5. The method of claim 3 , wherein obtaining information about the topic further comprises: receiving search results as a result of searching the multiple sources, the search results comprising documents corresponding to the search query; and extracting the excerpts from a subset the documents.
5. The method of claim 3 , wherein obtaining information about the topic further comprises: receiving search results as a result of searching the multiple sources, the search results comprising documents corresponding to the search query; and extracting the excerpts from a subset the documents. 6. The method of claim 5 , wherein obtaining information about the topic further comprises: selecting the subset of the documents from which to extract the excerpts, the subset of the documents being selected based on intrinsic metrics and extrinsic metrics, the intrinsic metrics comprising data from the documents and the extrinsic metrics comprising data relating to the documents but not from the documents; wherein the excerpts are extracted from the subset of documents based on the one or more criteria, the excerpts comprising text and non-text.