Date: Wed, 29 Jan 86 18:26 EST To: irdis at vpi Subject: IRList Digest V2 #4 IRList Digest Wednesday, 29 Jan 1986 Volume 2 : Issue 4 Today's Topics: Announcement - Library Systems Interest Group in Boston - Job Opening at Columbia University - Preview of Contents of Next SIGIR Forum Abstracts - CSLI Presentation Abstracts of Interest Call for Papers - Extended Deadline for 3rd Office Inf. Systems Conf. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Don Saklad Date: Mon, 27 Jan 86 11:51:48 est Subject: library services and systems Forming a library systems interest group, meeting by the revolving door at the Copley Square Boston Public Library, Sundays, 1:30 pm. The purpose of this activity is to organize a group for persons interested in library services and systems. Library users as well as those merely interested are encouraged to contact Boston library users, tel. 617-661-9650 or 617-876-2789. Don Saklad 2 Linwood Place Cambridge, MA 02139 dws@eddie ----------------------------- >From fox Wed Jan 29 17:11:43 1986 Date: Wed, 29 Jan 86 17:11:41 est Subject: Job Opening at Columbia University There is a full time position that would be especially appropriate for someone interested in information retrieval at Columbia. The opening is in the Library School, and there may be possibility of joint appointment or work with the Computer Science Department. For more information contact Dean Robert Wedgeworth School of Library Science Columbia University NY, NY 10027 ----------------------------- Date: Sat, 25 Jan 86 14:21:41 est From: vtvax5::foxea@vtcs1.VT Subject: Preview of next SIGIR Forum [Here is a sneak preview of the upcoming issue. If you or a colleague are not yet members of ACM SIGIR, the current YEARLY fee is only $6! - Ed] Table of Contents for ACM SIGIR Forum Winter 1986 Vol. 19 Issues 1-4 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Report on SIGIR Business Meeting >From the Forum Editor >From the Book Review Editor Procedures for the SIGIR Award >From the Headquarters -- Extended Terms for SIG Officers Recommendations for the Visitors for the CS Accreditation Comm. SIGIR/SIGDOC Workshop -- Writing to be searched: A Workshop on Document Creation Principles Information Retrieval Research at the National Library of Medicine Short Communication -- Which Way for a Classification Scheme for Computers and Medicine Book Review -- Database: A Primer, by C.J. Date Abstracts of Articles in IR Area Selected from Recent Issues of Journals Selected from SIGIR-84 Conference at Cambridge Selected from 1983 Issues of Journals NSF Funding for Participants to SIGIR-86 Conference in Pisa, Italy Merger of Information Technology and Information Processing and Mgmt. Call for Papers INFOR SID-86 49th Annual Meeting of ASIS 43rd FID Conference and Congress Canadian Journal of Information Science ----------------------------- Date: Sat, 25 Jan 86 14:21:41 est From: vtvax5::foxea@vtcs1.VT Subject: CSLI Presentation Abstracts of Interest Extracts from CSLI Newsletter - Dec. 5, 1985 -- Vol. 3, No. 4 A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing - by Carolyn R. Miller This paper is typical of a number of recent articles by sociologists, rhetoricians, and humanistically-trained writing specialists, that insist that scientific writing is no less rhetorical in its means and effects than is writing of an explicitly belletristic sort. Whether or not we find their arguments compelling, these articles raise interesting questions for producers and consumers of technical prose, especially in intellectually self-conscious disciplines like philosophy, AI, and linguistics. For example: What is the common understanding of the research enterprise that underlies the linguistic conventions characteristic of scientific prose, such as the avoidance of "I" and the unusual uses of "we," the frequent use of impersonal constructions, the numbering of paragraphs, and so on? Can we apply the apparatus of traditional rhetoric to the evaluation of the expository usefulness of particular formal languages and notational conventions? Is there grounds for distinguishing between a "rhetoric of information," concerned with the selection and arrangement of factual observations, and a "rhetoric of description," concerned with the linguistic means used to report such observations? Spatial Parsing for Visual Languages -- Fred Lakin Graphics are very important in human/computer interaction. To participate effectively in this kind of interaction, computers must be able to understand how humans use graphics to communicate. When a person employs a text and graphic object in communication, that object has meaning under a system of interpretation, or "visual language." A first step toward computer understanding of the visual communication objects used by computers