TY - JOUR AB - Purpose– Observing that people re‐access what they have seen or used in the past is very common in real lives. The purpose of this paper is to review the subject of information re‐finding comprehensively, and introduce to readers the underlying techniques and mechanisms used in information re‐finding.Design/methodology/approach– After analyzing users' information re‐finding behaviors and their requirements, the paper studies the natural way of re‐finding in human memory, and reviews state‐of‐the‐art techniques and tools developed in the fields of web and personal information management for information re‐finding.Findings– Four main re‐finding support techniques on the Web are: re‐finding tools in Web browsers; history service; re‐finding search engine; and voice‐based re‐finding. Three main re‐finding approaches are used in PIM: browse‐based approaches; content‐based search; and context‐based search.Practical implications– Following the recalling mechanisms in human memory, the method of recall‐by‐context in both fields of web usage and personal information management can make users feel easy to re‐find information.Originality/value– The paper gives a comprehensive overview of information re‐finding techniques. VL - 7 IS - 4 SN - 1744-0084 DO - 10.1108/17440081111187538 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/17440081111187538 AU - Deng Tangjian AU - Feng Ling PY - 2011 Y1 - 2011/01/01 TI - A survey on information re‐finding techniques T2 - International Journal of Web Information Systems PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited SP - 313 EP - 332 Y2 - 2024/05/12 ER -