Gene Golovchinsky at FXPAL has written a great series of posts on medical literature search, specifically looking at how MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) has been used to augment conventional text search, and whether its use improves the overall effectiveness of information seeking.
Here are the posts:
Even if you’re not specifically interested in medical literature search, I recommend you check these posts out. Much of the interesting work on information seeking is taking place in specialized domains like this one, where the value of getting it right offers far more promising returns than incremental improvements to general web search.
