IRE Contents contents Butterworth & Company Karen Sparck Jones All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, without the written permission of the copyright holder, application for which should be addressed to the Publishers. Such written permission must also be obtained before any part of this publication is stored in a retrieval system of any nature. Contents Chapter 1 Introduction Karen Sparck Jones Part 1 Chapter 2 Testing in general The methodology of information retrieval experiment Stephen E. Robertson 3 Retrieval effectiveness Cornelis J. van Rjjsbergen 4 Ineffable concepts in information retrieval Nicholas J. Belkin 5 The pragmatics of information retrieval experimentation Jean M. Tague 1 7 9 32 44 59 Part2 Chapter 6 Types of test Evaluation within the environment of an operating information service F. Wilfrid Lancaster 7 Opportunities for testing with online systems Elizabeth D. Barraclough S Laboratory tests of manual systems E. Michael Keen 9 Laboratory tests: automatic systems Robert N. Oddy 10 Simulation, and simulation experiments Michael D. Heine 11 Gedanken experimentation: An alternative to tradi- tional system testing? William S. Cooper 103 105 128 136 156 179 199 vii