Finding Out about: A Cognitive Perspective on Search Engine Technology and the WWW [With Book with CDROM]

I found this to be a wonderful book about Search Engines. If you like history, math, computer science, and how we can make computers communicate effectively with people, then this book is a great read. With current Search Engines, we enter some words and get back a bibliography. I look forward to a sequel: "Answer Engines: How You Can Enter a Short, Simple Question and Get Back a Short, Simple Answer (NOT a list of things to read)!"

I wonder if I was reading the same book as a couple of the reviewers! IMHO there are (too) many books in this field that deal with how search engines work, but the more 'slippery' concepts associated with how people actually use them to find about information have received much less attention.The book provides a very welcome cognitive science perspective on a discipline often dominated by those who seek overly simple mechanistic formulas and 'answers' to very tricky 'questions'.

Though I have not Taken Dr. Belew's class, I know he is a consumate professional in his field. His Ideas are new and revolutionary. There are a lot of concepts in the book that I am still trying to grasp, but Belew really does a good job of explaining new concepts in a comprehensive way. He is really an asset to the Computer Science community.