Kowalski G.J., Maybury M.T. Information Storage and Retrieval Systems. Theory and Implementation

Kluwer, 2002. — 333 p.The Second Edition incorporates the latest developments in the area of Information Retrieval. The major addition to this text is descriptions of the automated indexing of multimedia documents. Items in information retrieval are now considered to be a combination of text along with graphics, audio, image and video data types. What this means from an Information Retrieval System design and implementation is discussed.
The growth of the Internet and the availability of enormous volumes of data in digital form have necessitated intense interest in techniques to assist the user in locating data of interest. The Internet has over 800 million indexable pages as of February 1999 (Lawrence-
99.) Other estimates from International Data Corporation suggest that the number is closer to 1.5 billion pages and the number will grow to 8 billion pages by the Fall 2000 (http://news.excite.com/news/zd/000510/21/inktomichief- gets, 11 May 2000.) Buried on the Internet are both valuable nuggets to answer questions as well as a large quantity of information the average person does not care about. The Digital Library effort is also progressing, with the goal of migrating from the traditional book environment to a digital library environment.
The challenge to both authors of new publications that will reside on this information domain and developers of systems to locate information is to provide the information and capabilities to sort out the non-relevant items from those desired by the consumer. In effect, as we proceed down this path, it will be the computer that determines what we see versus the human being. The days of going to a library and browsing the new book shelf are being replaced by electronic searching the Internet or the library catalogs. Whatever the search engines return will constrain our knowledge of what information is available. An understanding of Information Retrieval Systems puts this new environment into perspective for both the creator of documents and the consumer trying to locate information.
This book provides a theoretical and practical explanation of the latest advancements in information retrieval and their application to existing systems. It takes a system approach, discussing all aspects of an Information Retrieval System. The importance of the Internet and its associated hypertext linked structure are put into perspective as a new type of information retrieval data structure. The total system approach also includes discussion of the human interface and the importance of information visualization for identification of relevant information. With the availability of large quantities of multi-media on the Internet (audio, video, images), Information Retrieval Systems need to address multi-modal retrieval. The Second Edition has been expanded to address how Information Retrieval Systems are expanded to include search and retrieval on multi-modal sources. The theoretical metrics used to describe information systems are expanded to discuss their practical application in the uncontrolled environment of real world systems.
The primary goal of writing this book is to provide a college text on Information Retrieval Systems. But in addition to the theoretical aspects, the book maintains a theme of practicality that puts into perspective the importance and utilization of the theory in systems that are being used by anyone on the Internet. The student will gain an understanding of what is achievable using existing technologies and the deficient areas that warrant additional research. The text provides coverage of all of the major aspects of information retrieval and has sufficient detail to allow students to implement a simple Information Retrieval System. The comparison algorithms from Chapter 11 can be used to compare how well each of the student’s systems work.Introduction to Information Retrieval Systems
Information Retrieval System Capabilities
Cataloging and Indexing
Data Structure
Automatic Indexing
Document and Term Clustering
Information Visualization
Text Search Algorithms
Multimedia Information Retrieval
Information System Evaluation