1. A computer-implemented mapping method for categorizing a plurality of informational items in an information retrieval system, the method comprising the steps of; clustering by identifying one or more groupings of the informational items into one or more clusters, wherein said clustering is extended by adding an adaptive method comprising the steps of: application of said clustering, statistical evaluation of said clustering output for quality, usage of said statistics to alter the plurality of clustering parameters, re-running of clustering algorithm, and continuing this process until some stopping condition is met; classifying said clusters by identifying rules to assign the informational items to a specific one of said clusters without utilizing information from externally provided hierarchical representations; summarizing each of said clusters by determining human readable descriptive titles to uniquely identify each of said clusters; and storing said human readable descriptive titles, wherein said clustering, classifying and summarizing are all performed on a given set of data in no particular order.