Page 112 - DLIS402_INFORMATION_ANALYSIS_AND_REPACKAGING

Unit 5: Information Retrieval

The Objects of IR Notes

Traditionally, IR has concentrated on finding whole documents consisting of written text; much IR
research focuses more specifically on text retrieval – the computerized retrieval of machine readable
text without human indexing. But there are many other interesting areas:
• Speech retrieval, which deals with speech, often transcribed manually or (with errors) by
automated speech recognition (ASR).
• Cross-language retrieval, which uses a query in one language (say English) and finds docu-
ments in other languages (say Chinese and Russian).
• Question-answering IR systems, which retrieve answers from a body of text. For example, the
question Which country won the 2011 Cricket World Cup? Finds a 2011 headline World Cup
Cricket: India are the Champions.
• Image retrieval, which finds images on a theme or images that contain a given shape or colour
• Music retrieval, which finds a piece when the user hums a melody or enters the notes of a
musical theme.
• IR dealing with any kind of other entity or object: works of art, software, courses offered at a
university, people (as experts, to hire, for a date), and products of any kind. Text, speech, and
images, printed or digital, carry information, hence information retrieval. Not so for other
kinds of objects, such as hardware items in a store.

Make a report on the development of information Retrieval systems from 1950–1960.

5.4 Summary

• Information retrieval mean recovery of information, especially in a database stored in a com-
puter.
• The information retrieval process begins when a potential information seeker realizes that s/
he needs information on a certain topic.
• Databases usually use thesaurus terms or subject headings in describing the contents of docu-
ments.
• Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) are used when linking concepts or keywords together.
• The first automated information retrieval systems were introduced in the 1950s and 1960s.
• Information retrieval (IR) is the area of study concerned with searching for documents, for
information within documents, and for metadata about documents, as well as that of search-
ing relational databases and the World Wide Web.
• The goal of information retrieval (IR) is to provide users with those documents that will sat-
isfy their information need.
• An information retrieval process begins when a user enters a query into the system.
• Research is simply the process of finding information
• Search strategies is a comprehensive plans for finding information — includes defining the
information need, and determining the form in which it is needed.
• Successful searching combines creative guessing of Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) along
with smart use of subject directories and search engines.
• A basic search strategy can help you get used to each search engine’s features and how they
are expressed in the search query.

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