Books
Key books on search, information retrieval, NLP, and related fields. Organized by audience and focus area.
Foundational IR
| Title | Authors | Notes |
|---|
| Introduction to Information Retrieval | Manning, Raghavan, Schütze | Free online; covers TF-IDF, BM25, vector models |
| Search Engines: Information Retrieval in Practice | Croft, Metzler, Strohman | Textbook, covers indexing to ranking |
| Information Retrieval: Implementing and Evaluating Search Engines | Büttcher, Clarke, Cormack | Deep on implementation |
Applied / Practitioner
| Title | Authors | Notes |
|---|
| Relevant Search | Turnbull, Berryman | Elasticsearch-focused; mental models for relevance |
| AI-Powered Search | Trey Grainger et al. | Neural/semantic search with Solr/Opensearch |
| Search Patterns | Peter Morville, Jeffery Callender | UX patterns for search interfaces |
| Elasticsearch: The Definitive Guide | Clinton Gormley, Zachary Tong | Free online; Elasticsearch internals |
Machine Learning for Search
| Title | Authors | Notes |
|---|
| Learning to Rank for Information Retrieval | Liu | LTR theory and practice |
| Neural Information Retrieval | various | Deep learning models for IR |
Broader Context
| Title | Authors | Notes |
|---|
| The Filter Bubble | Eli Pariser | Personalization and what gets hidden |
| How Google Works | Schmidt, Rosenberg | Business and engineering culture |
| The Alignment Problem | Brian Christian | AI values alignment — relevant to relevance |