Finding Out About: A Cognitive Perspective on Search Engine Technology and the WWW

The World Wide Web is rapidly filling with more text than anyone could have imagined a short time ago. However, the task of determining which data is relevant has become appreciably harder. In this original new work Richard Belew brings a cognitive science perspective to the study of information as a computer science discipline. He introduces the idea of Finding Out About (FOA), the process of actively seeking out information relevant to a topic of interest. Belew describes all facets of FOA, ranging from creating a good characterization of what the user seeks to evaluating the successful performance of search engines. His volume clearly shows how to build many of the tools that are useful for searching collections of text and other media. While computer scientists make up the book's primary audience, Belew skillfully presents technical details in a manner that makes important themes accessible to readers more comfortable with words than equations. Resources are available from the book's web site

Explains how to build useful tools for searching collections of text and other media.

Booknews

Culling the desired information from the chaff on the Web can be daunting. Bringing a cognitive perspective to the study of data/ information retrieval, Belew (computer science and engineering, U. of California, San Diego) introduces the Finding Out About search process<-->ranging from FOA's mathematical foundations and creating on-target query language, to making inferences beyond the index and evaluating search engine performance. Includes discussion of future directions in publishing; an auxiliary Web site; notes on freeware/shareware tools used in the book's production; and a CD-ROM containing a hypertext version of the book plus additional material. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Richard K. Belew is a professor in the Computer Science and Engineering departments at The University of California, San Diego. He is an associate editor of the journal Evolutionary Computation and co-editor (with Melanie Mitchell) of Adaptive Individuals in Populations (1996).