This text presents a theoretical and practical examination of the latest developments in Information Retrieval and their application to existing systems. By starting with a functional discussion of what is needed for an information system, the reader can grasp the scope of information retrieval problems and discover the tools to resolve them. The book takes a system approach to explore every functional processing step in a system from ingest of an item to be indexed to displaying results, showing how implementation decisions add to the information retrieval goal, and thus providing the user with the needed outcome, while minimizing their resources to obtain those results.
The text stresses the current migration of information retrieval from just textual to multimedia, expounding upon multimedia search, retrieval and display, as well as classic and new textual techniques. It also introduces developments in hardware, and more importantly, search architectures, such as those introduced by Google, in order to approach scalability issues.
About this textbook:
A first course text for advanced level courses, providing a survey of information retrieval system theory and architecture, complete with challenging exercisesApproaches information retrieval from a practical systems view in order for the reader to grasp both scope and solutionsFeatures what is achievable using existing technologies and investigates what deficiencies warrant additional exploration
The text stresses the current migration of information retrieval from just textual to multimedia, expounding upon multimedia search, retrieval and display, as well as classic and new textual techniques. It also introduces developments in hardware, and more importantly, search architectures, such as those introduced by Google, in order to approach scalability issues.
About this textbook:
A first course text for advanced level courses, providing a survey of information retrieval system theory and architecture, complete with challenging exercisesApproaches information retrieval from a practical systems view in order for the reader to grasp both scope and solutionsFeatures what is achievable using existing technologies and investigates what deficiencies warrant additional exploration
From the reviews: "Kowalski indicates that the book can serve as a textbook for an IR systems course or as a resource for information on the practical aspects of IR. ... The book includes chapters on all the important fundamentals, offering clear explanations as well as a nice historical context. ... Summing Up: Recommended. ... Upper-division undergraduates through professionals." (H. Levkowitz, Choice, Vol. 49 (5), January, 2012) "Kowalski's textbook is for advanced undergraduate and first-year graduate courses on information retrieval (IR) systems. The book's title accurately captures its theme: an introduction to the architecture and algorithms necessary to build an effective IR system. It contains nine chapters. ... It is a pleasure to read this book because it is very well written. ... All readers will quickly find that the language is very accurate and informative, and not dry at all. This is an excellent book on the subject." (Xiannong Meng, ACM Computing Reviews, June, 2011)