The foreword of this compendium outlines three perceived advantages of the volume: it is written by experts, it includes extensive lists of resources and it covers the full spectrum of information retrieval. While the third assertion may not be entirely correct, it is admittedly difficult to cover all aspects of information retrieval in such a volume.
The intended audience of the book are students who wish to start research in the field of information retrieval. It wants to complement the many textbooks on the topic with some insight into hot topics for research. As the field keeps on changing, there is, indeed, a need for staying in touch with the latest developments in the field.
The idea itself is worthy, the contributors more than qualified. However, the result is perhaps not what one would expect. From the point of view of potential researchers (students or not) the greatest contribution of this volume is as a vast list of resources on different, but by no means all, topics in information retrieval. However, often the reader is left wanting to know more about a certain topic or study, as not many studies are actually described, and when they are, it is most often the current work of the authors. In this way, some of the objectivity, necessary for first time researchers, is lost.
Another baffling aspect of the volume is the title as there is no direct talk about innovations or the way they influence information retrieval. Admittedly, the book describes some novel approaches (primarily suited to the ever evolving web) and the book is openly influenced by newer understanding of information retrieval, primarily work by Ingwersen and Järvelin.
As can be expected for a volume with many different authors, there is not much consistency in writing, but there is also not much consistency in the specificity of the topics covered.
The opening chapter by David Bawden on serendipity, browsing and similar phenomena is very rich with references but it requires good prior understanding of the field. That said, the topic is clearly on the minds of many, as it consistently pops up throughout the book.
On the other hand Aida Slavic's chapter on classification presents a nice overview that is very basic in some places. While the connection to information retrieval is made apparent and some potential research questions are opened, there is not much mention of actual research in the field.
The next two chapters on fiction and music retrieval are highly specific. While it is hard to cover retrieval of all different specific types of material in such a volume, the choice of including only fiction and music retrieval seems arbitrary. In the chapter on fiction retrieval, two prototypes (one by each co-author of the chapter, Anat Vernitski and Pauline Rafferty) based on intertextuality (connection between two works) and genres are presented. The chapter on MIR (music information retrieval) by Charlie Inskip is well-balanced, with much thought being given to relevance and evaluation of MIR but also the nature of music and music information.
The chapter on folksonomies and social tagging is the longest, and for the most part highly detailed. While some of the points made by Isabella Peters will be familiar to internet users, there is some nice discussion on some of the more hidden aspects, as well as obvious concern for both the design and visualization of results. Also, while some of disadvantages are mentioned, most of the chapter is based on an optimistic view of user involvement and the motivation behind the involvement (e.g. there is no explicit mention of the critical mass of contributing users).
The topic of the following chapter, digital information interaction as semantic navigation, may sound as though it is very loosely defined; however, this is perhaps the most systematically written chapter in the book. Authored by Richard Kopak, Luanne Freund and Heather L. O’Brien, it covers such exciting, but also diverse, topics as user engagement, annotation, linking and document genre (choosing a fairly restrictive definition of the latter) in connection with understanding the information environment a user finds oneself in.
The last chapter by webometric guru Mike Thelwall is exclusively dedicated to the rather narrow research of comparison of the number of reported and actual search engine results.
While far from being useless, from the point of view of a student this volume may well miss the intended target. Some topics are discussed in too great a detail, while others are barely mentioned. The reference to Michelangelo's Mona Lisa on page 101 is baffling and might wrongfully indicate to the casual reader that the book is neither well-written nor well-edited, which is a shame, as it definitely provides helpful insights into some of the hottest topics in the field of information retrieval and shares a wealth of knowledge supplied by some of the bigger names in information science at the moment.
Those expecting details on the nitty-gritty of information retrieval research at the moment will be left underwhelmed. However, those seeking to gain insight into some of the issues behind modern information retrieval (including those arising from the fields of cognitive sciences, art history and literature studies and the nature of information on the web) will surely find something useful and those looking for research challenges or simply food for thought are presented with a plethora of relatively fresh and exciting starting points. Perhaps the best advice for a student would be to ponder the topics covered before obtaining the book.
