Information retrieval (IR) is concerned with the effective and efficient retrieval of information based on its semantic content. The central problem in IR is the quest to find the set of relevant documents, among a large collection containing the information sought, satisfying a user's information need usually expressed in a natural language query. Documents may be objects or items in any medium: text, image, audio, or indeed a mixture of all three. This book presents 12 revised lectures given at the Third European Summer School in Information Retrieval, ESSIR 2000, held at the Villa...

The Information Management Systems group at the University of Padua, led by Maristella Agosti, has been a major contributor to information retrieval and digital libraries for nearly twenty years.This group has produced some of Italy s best-known IR researchers, whose work spans a broad range of topics, as the papers in this book demonstrate. One of the goalsof the IR book series is to highlight the work of academic research centers in our ?eld, in order to balancetheperceptionthateveryoneinIRworksforasearchenginecompany. One of the best aspects of our ?eld is that, as academic researchers, we...