Towards an Information Market Paradigm P. van Bommel, B. van Gils, H.A. Proper, E.D. Schabell, M. van Vliet and Th.P. van der Weide Department of Information & Knowledge Systems, Institute for Computing and Information Sciences, Radboud University Nijmegen, Toernooiveld 1, 6525 ED Nijmegen, The Netherlands, EU. E.Proper@cs.ru.nl Abstract. This paper discusses the concept of information market. The authors of this paper have been involved in several aspects of information retrieval research. In continuing this research tradition we now take a wider perspective on this field, and position it as a market where demand for information meets supply for information. 1 Introduction Our modern day western societies are dominated by information systems. This is not a new phenomenon, as there were information systems playing important roles in cultures and empires long since gone. The problem of managing large volumes of information is also not new. The first institutional libraries appeared in Athens during the 4th century BC. Around that time in the library of Alexan- dria the first catalogs were used. The Romans later introduced classification and in the 18th century Dewey elaborated on that with the Dewey Decimal System. These days we use computers to assist us in managing these large volumes of information, either stored in a physical bricks and mortar library or on the Web. Hand in hand with the increased amounts of information that needed process- ing, the problem of information overload started to surface. As more and more data accumulated in information systems, it became harder and harder to find those bits of data that really mattered. This has led to the introduction of the field of information retrieval [1]. The development of the Internet provided our society with the opportunity to interconnect computers, leading to networked information systems. As the Internet matured it gave birth to the World-Wide- Web (the Web). This resulted in a multiplication of the information available to people around the globe and gave birth to e-commerce. Given the abundance of information available via the Web, an important part of the commodities traded on the Internet are actually carriers of information. This paper proposes to look at the exchange of information on the Internet as an Information Mar- ket, where demand and supply of information meet. As such, our aim is to mark a transition from a traditional view on information retrieval to an Information Market Paradigm. A traditional perspective on information retrieval is provided in the Information Retrieval Paradigm [2]. On one side, there are information resources that are at our disposal. These resources, which may be aggregated, 27 Proceedings of the CAiSE'05 Forum - O. Belo, J. Eder, J. Falcão e Cunha, O. Pastor (Eds.) © Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, Portugal 2005 - ISBN 972-752-078-2