Information retrieval (IR) is a complex human activity supported by sophisticated systems. Information science has contributed much to the design and evaluation of previous generations of IR system development and to our general understanding of how such systems should be designed and yet, due to the increasing success and diversity of IR systems, many recent textbooks concentrate on IR systems themselves and ignore the human side of searching for information. This book is the first text to provide an information science perspective on IR. Unique in its scope, the book covers the whole spectrum of information retrieval, including: history and background information behaviour and seeking task-based information searching and retrieval approaches to investigating information interaction and behaviour information representation access models evaluation interfaces for IR interactive techniques web retrieval, ranking and personalization recommendation, collaboration and social search multimedia: interfaces and access. Readership: Senior undergraduates and masters' level students of all information and library studies courses and practising LIS professionals who need to better appreciate how IR systems are designed, implemented and evaluated.

Class-tested and coherent, this textbook teaches classical and web information retrieval, including web search and the related areas of text classification and text clustering from basic concepts. It gives an up-to-date treatment of all aspects of the design and implementation of systems for gathering, indexing, and searching documents; methods for evaluating systems; and an introduction to the use of machine learning methods on text collections. All the important ideas are explained using examples and figures, making it perfect for introductory courses in information retrieval for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in computer science. Based on feedback from extensive classroom experience, the book has been carefully structured in order to make teaching more natural and effective. Slides and additional exercises (with solutions for lecturers) are also available through the book's supporting website to help course instructors prepare their lectures.

Web search engines are not just indispensable tools for finding and accessing information online, but have become a defining component of the human condition and can be conceptualized as a complex behavior embedded within an individual's everyday social, cultural, political, and information-seeking activities. This book investigates Web search from the non-technical perspective, bringing together chapters that represent a range of multidisciplinary theories, models, and ideas.

Information users and usability constitute the main building blocks of today's electronic information world. This important new text is the first to give a holistic overview of all of the necessary issues relating to information users and the usability of information services in the digital world, including user-centred design, and the characteristics and behaviour of information users. This book helps readers understand why information users and the usability of information services are important and equips them to play a proper role in designing user-centred information systems and services and to properly exploit information services for the maximum benefit of users. It covers all of the major issues, the current situation and what the various research studies from around the world show.

This unique book presents authoritative overviews of more than 70 conceptual frameworks for understanding how people seek, manage, share, and use information in different contexts. A practical and readable reference to both well-established and newly proposed theories of information behavior, the book includes contributions from 85 scholars from 10 countries. Each theory description covers origins, propositions, methodological implications, usage, links to related conceptual frameworks, and listings of authoritative primary and secondary references. The introductory chapters explain key concepts, theorymethod connections, and the process of theory development.

A fresh research approach that bridges the study of human information interaction and the design of information systems. Human information interaction (HII) is an emerging area of study that investigates how people interact with information; its subfield human information behavior (HIB) is a flourishing, active discipline. Yet despite their obvious relevance to the design of information systems, these research areas have had almost no impact on systems design. One issue may be the contextual complexity of human interaction with information; another may be the difficulty in translating real-life and unstructured HII complexity into formal, linear structures necessary for systems design. In this book, Raya Fidel proposes a research approach that bridges the study of human information interaction and the design of information systems: cognitive work analysis (CWA). Developed by Jens Rasmussen and his colleagues, CWA embraces complexity and provides a conceptual framework and analytical tools that can harness it to create design requirements. CWA offers an ecological approach to design, analyzing the forces in the environment that shape human interaction with information. Fidel reviews research in HIB, focusing on its contribution to systems design, and then presents the CWA framework. She shows that CWA, with its ecological approach, can be used to overcome design challenges and lead to the development of effective systems. Researchers and designers who use CWA can increase the diversity of their analytical tools, providing them with an alternative approach when they plan research and design projects. The CWA framework enables a collaboration between design and HII that can create information systems tailored to fit human lives.

Presents a direction for research into cognitive oriented Information Retrieval (IR) research. This title describes concepts and models of cognitive IR that explore the nexus between human cognition, information and the social conditions that drive humans to seek information using IR systems.