Narendravarapu, Reena Rachel2011-10-262011-10-262011-08https://hdl.handle.net/11299/117075University of Minnesota. M.S. thesis. August 2011. Major: Computer science. Advisor: Dr. Donald B. Crouch. 1 computer file (PDF) ix, 54 pages.Information Retrieval Systems focus on retrieving information relevant to the user’s query. Many strategies have been developed to retrieve documents. Due to the increase in the data across the web, it is very important to retrieve relevant elements at the appropriate level of granularity. Our element retrieval system called Flexible retrieval (Flex) works with semi-structured documents to retrieve elements at run time. The goal of this thesis is to improve the results of INEX Ad Hoc 2009 and 2010 Relevant in Context (RiC) tasks. The RiC task returns a set of focused elements that are ordered by document. Snippets are incorporated as a part of the 2010 INEX RiC task. Snippets give an overview of the document and hence should be short with few irrelevant characters so as not to lose user interest. Appropriate retrieval techniques are developed to accommodate snippets. The Restricted Relevant in Context (RRiC) task, in which a snippet can have a maximum length of 500 characters, is also described.en-USComputer scienceThesis or Dissertation