Information Retrieval
Introduction
Information Retrieval (IR) is the act of storing, searching, and retrieving information that match a user’s request [1]. A user requests information in terms of a query, which concretely describes the needed information. The query is then passed on to the IR system where is transformed into a form that the system’s model can understand. Using this translated form, the underlying document collection is then searched. Retrieved documents are then either directly sent to the user or ranked by relevance and then sent to the user.
The beginnings of Information Retrieval can be dated back to Greek times, where they started to use alphabetization for indexing the books in their libraries. Until the the 1950s, IR was mostly only a research field of library sciences. It can be argued that in 1945 the ideas of modern IR were born by Vannevar Bush who talked about bringing quick and easy access to the world’s libraries using machines and made predictions about such things as hypertext and the personal computer [2].
In the 1950s and 60s computer based IR systems begin to be developed. However, these systems suffered from a lack of computing power and did not provide real time results [3]. However, much of the theoretical research that is still used in todays systems was developed during this time. Starting in the 1970s computers started to be powerful enough to handle real time responses.
In the past 10 years IR has started to gain importance due to the increasing number of electronically available texts. With the quick growth of the Internet and the now billions of pages available, IR systems have become a necessity. Companies, like Google and Yahoo, are battling to be the best at indexing and searching the Internet.
References
[1]Korfhage, R.R. Information Storage and Retrieval John Wiley and Sons, 1997
[2]Bush, V. As We May Think Atlantic Monthly, 1945, 176, 101-108
[3]Flynn, R. (ed.) Computer Sciences: Macmillan Science Library Macmillan Reference USA, 2002
Classes
- University of Massachusetts Amherst, CMPSCI 646, Information Retrieval, Fall 2006 (James Allen)
- University of Massachusetts Amherst, CMPSCI 791S, Statistical Information Extraction, Spring 2003 (Andrew McCallum)
Online Books
- Christopher D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan and Hinrich Schütze, Introduction to Information Retrieval, Cambridge University Press. 2007.
- C. J. van RIJSBERGEN, Information Retrieval, Butterworths, 1979