本书是第一本从各个层面全面介绍语言技术的书，自第1版出版以来，一直好评如潮，被国外许多著名大学选为自然语言处理和计算语言学课程的主要教材。本书将深入的语言分析与健壮的统计方法结合起来，新版更是涉及了大量的现代技术，将自然语言处理、计算语言学以及语音识别等内容融合在一本书中，把各种技术相互联系起来，让读者了解怎样才能最佳地利用每种技术，怎样才能将各种技术结合起来使用。本书写作风格引人入胜，深入技术细节而又不让人感觉枯燥。
本书不仅可以作为高等学校自然语言处理和计算语言学等课程的本科生和研究生教材，对于自然语言处理相关领域的研究人员和技术人员也是不可或缺的权威参考书。

Class-tested and coherent, this groundbreaking new textbook teaches classic web information retrieval, including web search and the related areas of text classification and text clustering from basic concepts. Written from a computer science perspective by three leading experts in the field, it gives an up-to-date treatment of all aspects of the design and implementation of systems for gathering, indexing, and searching documents; methods for evaluating systems; and an introduction to the use of machine learning methods on text collections. All the important ideas are explained using examples and figures, making it perfect for introductory courses in information retrieval for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in computer science. Based on feedback from extensive classroom experience, the book has been carefully structured in order to make teaching more natural and effective. Although originally designed as the primary text for a graduate or advanced undergraduate course in information retrieval, the book will also create a buzz for researchers and professionals alike.
Contents
1. Information retrieval using the Boolean model; 2. The dictionary and postings lists; 3. Tolerant retrieval; 4. Index construction; 5. Index compression; 6. Scoring and term weighting; 7. Vector space retrieval; 8. Evaluation in information retrieval; 9. Relevance feedback and query expansion; 10. XML retrieval; 11. Probabilistic information retrieval; 12. Language models for information retrieval; 13. Text classification and Naive Bayes; 14. Vector space classification; 15. Support vector machines and kernel functions; 16. Flat clustering; 17. Hierarchical clustering; 18. Dimensionality reduction and latent semantic indexing; 19. Web search basics; 20. Web crawling and indexes; 21. Link analysis.
Reviews
“This is the first book that gives you a complete picture of the complications that arise in building a modern web-scale search engine. You'll learn about ranking SVMs, XML, DNS, and LSI. You'll discover the seedy underworld of spam, cloaking, and doorway pages. You'll see how MapReduce and other approaches to parallelism allow us to go beyond megabytes and to efficiently manage petabytes." -Peter Norvig, Director of Research, Google Inc.
"Introduction to Information Retrieval is a comprehensive, up-to-date, and well-written introduction to an increasingly important and rapidly growing area of computer science. Finally, there is a high-quality textbook for an area that was desperately in need of one." -Raymond J. Mooney, Professor of Computer Sciences, University of Texas at Austin
“Through compelling exposition and choice of topics, the authors vividly convey both the fundamental ideas and the rapidly expanding reach of information retrieval as a field.” -Jon Kleinberg, Professor of Computer Science, Cornell University

封面图片为英国伯明翰塞尔福瑞吉百货大楼，其极具线条感的轮廓外型优美，犹如水波的流动。其外表悬挂了1.5万个铝碟，创造出一种极具现代气息的纹理装饰效果，有如夜空下水流的波光粼粼，闪烁于月光之下，使建筑的商业氛围表现到极致。设计该建筑的英国“未来系统建筑事物所”，将商场内部围合成一个顶部采光的中庭，配以交叉的自动扶梯，使购物环境呈现出一种凝聚的向心力和商业广告的展示效应。作为英国第二商业城市伯明翰的建筑地标，人们称该建筑为“未来的百货商店”。因其设计构思的前卫性，该建筑获得2004年英国皇家建筑学会的“建筑设计奖”和2004年“英国皇家工艺美术委员会奖”等多个奖项。
本书从计算机科学领域的角度出发，介绍了信息检索的基础知识，并对当前信息检索的发展做了回顾，重点介绍了搜索引擎的核心技术，如文档分类和文档聚类问题，以及机器学习和数值计算方法。书中所有重要的思想都用示例进行了解释，生动形象，引人入胜，实现了理论与实战的完美结合。
本书的三位作者均是信息检索领域的顶级专家，两位来自学术教育界，一位来自硅谷业界，使本书既具备深厚的理论基础，又代表了尖端科技水准。因此，该书甫一出版，即被奉为该领域的权威著作，备受瞩目。目前已被众多世界名校采用为信息检索课程的教材。