12. The method of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of reusable operators include a composition operator, wherein the composition operator generates an output annotation based on a relationship between an input annotation and an input annotation type.
1. A computer-implemented method of extracting information comprising: defining a plurality of reusable operators, wherein each operator performs a predefined information extraction task different from the other operators; specifying a composition of said reusable operators to form a composite annotator, wherein each operator receives a searchable item and generates one or more output annotations; and storing the output annotations for use during a search, wherein the plurality of reusable operators include an extraction operator, wherein the extraction operator identifies features based on predefined criteria and generates one or more output annotations comprising the features extracted from one or more searchable items, the searchable items comprising text, wherein the extraction operator extracts specified text by matching text in each of said searchable items against a first rule and a second rule, wherein if text satisfies the first rule and the second rule, text between the text satisfying the first rule and text satisfying the second rule is stored in an output annotation, and wherein the extraction operator assigns a specified type to each of the one or more output annotations.