A computer-based process retrieves information organized in documents containing text and/or coded representations of text. The process involves obtaining and labeling a selected set of documents, and extracting and selecting features from each document in the selected set. The extracted and selected features are represented, and models are constructed using parametric learning algorithms. The constructed models are capable of assigning a label to each document. The model parameters being instantiated use a first subset of the selected set of documents. Parameters are chosen by validating the corresponding model against at least a second subset of the full document set. The constructed models also are capable of assigning labels and ranks to similar documents outside a selected subset not previously given to the process of model construction.