This course presents Basic and advanced techniques for text-based information systems: efficient text indexing; Boolean and vector space retrieval models; evaluation and interface issues; Web search text/Web clustering, classification; text mining. Upon completion of this course students will be able to: (1) Understand and discuss current issues and research in online searching and information retrieval (2) Appreciate the capabilities and limitations of information retrieval systems (3) Identify search concepts in an information request (4) Employ appropriate search strategies and vocabularies for online and Internet searching (5) Identify and exploit characteristics of reference and source databases and search systems for effective searching (6) List and discuss evaluation criteria for commercial and Internet-based search systems (7) Demonstrate problem solving skills to handle a complex search problem (8) Identify and discuss problems, issues, and future developments in information retrieval and online searching