This chapter is a basic introduction to text information retrieval. Information Retrieval (IR) refers to the activities of obtaining information resources (usually in the form of textual documents) from a much larger collection, which are relevant to an information need of the user (usually expressed as a query). Practical instances of an IR system include digital libraries and Web search engines. This chapter presents the typical architecture of an IR system, an overview of the methods corresponding to the design and the implementation of each major component of an information retrieval system, a discussion of evaluation methods for an IR system, and finally a summary of recent developments and research trends in the field of information retrieval.
