Preface

There are three things extremely hard:
steel, a diamond, and to train a retriever.

– Benjamin Franklin

I won't say it's hard but it's annoying for sure. Anyways, it seems like ColBERT has been gaining interest among IR folks and since I've been working on creating the next generation of ColBERT(pronounced as Col-BERT, just the way God intended). I thought I should be writing more about it.

I've never written a book before so I thought why not do it now! Main Idea is to introduce ColBERT to anyone who wants to or has been working in the field of Information Retrieval. But what is IR anyway? We'll learn about that along with it's rich history too! But wait what is ColBERT anyway?

Unlike the usual Bi-Encoders and Cross Encoders we know, ColBERT introduces a new mechanism that brings the best of both worlds. Oh but wait, what is a Bi-Encoder? Heck, what is an Encoder here anyway? Wait what even is this domain? Well boy, you gotta buckle up cuz this one's gonna be good.