On February 23rd and 24th 2012, the “12th Dutch-Belgian Information Retrieval Workshop” (DIR 2012) will be organised at the Ghent University conference center Het Pand. One of the primary goals of this year's edition of DIR is to create an informal meeting place between the major IR research groups and related companies in Belgium and the Netherlands, to exchange information and to present innovative research developments. If your field of expertise is situated in the broad area of Information Retrieval, you are warmly invited to submit a “short paper” (4 pages) containing new research results, or a “compressed contribution” (2 pages) from a recent high-standard conference or journal paper. For companies active in this area, we offer the opportunity to submit demo papers, focusing on novel IR technology and applications. All further information regarding DIR 2012 can be found on http://dir2012.intec.ugent.be/.