In today’s knowledge-driven society, information abundance and personal electronic device ubiquity have made it difficult for users to find the right information at the right time and at the right level of detail. To solve this problem, researchers have eveloped systems that adapt their behavior to the goals, tasks, interests, and other characteristics of their users. Based on models that capture important user characteristics, these personalized systems maintain their users’ profiles and take them into account to customize the content generated or its presentation to the different individuals. This tutorial will provide a comparative survey of user models and personalization methods emerging from the IR and database communities. It will also discuss open issues and challenges and will point to technology transfer opportunities between the two disciplines. The target audience includes researchers and practitioners in database and web-based systems and applications.