目前大部分的摘要系統為單篇文章摘要系統，雖然能提示個別文章的要點，卻無法把性質相近的文章集合成單篇摘要。能否夠發展一個多篇文章摘要系統，將敘述相同事件的文章統合成一篇摘要？如此一來，兩三個句子就能把文章的文意清楚而簡潔的表達出來，讓使用者能在一分鐘之內，明瞭這幾篇文章是否符合資訊需求，以縮短其蒐集的時間，更有效率的吸收網路上的大量資訊。
我們的目標在於發展一個多篇文章摘要系統，系統所產生的摘要能滿足以下兩個條件：指示性簡單摘要，和查詢主題相關，能因應使用者的查詢而有所改變。

為了達成此目標，我們將探討句子的指示性和查詢主題相關性，並選出重要性高而且相互獨立的句子，然後將不重要的小句刪除，以得到最終摘要。

我們針對NTCIR的248篇文章和50個查詢標題作實驗，所得到的摘要縮減比率為95％以上。整體而言，產生的摘要都能指示出幾篇相關新聞以及查詢主題的要旨。

Most summarization systems are designed for a single document at present. These systems indicate the essence of individual document, but do not transfer similar documents into single summary. Can we develop a multi-document summarization system, which transfers related documents with the same event into a summary? If that is possible, the main points of documents will be clearly and simply displayed with two or three sentences. Users can see whether these documents are what they want in a minute. It can reduce time for collecting documents and enable users to gather information on the Internet more efficiently.
To develop a multi-document summarization system is the goal of this thesis. Summary produced by the must system satisfy two conditions: indicative and topic related. The summary should be tailored to suit user’s query.

To achieve this goal, we will study the indicativeness and topic relevance of sentences, and the selection of sentences that are important and independence to each other. Finally, unimportant small clauses will be deleted, to make the final summary more concise.

System generates summaries with 248 documents and fifty topics of NTCIR. The reduction rate is over 95%. overall, the quality of summaries produced were satisfactory.

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