is computer parsing of such objects, recovering their underlying syntactic structure. The research described in this paper combines computer graphics, symbolic computation and textual linguistics to accomplish "spatial parsing" for visual languages. Parsing has been investigated in four visual languages: VennLISP (a visual programming language based on LISP), VIC (a visual communication system for aphasics), FSA (finite state automaton) diagrams, and SIBTRAN (graphic devices for organizing textual sentence fragments). A parser has been written which can recover the structure for graphic communication objects in the different visual languages. In addition, interactive visual communication assistants utilize modules from the parser to actively assist humans using two of the visual languages. ----------------------------- From: Hewitt%mit-mc.arpa@CSNET-RELAY Subject: Postponement in OIS-86 paper submission deadline To: AIList-Request%sri-ai.arpa@CSNET-RELAY ReSent-date: Wed 22 Jan 86 13:03:53-PST ReSent-From: Ken Laws ReSent-To: IRList%vpi.csnet@CSNET-RELAY Because of the delay in the distribution of the call for papers for OIS-86 in the Newsletter, we have decided to postpone the deadline for paper submission from February 1 to March 1, 1986 in order to satisfy the requirements for broad distribution of the call. Enclosed please find the updated call for papers which reflects this change: ******************* C A L L F O R P A P E R S * * ---------------------------------------------- * * Third ACM Conference On * * OFFICE INFORMATION SYSTEMS * OIS-86 * * * October 6-8, 1986 * * Biltmore Plaza Hotel * * Providence, RI ******************* ------------------------------------------------- General Chair: Carl Hewitt, Topics appropriate for this MIT conference include (but are not restricted to) the following as they Program Chair: Stanley Zdonik, relate to OIS: Brown University Technologies including Display, Voice, Treasurer: Gerald Barber, Telecommunications, Print, etc. Gold Hill Computers Human Interfaces Local Arrangements: Andrea Skarra, Brown University Deployment and Evaluation An interdisciplinary conference on System Design and Construction issues relating to office information systems (OIS) sponsored Goals and Values by ACM/SIGOIS in cooperation with Brown University and the MIT Distributed Services and Applications Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Submissions from the following Knowledge Bases and Reasoning fields are solicited: Distributed Services and Applications Anthropology Artificial Intelligence Indicators and Models Cognitive Science Computer Science Needs and Organizational Factors Economics Management Science Impact of Computer Integrated Psychology Manufacturing Sociology The program committee includes: Bob Allen Ray Panko Bellcore University of Hawaii Guiseppe Attardi Robert Rosin University of Pisa Syntrex James Bair Erik Sandewall Hewlett Packard Linkoping University Gerald Barber Walt Scacci Gold Hill Computers USC Peter de Jong Andrea Skarra MIT Brown University Irene Greif Susan Leigh Star MIT Tremont Research Institute Sidney Harris Luc Steels Georgia State University University of Brussels Carl Hewitt Sigfried Treu MIT University of Pittsburgh Heinz Klein Dionysis Tsichritzis SUNY University of Geneva Fred Lochovsky Eleanor Wynn University of Toronto Brandon Interscience Fanya Montalvo Aki Yonezawa MIT Tokyo Institute of Technology Naja Naffah Stanley Zdonik Bull Transac Brown University Margrethe Olson NYU Professor J.C.R. Licklider of MIT will be the keynote speaker. Unpublished papers of up to 5000 words (20 double-spaced pages) are sought. The first page of each paper must include the following information: title, the author's name, affiliations, complete mailing address, telephone number and electronic mail address where applicable, a maximum 150-word abstract of the paper, and up to five keywords (important for the correct classification of the paper). If there are multiple authors, please indicate who will present the paper at OIS-86 if the paper is accepted. Proceeedings will be distributed at the conference and will later be available from ACM. Selected papers will be published in the ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems. Please send eight (8) copies of the paper (which must arrive by March 1, 1986) to: Prof. Stan Zdonik OIS-86 Program Chair Computer Science Department Brown University P.O. Box 1910 Providence, RI 02912 DIRECT INQUIRIES TO: Margaret H. Franchi (401) 863-1839. IMPORTANT DATES Deadline for Paper Submission (postponed 1 mo.) March 1, 1986 Notification of Acceptance: April 30, 1986 Deadline for Final Camera-Ready Copy: July 1, 1986 Conference Dates: October 6-8, 1986 ------------------------------ END OF IRList Digest ********************