Preface of modern information retrieval

In recent years, with the development of the Internet and the appearance of modern, cheap graphical user interfaces and mass storage devices, great changes have taken place in the field of information retrieval, which makes the traditional information retrieval textbooks obsolete, so it is necessary to launch new information retrieval books. We firmly believe that readers need a book that analyzes this field rigorously and completely from the perspective of computer science (as opposed to the user-centered perspective). This book is dedicated to filling this gap and is suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in information retrieval. This book consists of two parts, which complement and balance each other. The first nine chapters are the core part, edited or co-authored by the designer of this book; The second part, consisting of six chapters, is closely connected with the first part and is the latest achievement of related disciplines written by outstanding researchers in this field. All chapters use the same notes and terminology. Therefore, although this book is co-authored by many people, it is actually a good teaching material, rather than simply editing the chapters written by various authors. In addition, we have carefully designed the content and structure of this book, and strive to fully display the views of all important parts of modern information retrieval. From information retrieval model to index text, from information retrieval visualization tools to Web interface, from information retrieval multimedia to digital library, this book has extensive contents and rich details. In view of the close relevance and importance of information retrieval to modern society, we hope this book will help to further spread the research results of information science, computer science and library science around the world. Ricardo baeza-Yates and Bettie Ribeiro-Neto are respected information retrieval experts in the international information field. Their works are excellent works with excellent reputation. The idea of writing a translator's preface for their works is quite arrogant in itself. After reading this book and pondering for a long time, I deeply feel that this book really discusses many very important issues in information retrieval, and they are all very practical, and some of them are often encountered in our work. The discussion and analysis in this paper are easy to understand, profound and profound, and I feel very rewarding after reading it, which inevitably leads to the idea of introducing this book to my domestic counterparts. After many twists and turns, I learned that Machinery Industry Publishing House was interested in publishing this book, so I volunteered to undertake the translation work. Information retrieval is the core of information management. Facing the massive knowledge accumulated by the continuous development of human society, how to find the needed information efficiently and accurately is an unavoidable problem for everyone in their study, research and life. Information retrieval originated from the reference work and bibliography work of the library. Later, with the rapid increase of information, people used more and more information, and information retrieval gradually became popular. With the development and popularization of computer technology, network technology, communication technology and mass storage technology, great changes have taken place in the field of information retrieval. The relationship between modern information retrieval and computer science is getting closer and closer, and information retrieval has entered a new stage of development. At present, there are many kinds of teaching materials about information retrieval at home and abroad, but most of them are compiled by librarians and information scientists, focusing on the basic principles and methods of information retrieval, which is very operational. Baeza Yates and Ribeiro Neto are experts in the computer field and are familiar with information retrieval theory. From the perspective of computer science, they combine computer theory with information retrieval, focusing on the mathematical model and implementation technology of information retrieval, which is worthy of being a masterpiece of history, and this is the value of this book. We believe that anyone who works in the field of information retrieval, who wants to retrieve information quickly and conveniently, will benefit a lot from reading this book, which is why we are willing to do it. Benefiting from this book, I take the liberty to suggest an efficient reading method for readers of this book. This book is divided into two parts. The first part consists of 1 to 9 chapters. Based on mathematical theory, this paper analyzes the information retrieval model, evaluation, query language and operation, text language and operation, multimedia language and its characteristics, indexing and retrieval, parallel and distributed retrieval, etc. It is rigorous and informative, which constitutes the core of this book. Comparatively speaking, the fourth chapter "query language" is a more reasonable starting point for readers, and the second chapter "modeling" is the key to understanding the whole book, and any retrieval is promoted on this basis. The latter consists of chapters 10 to 15, which is the latest achievement of computer science in the field of information retrieval, mainly involving user interface and visualization, multimedia information