The Tague-Sutcliffe (1992) paper is very important to this course. I have made an extensive set of personal study notes that might allow you some insight into what I see as central to the study and evaluation of Information Retrieval systems.
It is important to understand the general principles involved in storing and then retrieving information. I have created three pages that should help understand Inverted Files (a very common way of organizing information in IR systems):
Page creator: J. Stephen Downie
Page created: 16 September 1997
Page updated: 18 September 1997