A technique for representing an information need and employing one or more filters to select documents that satisfy the represented information need, including a technique of creating filters that involves (a) dividing a set of documents into one or more subsets such that each subset can be used as the source of features for creating a filtering profile or used to set or validate the score threshold for the profile and (b) determining whether multiple profiles are required and how to combine them to create an effective filter. Multiple profiles can be incorporated into an individual filter and the individual filters combined to create an ensemble filter. Ensemble filters can then be further combined to create meta filters.