ISR10 Preface Preface 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. PREFACE [OCRerr]his thesis presents a functional mo[OCRerr]el for &ocument retrieval systems. Pased on this model, a search request optimization algorithm and an automatic classification algorithm applicable to efficient storage 6rganization are derived. In addition some novel evaluation measures for document retrieval Systems are proposed. [OCRerr]ihe writer is deeply indebted to Professor Cerard Salton for his guidance during the conception and development of this thesis, and for his confidence, encouragement, and continuing support. Particular thanks are also due to Mr. Michael Lesk for his valuable assistance with respect to programming problems and with operational aspects of the SMAR[OCRerr] system, and to the other members of the SMARr.D project at the Rarvard Computation Laboratory. In addition the editorial assistance and moral support of Mary [OCRerr]occhio, the author1s wife, were of immeasurable value. Finally the writer wishes to acknowledge the support of this research by the [OCRerr]ational Science Foundation under grant aN 360, and by the [OCRerr]ll Telephone Laboratories under contract with Rarvard University. V