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Reviewer: Harold Borko

According to the author, “the aims of the book are to establish a unifying scientific approach to IR [Information Retrieval]—a synthesis based on the concept of IR interaction and the cognitive viewpoint; to present research and developments in the field of information retrieval based on a new categorization; and to generate a consolidated framework of functional requirements for intermediary analysis and design—the Mediator Model” (p. viii). Ingwersen explains that while IR research began in a fragmentary way during the 1950s or perhaps earlier, a new generation of information professionals has emerged along with new technologies and new concepts in the last few decades. Consequently, it is time to seek a new synthesis of all the relevant research and to design a new IR model. This synthesis is the author's ambition and the goal of the book. The first chapter places “information science in context” by describing its origins and its search for identity while establishing disciplinary alliances with psychology, linguistics, sociology, and computer science. A turning point occurred during the years 1977 to 1980 when, the author claims, information science was reorganized into a coherent and mature discipline. These conclusions are based on an analysis of the publications of leading researchers and scholars of that period and are presented in an interesting and informative manner. The next chapter elucidates the author's conceptualization of information and information science from a cognitive point of view, and the third chapter examines the implications of this cognitive concept of information retrieval research. The problems of aboutness, representation, relevance, and evaluation are discussed, and the importance of understanding user behavior and information need representation during retrieval is stressed. The chapter concludes with an overview of the traditional, user-oriented, and cognitive approaches to IR research. The chapters that follow amplify the overview and provide detailed descriptions of the traditional IR research approach (chapter 4) and the user-oriented IR research approach (chapter 5). Cognitive structures are introduced in chapter 6, and the cognitive IR research approach is described more fully in chapter 7. This chapter begins with a discussion of the changes that took place in the 1980s, going from a user-oriented approach, which sought to understand and model the searcher's mental processes and behavior, to an integrated cognitive approach, which seeks to understand the bridging functions and the tasks performed by the user, the system, and the intermediaries. This chapter describes a number of IR system design models and points out their achievements, their shortcomings, and their lack of completeness. The final chapter outlines a consolidated framework for cognitive IR research based on knowledge-based intermediary mechanisms, which serve as a bridge between the structure of the IR system and the user's request for information. The functional components of the author's Mediator Model of cognitive IR systems are described, and it is stated that the model could be used for the analysis and design of complex IR environments, for the assessment of the effectiveness of system functions, and for the education and training of both human and mechanized search intermediaries. The book concludes with a glossary, references, and a subject index. The index does not list the names of any of the authors referred to in the book, so it is almost impossible to locate the pages on which they are mentioned and thereby to discover the influence of their works on the material presented in the text. This book is challenging. It provides the reader with a paradigm for organizing and conceptualizing IR research from its beginnings to the present. It needs to be studied and not read casually. Almost every reader or researcher in the field will discover works with which he or she is unfamiliar or only partially familiar. Perhaps most important, the author has laid out a direction for future productive IR research.