IR

Welcome to Toronto! We are pleased to host the Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on its second visit to Canada. The tutorials, keynote speech, papers, posters, demos and workshops to be given over the next five days represent current techniques, challenges, and advances in information retrieval.Since the 8th SIGIR Conference in Montreal, 1985, information retrieval applications have become ubiquitous. It is difficult to imagine using a personal computer, a library, the web, or a peer-to-peer file sharing system without relying on the results of information retrieval research. At the same time it is easy to observe limitations in the tools we use and to imagine how they might be improved. These observations provide the impetus for current and future research.Toronto, Canada's largest city with a population of 2.5 million, is home to virtually all of the world's cultural groups, boasting safe and clean streets, first class entertainment, fine dining, major league sports, parks, and recreation facilities. It may surprise you that Toronto is also a major centre for television and movie production, third in North America after Los Angeles and New York. "Chicago" -winner of six Academy Awards including Best Picture - was filmed here.