id: 05799467
dt: b
an: 05799467
au: Kowalski, Gerald
ti: Information retrieval architecture and algorithms.
so: New York, NY: Springer (ISBN 978-1-4419-7715-1/hbk;
    978-1-4419-7716-8/ebook). xii, 305~p. EUR~66.95/net; SFR~100.50;
    \sterling~62.99 (2011).
py: 2011
pu: New York, NY: Springer
la: EN
cc: 
ut: information retrieval; search; indexing; clustering; information
    presentation
ci: Zbl 0902.68050
li: doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-7716-8
ab: This book is one of the latest of the topic of information retrieval (IR).
    Being quite old in computer science in general, it has regained
    importance in the last decade thanks to the rapid growth of the Web and
    the information therein accessible. Indeed, search engines (as well as
    other Web-related tools) nowadays rely heavily on information retrieval
    techniques, and this book explains quite a few of them. Different from
    competing publications, this book takes a system-oriented approach,
    explaining the various components of an information retrieval system
    from an overall perspective, including user as well as system levels.
    As a result, the book does not concentrate on algorithms alone, but
    also contains chapters on data structures, search “architecture”,
    or information presentation. Moreover, it starts with a general look at
    IR system functions. The rest of the content is devoted to more common
    IR topics, including stemming, indexing, search, ranking, and
    clustering.  The book seems to be compact enough for a one-semester
    course, and it suggests a reasonable balance between theory and
    practice. It is a follow-up to the author’s book [Information
    retrieval systems. Theory and implementation. Dordrecht: Kluwer
    Academic Publishers (1997; Zbl 0902.68050)], but it represents the
    progress which has been made in the field in the meantime only to a
    limited extent. A quick browse through the references reveals that the
    number of citations from the year 2000 or later is extremely limited,
    which essentially makes the content pretty dated. Also, the practical
    part of the book (in particular Chapters 8 and 9) fails to be very
    practical, but remains very superficial and sketchy. In conclusion, I
    am not sure that I would use the book in an IR course.
rv: Gottfried Vossen (Münster)