Improving formal models and usability: Research in Information Retrieval at Glasgow University

The search for a perfect information retrieval (IR) system can be compared to the search for the perfect blended whisky taking inspiration from many components, maturing them together and finally satisfying the needs of a wide range of end-users. Like a blended whisky, IR is currently maturing together components from many constituent research communities, each with their own traditions and characteristics. On the formal side, these constituents include mathematical modelling of information using logical and probabilistic approaches, and modelling the information seeking process of searchers. These approaches are being added to a strong experimental and hypothesis testing tradition within IR research, which itself is being augmented by more psychological style experiments introduced to the computing science community via human computer interaction and cognitive science research.