Information Retrieval and Hypertext (Electronic Publishing Series) - Hardcover

`With an impressive list of authors, the in-depth chapters cannot fail to provide excellent coverage of the most significant work in hypertext-IR. .. thus, as a whole, the book provides a comprehensive bibliography on work combining hypertext and information retrieval. In an increasingly Web/hypertext dominated world, Agosti and Smeaton will clearly take its place as a key publication - an essential read for researchers in hypertext-IR.'
Journal of Documentation, 54:1 (1998)
`This is a collection for the reader with more than a casual interest in the conflation of the disciplines of information retrieval and hypertext. This this description fits you then I recommend that you buy this book or maybe persuade your institute library to purchase it.'
The Australian Computer Journal, 30:1 (1998)

Information Retrieval (IR) has concentrated on the development of information management systems to support user retrieval from large collections of homogeneous textual material. A variety of approaches have been tried and tested with varying degrees of success over many decades of research. Hypertext (HT) systems, on the other hand, provide a retrieval paradigm based on browsing through a structured information space, following pre-defined connections between information fragments until an information need is satisfied, or appears to be. Information Retrieval and Hypertext addresses the confluence of the areas of IR and HT and explores the work done to date in applying techniques from one area, to the other leading to the development of `hypertext information retrieval' (HIR) systems. An important aspect of the work in IR/HT and in any user-centred information system is the emergence of multimedia information and such multimedia information is treated as an integral information type in this text. The contributed chapters cover the development of integrated hypertext information retrieval models, and the application of IR and HT techniques in hypertext construction and the approaches that can be taken in searching HIR systems. These chapters are complemented by two overview chapters covering, respectively, information retrieval and hypertext research and developments. Information Retrieval and Hypertext is important as it is the first text to directly address the combined searching/browsing paradigm of information discovery which is becoming so important in modern computing environments. It will be of interest to researchers and professionals working in a range of areas related to information discovery.