Information Retrieval

By
Dr Syed Khaldoon Khurshid

Focus of the week

• Introduction of the course
• Basic Concepts
• Introduction to Information Retrieval
• Information Retrieval in the Library
• Information Retrieval Systems Operations
• The Retrieval Process
• Case Study Project:
 Design a Simple Document Search Engine
Things to know before the
commencement of the course:
• Reference Book: Modern Information Retrieval by Ricardo
Baeza Yates, Berthier Ribeiro Neto (Author), Pearson Education
Limited (Publisher), 2nd Edition Onwards

• Office Hours: 1pm to 2pm on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday

• Evaluation Components weightings: Evaluation Components marks:

Mid-term: 20% Mid-term: 30
Assignments: 50% Assignments: 20 Final paper:
30% Final paper: 40
Course Description:
This course provides an in-depth exploration of the concepts in
information retrieval, focusing on the integration of real-world
case studies or assignments. Students will learn how information
retrieval systems work, delve into various retrieval models, and
analyze practical applications through case studies or
assignments. The course covers both theoretical foundations and
hands-on implementation, equipping students with the skills to
design and evaluate effective information retrieval solutions.

Course Objectives:
 1. Understand the fundamentals of information retrieval, including
retrieval models, indexing, and ranking algorithms.
2. Explore advanced topics such as user modeling, query
expansion, and result diversification.
3. Analyze real-world case studies to identify challenges and
solutions in information retrieval.
4. Develop skills in implementing and evaluating information
retrieval systems.
5. Foster critical thinking and problem-solving abilities through
assignment-based learning.
Basic Concepts:
• Data 🡪 Raw fact
• Example of Data
 3520179534535

• Information 🡪 Processed
Data • Example of Information
CNIC: 35201-7953453-5

• Main Functions related to

Data or Information:
Store, Process, Representation
and Access

Input 🡪 Process🡪 Outcome

Example: Bio-data details hidden in the CNIC
Understanding in the terms of Computers:

• Data Structures Data in Memory

• Database Management Systems Data in Hard Disk • Data Science
Data in Machine Learning/AI • Information Retrieval Searching
Data/Information

MOTIVATION
INFORMATION RERIEVAL(IR)
Representation, storage, organization of,
and access to information items.

• Focus is on the user information

need.
• Information item: Usually text,
but
possibly also image, audio, video,
etc.
• Text items are often referred to as
 documents, and may be of different
scope (book, article, paragraph, etc.).
Information is communicated or received knowledge concerning a particular fact or circumstance. Retrieval
refers to searching through stored information to find information relevant to the task at hand.

MOTIVATION
• User information need:
- Find all docs containing information on
Computer Systems which: (1) are
designed by IBM and (2) designed after
2020.

• User information need cannot be used

directly to request information using
 the current interfaces of Web search
engines.
• Emphasis is on the retrieval of information
not data.

10

Information Retrieval
Systems IRS is with two basic aspects:
(i) How to store information, and
(ii) How to retrieve information.
Information Retrieval text based:
• An information retrieval system is designed to analyze process and
store sources of information and retrieve those that match a
 particular users requirements. Modern information retrieval
systems can either retrieve bibliographic items or the exact text that
matches a user's search criteria from a stored database of documents.
• IRS originally meant text retrieval systems as they were dealing
with textual documents.
Information Retrieval in the Library
⮚ Libraries were among the first institutions to adopt
systems for retrieving information.

⮚ In the first generation, such systems consisted

basically of an automation of previous
technologies (such as card catalogs).

⮚ In the second generation, increased search

functionality was added which allowed searching
by subject headings, by keywords, and some
more complex query facilities.

⮚ In the third generation, which is currently being

deployed, the focus is on improved graphical
interfaces, electronic forms, hypertext features, and
open system architectures

Information Retrieval (IR) in Library

• The principal function of any library is to make

available to the users, the information they need.
In order to fulfill this function, the information
which is stored in the library must be retrieved
from the library database.
•Information retrieval (IR) is the activity of
obtaining information resources relevant to an
information need from a collection of information
resources.
Importance of Information Retrieval in Library
• Libraries contain information in various physical forms. While for
many users, the book is still a major vehicle for communication of
information for others, the periodical or the technical report have
taken its place; and for yet others, films or gramophone records are
significant.
• It is clear that the same work can appear in various physical forms.
The intellectual content will be the same in each case, but obviously it
is not practical to try to arrange the different physical forms together.
• The library catalogue, however, is only one of the tools which serve as
the key to library documents. A library containing a large number of
periodicals will not attempt to list all articles of every issue if receives.
• Instead, we rely on indexes, abstracts and similar bibliographic
tools which present the contents of periodicals as well. This enables
us to obtain access to any particular item through number of
approaches.
Modern Information Retrieval Systems
 • Modern information retrieval systems deal not only with textual
information but also with multimedia information comprising text,
audio, images and video. Thus, modern information retrieval
systems deal with storage, organization and access to text, as well as
multimedia information resources.

The Web and Digital Libraries

If we consider the search engines on the Web today, we
conclude that they continue to use indexes which are
very similar to those used by librarians a century ago.
What has changed then?

Three dramatic and fundamental changes have occurred. ⮚

It became a lot cheaper to have access to various
sources of information
⮚ The advances in all kinds of digital communication
provided greater access to networks.
⮚ The freedom to post whatever information someone judges
useful has greatly contributed to the popularity of the Web.

