INF6060   Information Retrieval: Search Engines and Digital Libraries   (15 credits)

Description

Information Retrieval (IR) systems are ubiquitous as searching has become a part of everyday life. For example, we use IR systems when we search the web, look for resources using a library catalogue or search for relevant information within organisational repositories (e.g. intranets). This module provides an introduction to the area of information retrieval and computerised techniques for organising, storing and searching (mainly) textual information items. Techniques used in IR systems are related to, but distinct from, those used in databases. The emphasis for IR systems is to find documents that contain relevant information and separate these from a potentially vast set of non-relevant documents. The content of the module falls into two main areas: (1)  fundamental concepts of IR (indexing, retrieval, ranking, user interaction and evaluation) and (2) applying IR in specific contexts, bias in information retrieval, and dealing with non-textual and non-English content (multimedia and multilingual IR).

Reading List