The annual colloquium on information retrieval research provides an opportunity for both new and established researchers to present papers describing work in progress or ?nal results. This colloquium was established by the BCS IRSG(B- tish Computer Society Information Retrieval Specialist Group), and named the Annual Colloquium on Information Retrieval Research. Recently, the location of the colloquium has alternated between the United Kingdom and continental Europe. To re?ect the growing European orientation of the event, the colloquium was renamed "European Annual Colloquium on Information Retrieval Research" from 2001. Since the inception of the colloquium in 1979 the event has been hosted in the city of Glasgow on four separate occasions. However, this was the ?rst time that the organization of the colloquium had been jointly undertaken by three separate computer and information science departments; an indication of the collaborative nature and diversity of IR research within the universities of the West of Scotland. The organizers of ECIR 2002 saw a sharp increase in the number of go- quality submissions in answer to the call for papers over previous years and as such 52 submitted papers were each allocated 3 members of the program committee for double blind review of the manuscripts. A total of 23 papers were eventually selected for oral presentation at the colloquium in Glasgow which gave an acceptance rate of less than 45% and ensured a very high standard of the papers presented.