Information Retrieval: Past and Present

Today, as in the past, ways of facilitating information retrieval have been and are being invented; knowledge of these techniques is important to make one's search for a specific subject or topic more successful.

According to Hans Wellisch's Indexing from A to Z, the index goes back to ancient Rome. As Greek and Roman scholars wrote large works, they began to think of ways that would facilitate the process of retrieving the information. A small slip was attached to papyrus scrolls where the title of the work and sometimes the name of the author was written. With the help of the slips, each scroll would be easily identified without having to pull out the work in order to identify it.

In the 1st century A.D., when books were being compiled, the table of contents was then developed. It is also mentioned that not until the 18th Century did full alphabetization become a rule when compiling indexes. One must keep in mind that this brief information of the history of indexes is through the indexers perspective, as found in the American Society of Indexers web page. The Greek and Roman scholars, according to the indexers, were the first to come up with ways of facilitating information retrieval.

Through the searchers perspective, one can learn how to use these tools that were invented to improve indexing and put them to use when searching for information on a subject search. Patrick Wilson, in his article Searching: Strategies and Evaluation, mentions five major types of search strategies that can be used when searching for information on a subject or specific topic. The searching strategies that are recommended are: 

Browsing: Go directly to a collection of materials and look them over. 

Footnote chasing: Start with a particular book or journal article, and then follow up its footnotes, endnotes, or bibliographical references by locating the items referred to. Follow up their references to other works. 

Citation searching: The opposite of footnote chasing. Starts with particular works, often but not always old ones, and by using citation indexes, find later works that have referred back to one's starting set of works. 

Consultation: The process of asking for recommendations from someone who is in a position to give advice. 

Indirect search: The strategy of approaching the material we want indirectly by using catalogs, bibliographies, and indexes. These works are primarily collections of bibliographical descriptions with more or less complete representations of content.

The current form of information retrieval is the World Wide Web, in particular search engines. This is a good communication technology that can be used to retrieve information on a specific topic or subject. More information about how this technology functions is found in the section How do search engines work?