Advances in Information Retrieval

Advances in Information Retrieval

Advances in Information Retrieval

Article Type: Book review From: Journal of Documentation, Volume 68, Issue 5

Proceedings of the 32nd European Conference on IR Research (ECIR 2010), Milton Keynes, UK, March 28-31 2010,Edited by Cathal Gurrin, Yulan He, Gabriella Kazai, Udo Kruschwitz, Suzanne Little, Thomas Roelleke, Stefan Rüger and Keith van Rijsbergen,Springer-Verlag,Berlin,2011,677 pp.,ISBN 978-3642122743

Keywords: Information retrieval, Computer science, Natural language processing, Text mining, Web information retrieval, European Conference on IR Research

This publication provides an excellent “state of the art” review and description of recent developments and improvements within information retrieval (IR). It is very broad ranging in its coverage and the contributions are organised under the following headings: natural language processing (NLP) and text mining; web IR; evaluation; multi media IR; distributed IR and performance issues; IR theory and formal models; personalisation and recommendation; domain specific IR and cross language IR; user issues. In addition to 44 revised full papers, plus the keynote address, it includes abstracts of invited talks on emerging issues including collaborative web searching, the impact of visualisation technology on NLP and developments in automatic image annotation for multimedia IR. A fuller description of these talks or a clear reference to relevant papers would have been useful. Finally it includes posters and a description of some demonstrations of new IR systems.

The content is, as one would expect from this conference, more in the computer science than library and information science tradition, and some of it may be too technical for some LIS students. It does, however, provide a thorough and well-presented overview of recent developments. The introduction is a masterful analysis of the key topics covered which carefully links them with previous work as well as clearly highlighting what the new developments are. An essential text for those working in IR research and a useful guide for students to the breadth of IR research topics currently under investigation.

Clare ThornleyDept. of Information Studies, University College London, London, UK