The advent of new information retrieval (IR) technologies and approaches to storage and retrieval provide communities with previously unheard of opportunities for mass documentation, digitization, and the recording of information in all its forms. This book introduces and contextualizes these developments and looks at supporting research in IR, the debates, theories and issues.
Contributed by an international team of experts, each authored chapter provides a snapshot of changes in the field, as well as the importance of developing innovation, creativity and thinking in IR practice and research. Key discussion areas include:

• browsing in new information environments
• classification revisited: a web of knowledge
• approaches to fiction retrieval research
• music information retrieval research
• folksonomies, social tagging and information retrieval
• digital information interaction as semantic navigation
• assessing web search machines: a webometric approach.

Readership: LIS professionals , researchers and students, and for all those interested in the future of IR.

Foreword - Ina Fourie
Introduction - Allen Foster and Pauline Rafferty
1. Encountering on the road to Serendip? Browsing in new information environments - David Bawden
2. Classification revisited: a web of knowledge - Aida Slavic
3. Approaches to fiction retrieval research: from theory to practice? - Anat Vernitski and Pauline Rafferty 4. Music information retrieval research - Charlie Inskip
5. Folksonomies, social tagging and information retrieval - Isabella Peters
6. Digital information interaction as semantic navigation - Richard Kopak, Luanne Freund and Heather L. O’Brien
7. Assessing web search engines: a webometric approach - Mike Thelwall