retrieval model and language and its indexing and retrieval, Web retrieval, library and bibliographic system, digital library and so on. This part is the logical extension and expansion of the previous part. People engaged in information retrieval research can start from this and understand information retrieval under the new situation. In addition, each chapter has two sections: "Development Trends and Research Topics" and "Bibliographic Discussion", which provide readers with a broad and in-depth space for further study and research. This book still has a lot of content. In the process of reading, you will find many fresh, vivid and profound things, and you will find many things that you should know but haven't known yet. This is also our personal experience in the process of reading and translating this book. The spread of an English book in China is always unpredictable. For the translator of this book, the whole book discusses a field that the translator is most familiar with. The premise of this translation is a thorough understanding of the original text, so there will be no technical details distorted by the translator's strangeness. In fact, the translator mainly faces the aspect of "vocabulary". The same word or phrase has different understandings in different fields. In view of this, we combine our years of information retrieval knowledge and experience, refer to English-Chinese computer dictionaries and English-Chinese mathematical dictionaries according to the idioms in textbooks, and consult some experts in this field to make it accurate. Following academic practice, we may be grateful, and we should thank the scholars who have contributed to the translation of this book. This book was translated by Wang Zhijin and Jia Fuxin. Li Mingzhen, Sun Xin, Zhai Ya, Liu Jianzhun, Wang Chenjun, Wu, Fan, Lv Caimei, Ma Aiping, Tan, Zhang Guohua, Sun Meili and Sun also did a lot of work for the initial translation of some contents of this book. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks here. The book was retranslated by Zheng Hongjun, and Wang Zhijin was responsible for the second proofreading and final approval of the book. Although the translation has been revised and corrected many times, most of the mistakes have been corrected according to the latest errata of official website in this book. However, due to the limited level of translators and the short time, omissions, shortcomings and mistakes are inevitable. I sincerely hope my colleagues and readers will give me some advice and be grateful. We extend our sincere thanks to those who have given us selfless help in the past few months. Without their strong support, the book might not have been published. First of all, we would like to thank the authors of all chapters and their contributions. Elisa Bertino, Eric Brown, Barbara Catania, Christos Faloutsos, Elena Ferrari, Ed Fox, Marti Hearst, Gonzalo Navarro, Edie Rasmussen, Ohm Sornil, Nivio Ziviani, the professional knowledge in their articles is beyond our reach. During the whole editing and repeated review, they showed great patience, and we are grateful here. Secondly, we would like to thank everyone who has taken great interest in the publication of this book, especially Scott Delman and Doug Seri. Thirdly, we would like to thank Addison Wesley Longman Publishing Company for its work in the whole process, as well as Keith Mansfield, Karen Sutherland, Bridget Allen, David Harison, Sheila Chatten, Helen Hodge and Lisa Talbot for their attention and encouragement. The reviewers they contacted read some early plans of this book and provided us with good feedback and valuable opinions. The chapter of "Parallel and Distributed Information Retrieval" was moved from the part of "Information Retrieval Application" (not applicable in the book) to the part of "Text Information Retrieval" because an unnamed recommender objectively demonstrated this point. After another enthusiastic recommender emphasized the importance of this topic, the chapter "retrieval evaluation" was added. Fourthly, we want to thank all the people who discussed the plan with us. Doug Oder made a preliminary comment on the draft. Gary Marchioni was an early supporter and kept close contact with us. Bruce Croft encouraged us to do our best from the beginning. Alberto Mendelssohn made the initial suggestions and compiled the references of each chapter after searching online. Ed Fox took time out of his busy schedule to make a very insightful comment on the chapter "Introduction" (which greatly improved this chapter) and made a detailed comment on the chapter "Modeling". Marty Hurst showed great interest in our first draft and helped in the whole editing process. He is an enthusiastic supporter and participant. Fifth, thanks to the support of our unit, the computer department of the University of Chile and the Federal University of Minas Gerais for their selfless support. National Research Bureau (Brazil Research Council (CNPq) and Chile National Science and Technology Research Council (CONICYT)), international cooperation projects, especially CYTED project ⅴ Ⅱ.13 Amyri (information management and retrieval environment in the World Wide Web) in Spain, and SIAM (mobile computer information system) project of Brazilian scientific research project credit bureau (Finep) under Pronex plan. Most importantly, thanks to Helena, Rosa and the children, for this book, we did a lot of travel surveys, missed many weekends, and worked irregularly. They silently endured all this.