Advances in Information Retrieval Theory: Second International Conference on the Theory of Information Retrieval, ICTIR 2009 Cambridge, UK, September 10-12, 2009 Proceedings

These proceedings contain the refereed papers and posters presented at the Second International Conference on the Theory of Information Retrieval (ICTIR 2009), held at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK, September 10–11, 2009. This biennial international conference provides an opportunity for the presentation of the latest work describing theoretical advances in the field of information retrieval (IR). The first ICTIR was held in Budapest in October 2007, organized by Keith van Rijsbergen, Sándor Dominich, Sándor Darányi, and Ferenc Kiss. ICTIR was brought about by the growing interest in the consecutive workshops run at ACM SIGIR each year from 2000 until 2005 on Mathematical and Formal Methods in IR (Athens, Greece, 2000; New Orleans, USA, 2001; Tampere, Finland, 2002; Toronto, Canada, 2003; Sheffield, UK, 2004; Salvador, Brazil, 2005). This sustained initiative was in a large part down to the determination of Sándor Dominich and his passion for all things good, formal and mathematical. The foundation and the success of ICTIR is a direct result of his commitment and dedication to fostering research and development into the theoretical underpinnings of IR. His dedication is epitomized by his two books on the subject: Mathematical Foundations in Information Retrieval published in 2001, and The Modern Algebra of Information Retrieval published in 2008. While his efforts to promoting formal methods for IR have led to the foundation of ICTIR, sadly, his untimely passing in 2008 means that he is unable to witness how the theory of IR unfolds in the future. Nonetheless, his belief in the importance of theory and his spirit in …