While computer hardware and software both change rapidly, the principles they are based on are forever lasting. The goal of research in Information Retrieval is to help library users cope with very large collections of on-line documents by efficiently selecting those documents which are relevant to their needs. Specific research includes both the design of actual retrieval systems and the development of underlying theory. Creating complex modern systems can be extremely difficult and costly. Fortunately, they can be studied by constructing models of them.
Research has involve studying complex parallel software systems as well as simulation environments.