Mediating between available information objects and individual information needs is a central issue within the Information Society. In the simplest case this is an information request answered by a search engine based on the analysis of the content of individual information objects within an information collection that may be a digital library, but also the World Wide Web. However, neither the information search activity nor the information objects within the collection are isolated entities. They are both equipped with a multifaceted context. This talk discusses complementing ways to make such context explicit and to use it to improve the information mediation process.

In general "the context of something consists of the ideas, situations, events, or information that relate to it and make it possible to understand it fully". When information (or knowledge) is represented, context is generally left implicit. This strategy enables concise representation and communication of information under the assumption that relevant parts of the context are shared or given as background knowledge. If context is to be explicitly represented, as it is, for example, done in knowledge representation, it can be used for reasoning and decision making. In order to enable an effective use of context, it is important that the "right" aspects of the context are to be modeled and that the relationship between the context representation and the representation of the "something" in the context is clearly defined. This also holds true, when using context in intelligent information access support.

The most obvious and common way to represent context for information objects are metadata like bibliographic metadata that embed an information object in information mainly about its creation process. This is, however, capturing only part of the original context an information object was created in. Many information objects, like e.g. propaganda films, can only be fully understood, if more information about their original context is available, like e.g. the time, the