Information Representation and Retrieval in the Digital Age (2nd ed.)

Citation

Angus, E. (2010), "Information Representation and Retrieval in the Digital Age (2nd ed.)", Online Information Review, Vol. 34 No. 6, pp. 984-985. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684521011099450

In the seven years since the first edition of this book was published much has changed in the interlinked fields of information representation and information retrieval. The way people create, publish and search for information online has gone through some significant developments thanks to the rise of ‘user‐generated’ content and the emergence of new channels for sharing information (e.g., RSS, social bookmarking sites, social networking).

Accordingly, Heting Chu's second edition of Information Representation and Retrieval in the Digital Age is more than justified. As well as including revisions and updates to content from the first edition, Chu has also added new sections: Social Tagging and RSS; Digital Object Identifiers; Taxonomies, Folksonomies and Ontologies; and Other User‐Centered Models of Information Retrieval. As Chu points out, the topics are examined and discussed from the perspective of library and information science rather than from the viewpoint of computer science, and the handling of chapter topics therefore reflects this distinction.

The book starts with an overview of the field and also discusses some of the pioneering academics such as Mortimer Taube, Hans Peter Luhn, Calvin N. Mooers, Gerard Salton and Karen Spärck Jones. Two chapters are dedicated to information representation (basic approaches and related topics) covering areas such as indexing, categorisation, summarisation, metadata, full‐text and the representation of multimedia information.

In addition five chapters are dedicated to information retrieval, looking at retrieval techniques and query representation, retrieval approaches, retrieval models, information retrieval systems and information unique in content or format. There are also chapters which cover language in IRR (natural language, controlled vocabulary, taxonomies, folksonomies and ontologies); the user dimension in IRR; evaluation measures and criteria; and an overview of artificial intelligence in IRR. Where appropriate, Chu provides handy tables which compare the approaches/models being discussed, and these are a great way of getting a visual overview of the pros and cons of the topic in question.

The only criticism of the book is that the final chapter on Artificial Intelligence in IRR seems a bit tacked on at the end. The chapter covers both natural language processing and the semantic web, but ideally these should each have a chapter in their own right. The semantic web is a key topic in discussions about the next big revolution on the web (i.e. Web 3.0), and therefore a whole chapter dedicated to this topic would have been an appropriate way to conclude the book.

Overall this is a thoroughly exhaustive and extremely well written book and a key introductory text for anyone new to the field of IRR. It is also perfectly suited to undergraduate students in library and information science.

Having said that, even people who already have the first edition should acquire Chu's second edition, as there is enough new content to make this justifiable.