SPIRE 2014 - International Symposium on String Processing and Information Retrieval

SPIRE 2014 is the 21st edition of the International Symposium on String Processing and Information Retrieval. The event has been held under this title annually since 1998. The four first events concentrated mainly on string processing (SP), and were held in South America under the title South American Workshop on String Processing (WSP) in 1993 (Belo Horizonte, Brazil), 1995 (Valparaiso, Chile), 1996 (Recife, Brazil), and 1997 (Valparaiso, Chile).
WSP was transformed into SPIRE in 1998 (Santa Cruz, Bolivia) when the scope of the event was broadened to include also information retrieval (IR). The change was motivated by the increasing relevance of information retrieval and its close inter-relationship with the general area of string processing. From 1999 to 2007, the venue of SPIRE has been alternating between South / Latin America (odd years) and Europe (even years), with Cancun, Mexico in 1999, A Coruña, Spain in 2000, Laguna de San Rafael, Chile in 2001, Lisbon, Portugal in 2002, Manaus, Brazil in 2003, Padova, Italy in 2004, Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2005, Glasgow, UK in 2006, and Santiago, Chile in 2007. This pattern was broken when SPIRE 2008 was held in Melbourne, Australia, but it was probably restarted in 2009 when the venue was Saariselkä, Finland. In 2010 SPIRE took place in Los Cabos, Mexico and in 2011 SPIRE was held in Pisa, Italy, in 2012 it was held in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, and in 2013 it was held in Jerusalem, Israel. Look here for a complete history of the SPIRE series of symposia.