Information retrieval is a science related to documents and information searching. Information retrieval deals with the storage and representation of knowledge and the retrieval of information relevant to a specific user problem (Mandhl, 2007). Information retrieval technology mostly used in universities and public library to help students or information users to access to books, journals and other information resources that they needed. It also applies at organizations which having large collection of documents or information. In “The Seven Ages of Information Retrieval” article written by Michael Lesk, mentions the idea of information retrieval starting popular in year 1945. However, the use of information retrieval was started in 1880, where Herman Hollerith invents the recording of data on a machine readable medium (Wikipedia). This article has made good contribution to the field by describing the history of the IR systems from 1945 to 1996 with abundant information on the various technologies developed, IR systems built, and how they affected the research in IR. Based on his article, I observed and learned three important elements of information retrieval.
Elements Observed and Learned from the Article 1. Effectiveness of Information Retrieval System
One of the important things when developing a system is how it can help to human managing the tasks effectively. Technology provides a tool used to help information users to search for information or documents. The general objective of an Information Retrieval System is to minimize the overhead of a user locating needed information (Kowalski & Maybury, 2000). Overhead can be expressed as a processed that users need to go through to seek the information. Even the success of systems is subjective; in my opinion the important element of information retrieval system is the accuracy of information provided to information seekers. Precision can be defined as a fraction of the documents