Information Retrieval Tools and Techniques

Retrieval of data and information is something which every librarian, scientist and technologist does many times over in each working day. Much progress has been made in recent years, and we overview search engines and distributed tool-sets. However there are still some problems to be overcome before heterogeneous data can be integrated for the user in a seamless way, chiefly in regard to seamless integration of image data into current practices. We present a short state-of-the-art overview of the outstanding achievements of recent years; and of some of the more challenging, and potentially fruitful, open issues.