The present invention provides a system and method for inferring information need in a collection of hypermedia documents that is based on the observation that a user's hypertext link traversal decisions are typically based on the nature of that user's information need. The system identifies the hypermedia linkage structure among the plurality of documents in the collection. The documents include content items that may be relevant to a user information need. The system then accepts a user path item that represents a user's hypermedia link traversal history and applies a network flow model to the user path item in the hypermedia link information in order to create a document vector. The system also determines the distribution of the content items in the document collection, and then compares the document vector to the content item distribution in order to determine an inferred information need.