ISR10 Introduction chapter Joseph John Rocchio Harvard University Gerard Salton Use, reproduction, or publication, in whole or in part, is permitted for any purpose of the United States Government. 1-1 CHAP[OCRerr]ER 1 I[OCRerr]TRODUCTION 1. The [OCRerr]ocument Retrieval Problem The attention devoted to document retrieval systems in recent years is based in some form or other on the assumption that such systems can satisfy needs exhibited by a class 0£ users or can satisfy needs likely to be exhibited in the near future. Although there is general agreement that situations re[OCRerr]uiring reference to some body of accumulated knowledge do exist in[OCRerr]modern society, there is no such consensus as to the most effective means 0£ satisfying such needs underthe varying sets of circumstances' in which'they 2,3,4,5,6. One 0£ the alternatives arisee und'er consideration[OCRerr]is the' application of automatic information processing equipment[OCRerr], to the mechanization of reference providing systems.7 This report' characterizes the basic functions required in such systems, and develops' optimization techniques. app' licable tq a certain class:o£ implementations of `these functionse In addition,the basis for the evaluation of retrieval system performance is examined and some novel evaluation criteria are introduced. In general terms the document retrieval,problem can be introduced with the following assumptions: a body of recorded knowledge The reference's cited in the introduction are only illustrative and are by[OCRerr]no[OCRerr] means exhaustivee The Proceedings of t[OCRerr] 1958 International Conference on `Scientific Information Qontains a number of papers dealing with doc[OCRerr]ent retrieval and [OCRerr]l: ie'd problems.