Information Representation and Retrieval in the Digital Age

Citation

Li Liew, C. (2004), "Information Representation and Retrieval in the Digital Age", The Electronic Library, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 188-189. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470410533470

The author's declared intent for the book is that it “will be useful to anyone who is interested in learning about the field (information retrieval – IR), particularly those who are new to it”. This monograph will, indeed, be most useful as a guide for those needing a broad knowledge of information representation and retrieval (IRR). IR as a field of study has a peculiar eclecticism. This is a topic that is known to have drawn the rationale for its existence from individual and organisational goals, its service philosophy traditionally from librarianship and documentation, and its disciplinary base from mathematics and computer science, empirical science, linguistics and cognitive science. Recently, the field is also seeing “input” from other disciplines such as computing technology, as distinct from computer science. As far as the content is concerned, the strength of the monograph is its weakness too. With an aim to emphasise principles and fundamentals, many sections of the book suffer from the lack of more analytical discussion and review, and read more like “extended glossaries” of the main facets of IRR. If the book is intended only to be a supplementary text then perhaps well and good, but if intended to serve as an IR textbook to individuals who are new to IRR, it is not robust enough. Much of the discussion could usefully be extended so that some of the principles and issues are made clearer, and users could benefit more from these.

The opening chapter is interesting – it traces the history, key pioneers in the field and major development stages of information representation and IR. It was however, a little surprising that “the essential problem in IRR” is dealt rather superficially, and is given merely a subsection treatment in the book. A look at the essential problems of IRR in the digital age should warrant a chapter of its own. Chapters 2 and 3 examine information representation methods, followed logically by the central chapters 4‐7 that look at IRR languages, retrieval techniques and approaches. Chapter 6 that examines the various retrieval approaches (i.e. retrieval by searching, retrieval by browsing and the integrated approach) should be introduced before Chapter 5 that looks at retrieval techniques and query representation. Information retrieval models and systems (including multilingual and multimedia IR) are dealt with in Chapters 7‐9. The user dimension and evaluation issues are explored in Chapter 10 and 11 respectively. Chapter 11, apart from a very brief paragraph, fails to address issues in the increasingly important balanced approach to IRR evaluation – the need to synthesise the systems‐oriented laboratory research approach (dealt with in considerable detail in the chapter) and the real world situations and contexts of individuals and organisations in order to demonstrate utility and effectiveness from the user's perspective. Oddly, the evaluation of user‐system interaction is given very brief coverage at the end of Chapter 10. Chapter 11 also fails to include a discussion of evaluation of multimedia IRR such as the evaluation of content‐based image retrieval systems. The penultimate chapter is perhaps the most disappointing part of the book. It does not cover and explore the concepts and applications of experts systems in IRR, which would have made the discussion of the role and use of artificial intelligence in IRR more complete.

The tables used in the book are not particularly helpful. Table 4.1 for instance fails to reflect the fact that subjects heading lists like the current editions of LCSH (Library of Congress Subject Headings) have adopted reference notations similar to those used in thesauri. Discussion of certain concepts and applications meantime, could have been strengthened with appropriate diagrams, such as the discussion of the vector space model in Chapter 7.

Lest this review appears to be highly critical of the book, I must now state that it is a useful addition to literature on IRR. While more analytical discussion and review are desired throughout, there is no scarcity of facts and data in this monograph. It is well structured and clearly written in most parts, and will be useful to individuals who seek a broad knowledge of IRR.