Information Retrieval Systems Operations:

• An IR system is a set of rules and
procedures, for performing some or
all
of the following operations:
 • Indexing (or constructing of
representations of documents)
• Search formulation (or constructing of
representations of information needs)
• Searching (or matching representations of
documents against representations of
needs)
• Index language construction (or
generation of rules of representation) So
information retrieval is collectively defined
as a “science of search” or a process, method
and procedure used to select or recall,
recorded and/or indexed information from
files of data.
INFORMATION VS DATA RETRIEVAL
eval
 1. Information Retrieval 2. Data Retrieval

1) The software that deals with the 1) Data retrieval deals with obtaining
organization, storage, retrieval, and data from a database management
evaluation of information from system such as RDBMS.
document particularly textual
information.
2) Retrieves information about a subject. 2) Determines the keywords in the
user query and retrieves the data.
3) Small errors are likely to go unnoticed. 3) A single error object means
total failure.
4) Not always well structured and 4) Has a well-defined structure
is semantically ambiguous. and semantics.
5) Does not provide a solution to the 5) Provides solutions to the user of
user of the database system. the database system.
6) The results obtained are 6) The results obtained are exact matches.
approximate matches.
7) Results are ordered by relevance. 7) Results are unordered by relevance.
Information Retrieval was the main focus:
⮚ PAST 30-40 YEARS
• Information Retrieval has grown well beyond
• Research in IR includes modeling, document classification,
user interface, languages etc.

⮚ BEGINNING OF 1990s
 • Introduction of World Wide Web.
• Its success is based on the conception of a standard user
interface which is always the Same.
• Any user can create his own Web documents Without any
Restriction.

⮚ What about Now ??? Data Science Emergence

19

User Task
• The User of a retrieval system has to translate his information need into a
query.
• With an information retrieval system, this implies specifying a set of words.
• With a data retrieval system, a query expression is used to convey the
constraints that must be satisfied by objects in the answer set.
 Retrieval

Database

Browsing

Retrieval Vs Browsing task

Often user is
sophisticated (Database
Often user is
naive (layman).
Retrieval Browsing Engineer) .
• Retrieval:
❖ Information or d
Information
Information needed needed (retrieva
❖ purpose full goal) is
(retrieval goal) is vague and impre
focused • Browsing:
and crystalized. e Mans, France, tourism
❖ Glancing around
❖

Contents of repository Contents of

are well-known. repository are
not well-known.
 Prompt Engineering under the domain of Generative AI
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

⮚ For approximately 4000 years, man has

organized information for later retrieval and
usage.
 Example is the table of contents of a book.

⮚ In the computer-centered view, the IR problem

consists mainly of building up efficient
indexes

⮚ In the human-centered view, the IR problem

consists mainly of studying the behavior of
the user.
PRACTICAL ISSUES
⮚ One of the major issue is security. In an electronic transaction, the buyer
usually has to submit to the vendor some form of credit information
which can be used for charging for the product or service.

⮚ Two other very important issues are copyright and patent rights. It is far
from clear how the wide spread of data on the Web affects copyright and
 patent laws in the various countries.

⮚ Additionally, other practical issues of interest include scanning, optical

character recognition (OCR), and cross-language retrieval (in which the
query is in one language but the documents retrieved are in another
language).

Retrieval Process ⮚ To describe the retrieval process, we use a simple and generic
software architecture.
⮚ Given that the document database is indexed, the retrieval
process can be initiated.
⮚ The user first specifies a user need which is then parsed
and transformed by the same text operations applied to
the text.
⮚ Then, query operations might be applied before the actual
query, which provides a system representation for the user
 need, is generated.
⮚ The query is then processed to obtain the retrieved
documents. Fast query processing is made possible by
the index structure previously built.

The Retrieval Process

At this point, we are ready to detail our view of the retrieval process. To describe a retrieval
process, we use a simple and generic software architecture as shown below:
Text
User Interface

4, 10
User need Text

Text Operation
6, 7
Logical view Logical view
Operations Searching
5
8 Inverted file
User feedback
Query

Indexing
 DB manager module

Index
8

Text
Database

Retrieved docs

Ranked docs
2
Ranking

Assignment 1:
• Design a Simple Document Search Engine First:
Searching the word in the document
Resources
•Chapter 1 (Introduction) Book: Modern Information Retrieval

•“ACM Press New York - University of California, Los

Angeles.” [Online]. Available:
https://web.cs.ucla.edu/~miodrag/cs259-
security/baeza-yates99modern.pdf. [Accessed: 16-Feb-2023].

•S. Rababah, T. User, Yates, Ribeiro, and Wesley, “Modern

Information Retrieval - ppt download,” SlidePlayer. [Online].
Available: https://slideplayer.com/slide/13106234/.
[Accessed: 16-Feb-2023].

•“What is information retrieval?,” GeeksforGeeks, 03-Jul-2022.

[Online]. Available: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/what-is
information-retrieval. [Accessed: 16-Feb-2023].

•https://www.flexiprep.com/NIOS-Notes/Senior
Secondary/Library-Science/NIOS-Library-Science-Unit-16-
Information-Retrieval-System-Part-1-4.html [ Accessed: 27
Aug-2023]