Modern Information Retrieval Acknowledgements

Contents

We would like to deeply thank the various people who, during the several months in which this endeavor lasted, provided us with useful and helpful assistance. Without their care and consideration, this book would likely not have matured.

First, we would like to thank all the chapter contributors, for their dedication and interest. To Elisa Bertino, Eric Brown, Barbara Catania, Christos Faloutsos, Elena Ferrari, Ed Fox, Marti Hearst, Gonzalo Navarro, Edie Rasmussen, Ohm Sornil, and Nivio Ziviani, who contributed with writings that reflect expertise we certainly do not fully master ourselves. And for all their patience throughout an editing and cross-reviewing process which constitutes a rather difficult balancing act.

Second, we would like to thank all the people who demonstrated interest in publishing this book particularly, Scott Delman and Doug Sery.

Third, we would like to commend the interest, encouragement, and great job done by Addison Wesley Longman throughout the overall process, represented by Keith Mansfield, Karen Sutherland, Bridget Allen, David Harrison, Sheila Chatten, Helen Hodge, and Lisa Talbot.

The reviewers they contacted read an early (and rather preliminary) proposal of this book and provided us with nice feedback and invaluable insights. The chapter on Parallel and Distributed IR was moved from the part on Applications of IR (where it did not fit well) to the part on Text IR due to the objective argumentation of an unknown referee. A separate chapter on Retrieval Evaluation was only included after another zealous referee strongly made the case for the importance of this subject.

Fourth, we would like to thank all the people who discussed this project with us. Doug Oard provided us with an early critique of the proposal. Gary Marchionini was an earlier supporter and provided us with useful contacts during the process. Bruce Croft encouraged our effort since the beginning. Alberto Mendelzon provided us with an initial proposal and a compilation of references for the chapter on searching the Web. Ed Fox found time in a rather busy schedule to provide us with an insightful review of the introduction (which resulted greatly improved) and a thorough review of the chapter on Modeling. Marti Hearst demonstrated interest in our proposal early on, provided assistance throughout the editing process, and has been an enthusiastic supporter and partner.

Fifth, we thank the support of our institutions, the Departments of Computer Science of the University of Chile and of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, as well as the funding provided by national research agencies (CNPq in Brazil and CONICYT in Chile) and international collaboration projects, in particular CYTED project VII.13 AMYRI (Environment for Information Managing and Retrieval in the World Wide Web) and Finep project SIAM (Information Systems for Mobile Computers).

Most important, to Helena, Rosa, and our children, who put up with a string of trips abroad, lost weekends, and odd working hours.