Information Representation and Retrieval in the Digital Age (2nd ed.)

Citation

Lazarinis, F. (2012), "Information Representation and Retrieval in the Digital Age (2nd ed.)", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 46 No. 1, pp. 146-148. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330331211204629

Heting Chu's second edition of Information Representation and Retrieval in the Digital Age is a book that covers several aspects of the fast‐changing field of information retrieval, providing useful insights into related issues, but using understandable language. The second edition contains useful revisions of the first edition's contents. A number of useful additions, such as social tagging and RSS, digital object identifiers, taxonomies, folksonomies and ontologies, semantic web and natural language searching expand the topics covered and move the discussion to more recent research areas of information retrieval (IR).

As in the first edition, the current version of the book starts with an overview of IR and introduces some of the key persons to the field. The work of Tauve, Luhn, Mooers, Salton and Spärck Jones is synopsised and their primary contributions are highlighted. The next two chapters are dedicated to Information Representation, where new sections like Social Tagging have been added.

Chapter 4 discusses issues related to Natural Language in Information Representation and Retrieval. In Chapters 5‐7 the retrieval process is analyzed. Information retrieval models, searching strategies, browsing methods, retrieval performance and query representation are discussed.

Chapter 8 begins with pioneering IR systems and moves to OPACs and more recent web‐based searching tools and Chapter 9 deals with multilingual retrieval and media searching.

Chapter 10 puts the user into the picture by considering issues such as user information needs and user interaction. Chapter 11 presents the evaluation criteria for information retrieval systems. The criteria are discussed with respect to the different retrieval systems. Evaluation projects such as TREC are also mentioned in this chapter.

Chapter 12, which is the last chapter, introduces the reader to Artificial Intelligence in Information Representation and Retrieval. In particular, it touches on issues like Natural Language Processing and the Semantic Web.

This book is broad in nature and avoids the mathematical formalism of other similar books. Readers, who are new in the field, will definitely benefit from this book as it covers several topics in a modular and coherent way, using an understandable language, introducing however the necessary scientific terminology. In particular, students or researchers who come from non‐technical fields will definitely find this book useful as they will become familiar with a lot of topics that are difficult to find in a single book. The text takes the reader from the early works in information retrieval to more recent web searching techniques, giving a unique opportunity to understand and appreciate the associated research issues.

On the other hand, a book so broad in scope raises some issues of concern. Some of the topics are over‐simplified and thus the real research problems are not emphasised. The lack of discussion of more technical issues makes it difficult to understand some of the practical aspects of information retrieval and representation. Finally, some topics, like web searching and the semantic web would benefit from an expansion, as it would allow readers to form a clearer idea of large‐scale IR systems and in general the current research directions.

Overall, in spite of some criticism, which is natural in such a wide‐ranging field, this is a well‐written book that could be used as an introductory text in the field of information retrieval and representation, especially in undergraduate courses. Graduates and research students from related areas form also a potential audience for the book.