Our discussions in the previous paragraphs have made it clear that in order to develop an effective and efficient information retrieval s we need to know about the users, their information needs, and so on. The process of finding out about users might take place at three different levels. First we need to know about the organization or institution that the user is linked with, and this will in turn inform us about different user groups, their activities, information needs, and so on. Finally, we should try to gather information about each individual user.