Kalervo Järvelin's research aims at making it easier for ordinary information seekers to locate the information they need.

Researcher profile:

The man behind the information retrieval systems

Kalervo Järvelin does important but invisible work for
ordinary information seekers

Text: Meeri Sipilä
Photo: Pasi Järvenpää
Translation: Virginia Mattila

Kalervo Järvelin is among the top names in information retrieval. In Finland research on information retrieval is in the hand of a small but meritorious body of researchers. This field of research is characterized by operating in a closeknit group and engaging in active international co-operation.

Professor Järvelin has been doing research since the early 1980s. However, his choice of an academic career was not an obvious one.

"It was rather by chance that I became a researcher. But I have always been interested in research and study," he says.

Making information retrieval easier

Professor Järvelin researches information retrieval and database management. In his research he has focused on cross-language information retrieval and on ontology-based information retrieval, in which effort is invested in supporting information seeking with a system of concepts describing concepts and the relationship pertaining between them.

Professor Järvelin is moreover interested in the problems in information seeking caused by the morphology of various languages, including inflected forms of words and compound words, and has developed methods for rendering inflected words in their lemma forms in order to improve the search results.

The methods of information access developed as a result of research in information retrieval at their best serve and benefit millions of information seekers.  Improving methods of information retrieval has a crucial effect on how successful we are in our searches and, more widely, on how our entire society functions.

"The aim in my research is to make information retrieval easier so that everyone can access the information they need in as simple a way as possible regardless of what language they are using for it, through what media and at what place in the world they are," says Professor Järvelin.

The world of media in the throes of change

Professor Järvelin predicts that the future will see a radical change in the media landscape. All the media distribution channels are going through a period of transition as the digital distribution of information challenges the business models of institutions based on physical documents. Copyright/ intellectual property rights issues are also emerging in a different way with the digitalization of information.

"All information will be digitalized and then electronically available through various access devices. Converting media from one form to another will be easier than before. It will be possible for transform text into speech and speech into text. Translation between languages will also become trouble-free.

Reform of the distribution channels

"There will no longer be a need for bookshops as we know them today, nor for academic libraries in their current form to store books in collections."

The change will also affect the public libraries.

"The advent of digital literature has been on exhibition for 40 years, but so far it has been stumped by problems with reading devices. However, in ten years we shall have at our disposal electronic paper which is at least as convenient as conventional paper," Professor Järvelin predicts.

In spite of numerous changes the problems of information organization and retrieval will remain acute, thus there will be plenty for Professor Järvelin to research in the future.