Christopher D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan, and Hinrich Schütze: Introduction to information retrieval

Excerpt

Information retrieval (IR) is not a very easy term to define. Writing a book on the subject, Lancaster (1968), with a footnote acknowledging van Rijsbergen (1979)—tongue in cheek—put it this way: “Information retrieval is the term conventionally, though somewhat inaccurately, applied to the type of activity discussed in this volume”. Usefully, Manning, Raghavan, and Schütze (2008) define it as “… finding material (usually documents) of an unstructured nature (usually text) that satisfies an information need from within large collections (usually stored on computers)”. Thus, “an information retrieval system does not inform (i.e. change the knowledge of) the user on the subject of his inquiry. It merely informs on the existence (or non-existence) and whereabouts of documents relating to his request” (Lancaster 1968). In an age where “information explosion” and “information overload” have become clichés, the importance of IR as an area of academic activity cannot be overemphasized, and the book by Manning, Raghavan, and Schütze could not have been more timely. …