled to the cluster processing engine and the plurality of summarization engines and providing a display including cluster summaries and cluster information.   
     
     
         25 . The system for document collection, grouping and summarization of  claim 24 , wherein the plurality of forms of multiple document summarization engines include a single event engine, a biography engine and a multi-event engine. 
     
     
         26 . The system for document collection, grouping and summarization comprising  claim 25 , wherein the summarization router selects the single event engine if a predetermined number of documents in the subset of the collection are generated within a predetermined time period. 
     
     
         27 . The system for document collection, grouping and summarization of  claim 26 , wherein the router selects the biography engine if the documents in the collection are not generated within a predetermined time period and the number of capitalized words and the number of personal pronouns each exceed a predetermined threshold value. 
     
     
         28 . The system for document collection, grouping and summarization of  claim 24 , wherein the document collection engine is configured to search the content of a predetermined set of content sources. 
     
     
         29 . The system for document collection, grouping and summarization comprising of  claim 28 , wherein the content sources are websites of content providers on the Internet. 
     
     
         30 . The system for document collection, grouping and summarization of  claim 24 , wherein the cluster processing engine establishes cluster labels for each of the clusters and wherein the cluster information displayed by the graphical user interface includes the cluster labels. 
     
     
         31 . The system for document collection, grouping and summarization of  claim 30 , wherein the cluster processing engine sorts the clusters into one of a plurality of predetermined document categories, and wherein cluster information displayed by the graphical user interface includes the predetermined categories. 
     
     
         32 . The system for document collection, grouping and summarization of  claim 31 , wherein the graphical user interface presents a display including the predetermined categories and cluster labels. 
     
     
         33 . The system for document collection, grouping and summarization of  claim 32 , wherein one of the document collection engine or cluster processing engine identifies image files associated with documents that are collected and wherein the graphical user interface displays the image files with the summary associated with the document cluster. 
     
     
         34 . A method of generating a summary of multiple documents in a document cluster, comprising:
 for each document in the cluster, determining a score for each sentence based on features of the sentences;   selecting a subset of sentences based on a weighted sentence score;   merging the selected sentences in accordance with a predetermined order for the selected sentences; and   removing selected sentences which are duplicative.   
     
     
         35 . The method of generating a summary according to  claim 34 , further comprising the steps of determining variants of named entity references in the summary and performing a named entity substitution by inserting a first variant for the first occurrence of the reference and inserting a second variant for the remaining references. 
     
     
         36 . The method of generating a summary according to  claim 34 , wherein the features of the sentences include a score based on lead values. 
     
     
         37 . The method of generating a summary according to  claim 34 , wherein the features of the sentences include a score based on verb specificity. 
     
     
         38 . The method of generating a summary according to  claim 34 , wherein the features of the sentences include a score based on noun-verb concept sets. 
     
     
         39 . The method of generating a summary according to  claim 34 , wherein the features of the sentences include a score based on lead values, verb specificity, and noun-verb concept sets. 
     
     
         40 . The method of generating a summary according to  claim 34 , wherein the features of the sentences include a score based on at least one heuristic relationship selected from the set including sentence location, publication date, target, sentence length, other entity, pronoun, and role. 
     
     
         41 . Computer readable media encoded with instructions for a computer processor to perform the following steps:
 gathering a plurality of articles from a plurality of content providers;   determining clusters of at least a portion of the articles;   selecting one of a plurality of forms of multiple document summarization engines for each cluster of articles based on the temporal relationship of the articles in each cluster;   generating a summary for each cluster of articles; and   displaying at least one summary to a user.   
     
     
         42 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 7 , further comprising displaying a list of at least one of the articles in the cluster corresponding to the summary displayed to the user. 
     
     
         43 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 42 , wherein each entry in the list includes a link to contents of the article. 
     
     
         44 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 42 , wherein each entry in the list includes a date for each article. 
     
     
         45 . The computer-based method of presenting content, such as news articles, to a user of  claim 42 , wherein the entries in the list are grouped by date. 
     
     
         46 . The computer readable media encoded with instructions for a computer processor of  claim 41 , further comprising displaying a list of at least one of the articles in the cluster corresponding to the summary displayed to the user. 
     
     
         47 . The computer readable media encoded with instructions for a computer processor of  claim 46 , wherein each entry in the list includes a link to contents of the article. 
     
     
         48 . The computer readable media encoded with instructions for a computer processor of  claim 46 , wherein each entry in the list includes a date for each article. 
     
     
         49 . The computer readable media encoded with instructions for a computer processor of  claim 46 , wherein the entries in the list are grouped by date.