Information retrieval apparatus and information retrieval method

An information retrieval apparatus, comprising:

• an input device configured to specify a desired word in a document displayed on a display device;
• a retrieval section configured to search a database on the basis of the specified word and for acquiring a plurality of retrieval results;
• a sentence extracting section configured to extract a sentence including the specified word from the displayed document;
• means for analyzing the sentence extracted by the sentence extracting section;
• an evaluation section configured to evaluate each of the plurality of retrieval results obtained by the retrieval section based on the result of sentence analysis made by the analyzing means;
• and
• a selector configured to select a predetermined one of the plurality of retrieval results on the basis of the result of evaluation made by the evaluation section,
• wherein said evaluating section selects a first keyword from the sentence extracted by said sentence extraction section based on the result of the sentence analysis made by said analyzing means, and calculates the number of occurrences of the first keyword in each of the retrieval results acquired by the retrieval section,
• wherein each of the number of occurrences of the first keyword and the corresponding retrieval result are stored in a keyword number table, and
• wherein the selector sequentially displays the plurality of retrieval results stored in the keyword number table corresponding to a retrieval result with largest number of occurrences of the first keyword to a retrieval result with smallest number of occurrences of the first keyword, said sequentially displayed retrieval results being different from each other.