This unique introduction to the principal generic approaches to information retrieval and research, deals not only with associated concepts, but with models and systems as well. It is a stimulating and valuable read for information professionals.

The Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval (CIIR) was formed in the Computer Science Department ofthe University ofMassachusetts, Amherst in 1992. The core support for the Center came from a National Science Foun- tion State/Industry/University Cooperative Research Center(S/IUCRC) grant, although there had been a sizeable information retrieval (IR) research group for over 10 years prior to that grant. Thebasic goal ofthese Centers is to combine basic research, applied research, and technology transfer. The CIIR has been successful in each of these areas, in that it has produced over 270 research papers, has been involved in many successful government and industry collaborations, and has had a significant role in high-visibility Internet sites and start-ups. As a result of these efforts, the CIIR has become known internationally as one of the leading research groups in the area of information retrieval. The CIIR focuses on research that results in more effective and efficient access and discovery in large, heterogeneous, distributed, text and multimedia databases. The scope of the work that is done in the CIIR is broad and goes significantly beyond “traditional” areas of information retrieval such as retrieval models, cross-lingual search, and automatic query expansion. The research includes both low-level systems issues such as the design of protocols and architectures for distributed search, as well as more human-centered topics such as user interface design, visualization and data mining with text, and multimedia retrieval.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Theory of Information Retrieval, ICTIR 2009, held in Cambridge, UK, in September 2009. The 18 revised full papers, 14 short papers, and 11 posters presented together with one invited talk were carefully reviewed and selected from 82 submissions. The papers are categorized into four main themes: novel IR models, evaluation, efficiency, and new perspectives in IR. Twenty-one papers fall into the general theme of novel IR models, ranging from various retrieval models, query and term selection models, Web IR models, developments in novelty and diversity, to the modeling of user aspects. There are four papers on new evaluation methodologies, e.g., modeling score distributions, evaluation over sessions, and an axiomatic framework for XML retrieval evaluation. Three papers focus on the issue of efficiency and offer solutions to improve the tractability of PageRank, data cleansing practices for training classifiers, and approximate search for distributed IR. Finally, four papers look into new perspectives of IR and shed light on some new emerging areas of interest, such as the application and adoption of quantum theory in IR.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 32nd annual European Conference on Information Retrieval Research, ECIR 2010, held in Milton Keynes, UK, in March 2010. The 44 revised full papers and 23 poster papers presented together with the keynote lecture, 5 tool demonstrations and the abstracts of 3 invited lectures were carefully reviewed and selected from 202 full research paper submissions and 73 poster/demo submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on NLP and text mining, Web IR, evaluation, multimedia IR, distributed IR and performance issues, IR theory and formal models, personalization and recommendation, domain-specific IR and CLIR, as well as user issues.

Theseproceedingscontaintherefereedfulltechnicalpaperspresentedatthe26th Annual European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2004). ECIR is theannualconferenceoftheBritishComputerSociety’sspecialistgroupinInf- mation Retrieval. This year the conference was held at the School of Computing and Technology at the University of Sunderland. ECIR began life as the - nual Colloquium on Information Retrieval Research. The colloquium was held in the UK each year until 1998 when the event was held in Grenoble, France. Since then the conference venue has alternated between the United Kingdom and Continental Europe, and the event was renamed the European Conference on Information Retrieval. In recent years, ECIR has continued to grow and has become the major European forum for the discussion of research in the ?eld of Information Retrieval. To mark this metamorphosis from a small informal c- loquium to a major event in the IR research calendar, the BCS-IRSG decided to rename the event to the European Conference on Information Retrieval. ECIR2004received88fullpapersubmissions,fromacrossEuropeandfurther a?eldincludingNorthAmerica,ChinaandAustralia,atestamenttothegrowing popularity and reputation of the conference. Out of the 88 submitted papers, 28 were accepted for presentation. All papers were reviewed by at least three reviewers. Among the accepted papers 11 have a student as the primary author, illustrating that the traditional student focus of the original colloquium is alive today.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 36th European Conference on IR Research, ECIR 2014, held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in April 2014. The 33 full papers, 50 poster papers and 15 demonstrations presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 288 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: evaluation, recommendation, optimization, semantics, aggregation, queries, mining social media, digital libraries, efficiency, and information retrieval theory. Also included are 3 tutorial and 4 workshop presentations.

Information Retrieval has become a very active research field in the 21st century. Many from academia and industry present their innovations in the field in a wide variety of conferences and journals. Companies transfer this new knowledge directly to the general public via services such as web search engines in order to improve their information seeking experience. In parallel, teaching IR is turning into an important aspect of IR generally, not only because it is necessary to impart effective search techniques to make the most of the IR tools available, but also because we must provide a good foundation for those students who will become the driving force of future IR technologies. There are very few resources for teaching and learning in IR, the major problem which this book is designed to solve. The objective is to provide ideas and practical experience of teaching and learning IR, for those whose job requires them to teach in one form or another, and where delivering IR courses is a major part of their working lives. In this context of providing a higher profile for teaching and learning as applied to IR, the co-editor of this book, Efthimis Efthimiathis, had maintained a leading role in teaching and learning within the domain of IR for a number of years. This book represents a posthumous example of his efforts in the area, as he passed away in April 2011. This book, his book, is dedicated to his memory.