Professor Gobinda Chowdhury BSc Hons, MSc, PhD, FCLIP is Professor in Information Science at iSchool@northumbria, and Head of the Department of Mathematics and Information Sciences at Northumbria University. Before joining Northumbria University he was a Professor and Director of the Centre for Information and Knowledge Management at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. For over 25 years he has worked as an academic and researcher in information science in different parts of the world including Asia, Africa, Europe and Australia. For the past few years he has been actively involved in the iSchools activities. Professor Chowdhury has written or edited 15 books and over 150 research papers.

1. Basic concepts of information retrieval systems



Introduction
Features of an information retrieval system
Elements of an information retrieval system
Kinds of information retrieval systems
Design issues
Discussion
References

2. Database technology



Introduction
Data
The database
Kinds of databases
Database technology
The development of databases in an information retrieval environment
Discussion
References

3. Bibliographic formats



Introduction
Bibliographic records
ISO 2709: Format for bibliographic information interchange
MARC format
UNIMARC format
The Common Communication Format
Discussion
References

4. Cataloguing and metadata



Introduction
Cataloguing
Metadata
Discussion
References

5. Subject analysis and representation



Introduction
Classification
Types of bibliographic classification schemes
Major library classification schemes
Classification of electronic resources
Subject analysis
Manual indexing
Theory of indexing
Discussion
References

6. Automatic indexing and file organization



Introduction
The process of indexing
Automatic classification
Index file organization
Inverted file
Sequential access
Alternative text retrieval structures
Discussion
References

7. Vocabulary control



Introduction
Controlled vs natural indexing
Vocabulary control tools
Thesauri
Criteria for evaluating a thesaurus
Use of thesauri in online information retrieval
Discussion
References

8. Abstracts and abstracting



Introduction
Types of abstract
Qualities of abstracts
Uses of abstracts
The art of abstracting
Automatic abstracting
Recent works on text summarization
Discussion
References

9. Searching and retrieval



Introduction
The search strategy and its prerequisites
The pre-search interview
The searching process
Retrieval models
Alternative information retrieval models
Search facilities offered by most text retrieval systems
Discussion
References

10. Users of information retrieval



Introduction
Users and their nature
Types of information needs
Information needs in different areas of activity
Information-seeking behaviour of users
What we need to know about users
User studies
Possible sources of information about users
Discussion
References

11. User-centred models of information retrieval



Introduction
Information seeking
Human information behaviour models
User-centred information search models
Discussion
References

12. User interfaces



Introduction
The four-phase framework for interface design
Information seeking and user interfaces
User interfaces and visualization
User interfaces of some information retrieval systems
Discussion
References

13. Evaluation of information retrieval systems



Introduction
The purpose of evaluation
Evaluation criteria
The steps of evaluation
Discussion
References

14. Evaluation experiments



Introduction
The Cranfield tests
MEDLARS
The SMART retrieval experiment
The STAIRS project
Limitations of early evaluation studies
TREC
Discussion
References

15. Online and CD-ROM information retrieval



Introduction
Online searching
CD-ROM databases
Discussion
References

16. Multimedia information retrieval



Introduction
Multimedia information retrieval systems
Standards
Discussion
References

17. Hypertext and markup languages



Introduction
Hypertext
Markup languages
Discussion
References

18. Web information retrieval



Introduction
Traditional vs web information retrieval
Web information: volume and growth
Web information retrieval: issues and challenges
Access to information on the web: the tools
Economic aspects of web information and search engines
Deciding which pages to return
Search engine optimization
Web information retrieval: evaluation studies
Information seeking on the web
Discussion
References

19. Natural language processing and information retrieval



Introduction
Natural language understanding
Syntactic analysis
Semantic analysis
Pragmatic knowledge
Discussion
References

20. Natural language processing applications in information retrieval



Introduction
Cross-language information retrieval
Machine translation
Question answering systems
Text mining
Information extraction
Discussion
References

21. Citation analysis and information retrieval



Introduction
Bibliometrics, scientometrics and webometrics
Citation indexes and information retrieval
Discussion
References

22. Information retrieval in digital libraries



Introduction
Information resources in digital libraries
The basic design of a digital library
Interoperability
Common features of digital libraries
Information retrieval features of selected digital libraries
Problems and prospects
Discussion
References

23. Trends in information retrieval



Introduction
Evaluation of information retrieval systems
Developments related to the input subsystem
Searching and retrieval
User studies and user modelling
User interfaces
Information retrieval standards and protocols
Information retrieval in the context of web and digital libraries
Evaluation of natural language processing systems
Machine translation
Conclusions
References