  What is "intelligent" information retrieval? Essentially this is asking what
is intelligence, in this article I will attempt to show some of the aspects of
human intelligence, as related to information retrieval. I will do this by the
device of a semi-imaginary Oracle. Every Observatory has an oracle, someone who
is a distinguished scientist, has great administrative responsibilities, acts
as mentor to a number of less senior people, and as trusted advisor to even the
most accomplished scientists, and knows essentially everyone in the field. In
an appendix I will present a brief summary of the Statistical Factor Space
method for text indexing and retrieval, and indicate how it will be used in the
Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service. 2018 Keywords: Personal Digital
Assistant; Supervised Topic Models
