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Department of Information Science and Telecommunications

 

INFSCI 2140 - Information Storage and Retrieval

(Summer 2004, CRN 15559)


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INFSCI 2140 Course Books

SIS/DIST Information Retrieval course is designed to provide you with unique view of the field of Information Retrieval targeted for information architects. While a number of textbooks in the field are available, most of them either suited for Libary Science students or Computer Science Students. Also, almost all of them are at least several years old and do not cover energing topics such as Web IR, personalized information access, or information visualization. The book choosen by the instructor as the main course book provides good coverage of nearly 2/3 of coure topics on the right level of details. Most of the remaining readings can be found on Internet. Those who need some more advanced treatment of selected course topics could use additional recommeded books. Some lectures may have additional readings assigned from these books. One main course book and most of the recommended books have been reserved for you in the Information Sciences Library. You can locate the reserved books through Course Reserves.

Main course book

The book written by the late SIS Professor Korfhage provides an appropriate support for the topics presented in this course. This book has clearly emerged as a winner in a competition of about 10 considered books. While being relatively old, it still provides a better treatment of the subject and for smaller price then a number of more recent book. A good benefit of being "old" is the availability of many copies of this book (used or new) from private sellers on Amazon.com and similar cites. This book is also available from a publisher with a discount and through Pitt Book Center. Mandatory readings will be assigned from this book and your reading will be evaluated by quizzes. If you choose not to purchase it, make sure that you do your readings in the in the Information Sciences Library.

Information Storage and Retrieval
Robert R. Korfhage
John Wiley & Sons, 1997, 349 pp.
ISBN: 0-471-14338-3

Buy / read about this book at amazon.com ($72.80 new; $40 used)

Home page of the book

Supplementary Course Books

Alternative Textbooks

Both are relatively recent excellent textbooks oriented to Computer Science students. They now compete to be the most popular IR textbooks. Both book has been used for IS 2140 in the past, so you may have a good chance to borrow it from the students who took this course in the past. They were also reserved for you in the Information Sciences Library.

Modern Information Retrieval
Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Berthier Ribeiro-Neto
Addison-Wesley Pub Co, 1999, 513 pp.
ISBN: 020139829X

Buy / read about this book at amazon.com ($44 new; $27 used)

Home page of the book

Finding Out About: A Cognitive Perspective on Search Engine Technology and the WWW
Richard K. Belew
Cambridge University Press, 2001, 384 pages
ISBN: 0521630282

Buy / read about this book at amazon.com ($60.00 new; $39 used))

Home page of the book

Additional Readings on Information Storage and Retrieval

The books listed in this section are not required to complete the course but can be used by the students who need to understand the subject better or in more details. The authors of these books are leading authorities in IR. The last (and the oldest) book in the list is available online. Some of the rest have been reserved for you in the Information Sciences Library.

Managing Gigabytes: Compressing and Indexing Documents and Images
Ian H. Witten, Allistair Moffat, Timothy C. Bell

Morgan Kaufmann, 1999, 519 pp.
ISBN:
1558605703

Buy / read about this book at amazon.com

Home page of the book

Information Storage and Retrieval Systems: Theory and Implementation
Gerald Kowalski, Mark T. Maybury

Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000, 336 pp.
ISBN: 0792379241

Buy / read about this book at amazon.com

Nielsen Book

Information Seeking in Electronic Environments
Gary Marchionini

Cambridge University Press, 1997, 236 pp.
ISBN: 0521586747

Buy / read about this book at amazon.com

Nielsen Book

Information Retrieval
C. J. van Rijsbergen

London: Butterworths, 1979.

Go to online version of the book

Copyright © 2004 Peter Brusilovsky