Information Retrieval System

Information Retrieval is a very simple concept with everyone having practical ex­perience in it's use. The scenario of a user having information need, translating that into a search statement and executing that search to locate the information has become ubiquitous to even day life. The Internet has become a repository of any in­formation a person needs, replacing the library as a more convenient research tool. An Information Retrieval System is a system that ingests information, transforms it into searchable format and provides an interface to allow a user to search and retrieve information. The most obvious example of an Information Retrieval Sys­tem is GOOGLE and the English language has even been extended with the term "Google it" to mean search for something.

So everyone has had experience with Information Retrieval Systems and with a little thought it is easy to answer the question—"Does it work?" Everyone who has used such systems has experienced the frustration that is encountered when looking for certain information. Given the massive amount of intellectual effort that is going into the design and evolution of a "GOOGLE" or other search systems the question comes to mind why is it so hard to find what you are looking for.

One of the goals of this book is to explain the practical and theoretical issues associated with Information Retrieval that makes design of Information Retrieval Systems one of the challenges of our time. The demand for and expectations of us­ers to quickly find any information they need continues to drive both the theoretical analysis and development of new technologies to satisfy that need. To scope the problem one of the first things that needs to be defined is "information". Twenty-five years ago information retrieval was totally focused on textual items. That was because almost all of the "digital information" of value was in textual form. In to­day "s technical environment most people earn' with them most of the time the capa­bility to create images and videos of interest—that is the cell phone. This has made modalities other than text to become as common as text. That is coupled with Inter­net web sites that allow and are designed for ease of use of uploading and storing those modalities which more than justify the need to include other than text as part of the information retrieval problem.

Questionnaire:

• What is Information Retrieval System? Explain