Modern Information Retrieval

Information retrieval (IR) has changed considerably in recent years with the expansion of the World Wide Web and the advent of modern and inexpensive graphical user interfaces and mass storage devices. As a result., traditional IR textbooks have become quite out of date and this has led to the introduction of new IR books. Nevertheless, we believe that there is still great need for a book that approaches the field in a rigorous and complete way from a computer-science perspective (as opposed to a user-centered perspective). This book is an effort to partially fulfill this gap and should be useful for a first course on information retrieval as well as for a graduate course on the topic.

The book comprises two portions which complement and balance each other. The core portion includes nine chapters authored or co-authored by the designers of the book. The second portion, which is fully integrated with the first, is formed by six state-of-the-art chapters written by leading researchers in their fields. The same notation and glossary are used in all the chapters. Thus, despite the fact that several people have contributed to the text, this book is really much more a textbook than an edited collection of chapters written by separate authors. Furthermore, unlike a collection of chapters, we have carefully designed the contents and organization of the book to present a cohesive view of all the important aspects of modern information retrieval.

From IR models to indexing text, from IR visual tools and interfaces to the Web, from IR. multimedia to digital libraries, the book provides both breadth of coverage and richness of detail. It is our hope that, given the now clear relevance and significance of information retrieval to modern society. the book will contribute to further disseminate the study of the discipline at information science, computer science, and library science departments throughout the world.

Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Santiago, Chile
Berthier Ribeiro-Neto. Belo Horizonte, Brazil
January, 1999

The organization of the book, which includes a comprehensive glossary, allows the reader to either obtain a broad overview or detailed knowledge of all the key topics in modern IR. The heart of the book is the nine chapters written by Baeza-Yates and Ribeiro-Neto, two leading exponents in the field. For those wishing to delve deeper into key areas there are further state-of-the-art chapters on specialized topics, fully integrated and using the same notation and terminology, written by leading researchers:

• Parallel and Distributed IR - algorithms and architectures (Eric Brown)
• User Interfaces and Visualization - the main interface paradigms for query formation and visualization of results (Marti A. Hearst)
• Multimedia IR: Models and Languages - including MULTOS and SQL3 (Elisa Bertino, Barbara Catania and Elena Ferrari)
• Multimedia IR: Indexing and Searching - R-trees and GEMINI and QBIC (Christos Faloutsos)
• Libraries and Bibliographical Systems - online systems and public access catalogs (Edie M. Rasmussen)
• Digital Libraries - the main challenges for effective deployment (Edward A Fox and Ohm Sornil)

In addition, the book contains several chapters on :

• Text IR - all the main IR models, query operations, text operations, indexing and searching (three of them co-authored with Gonzalo Navarro or Nivio Ziviani)
• The Web - challenges, measures and models, search engines, directories, query languages, metasearches and trends

Modern Information Retrieval will prove invaluable to students in Computer Science, Information Science and Library Science departments, as well as to programmers and analysts working with products related to the Web, intranets, document database systems and digital libraries.

1. Introduction.
2. Modeling.
3. Text Languages, Transformations and Properties.
4. Text Operations.
5. Query Languages.
6. Query Operations.
7. Indexing and Searching.
8. Multimedia IR: Models and Languages.
9. Multimedia IR: Indexing and Searching.
10. User Interfaces for Information Access Systems.
11. Digital Libraries.
12. Searching the Web.
13. Library Systems.