Searching for useful information is nowadays difficult because of the information overload problem in a global network consisting of heterogeneous sources. Intelligent information agents, or multiagent systems consisting of those, are one of the solutions to this problem. This paper is a short case study of existing information retrieval systems based on agent approaches. User profiles and searching issues are two main issues described and a functional categorization of independent profiling systems or independent searching systems is proposed, as well as a short description of a hybrid profiling and searching system.
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