IRList Digest Saturday, 17 January 1987 Volume 3 : Issue 1 Today's Topics: Editorial - Past, Present, Future of IRList - Revised Welcome Message Announcement - ACM/SIGIR Conference travel grants available News addresses are ARPANET: fox%vt@csnet-relay.arpa BITNET: foxea@vtvax3.bitnet CSNET: fox@vt UUCPNET: seismo!vtisr1!irlistrq ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Jan 15 18:22 EST 1987 From: fox Subject: Past, Present and Future This is the first issue of IRList Digest in 1987. There were 28 digests in 1985 and 71 in 1986. Presently, there are 249 recipients, of which 36 are distribution lists -- so there are well over 250 readers. Addresses are for various parts of the DARPA Internet, for UUCPnet, for BITNET, and for other networks reachable from those. There are logical networks like CSNET, and others like Mailnet or corporate networks. Many different countries are represented. Readers come from the academic, governmental, and private sectors. Some are involved in research, some are students, and some are participating in commercial retrieval-related ventures. There are libraries, library schools, computer science and information science departments, etc. Readers have varying backgrounds, but all are interested in information retrieval or related work. 1986 saw a steady growth in IRList membership, but with attendant problems. New members do not always clearly state their electronic mail address, and so it is not always possible to successfully add them. The ARPANET-BITNET gateway, and the distribution point, seismo, became overloaded. Now, BITNET readers receive their issues from foxea@vtvax3.bitnet, and others receive copies redistributed from seismo. It will be necessary for some sites with multiple readers to set up a local redistribution list - you will be hearing more about this in the near future if you do not anticipate my request. Some IRList submissions will be coming out in (the soon to be released Fall-Winter) ACM SIGIR Forum. SIGIR and the journal "Information Processing and Management" (IP&M) have agreed to collaborate, so those interested in sending journal articles can also send them in electronic form to IRList (though details of handling figures etc. must be discussed!) since I am involved in all 3 of these publications. Perhaps we can thus move 1 step further toward electronic publishing. Please send in more news! There are weekly or monthly seminars that you could easily write up and send in so we can follow latest developments! There are technical reports coming out - abstracts are welcome for those and for papers and dissertations etc. We could also have more lively discussions, comments on conferences, and other communication. We have made a good start, and the world is hearing more about information retrieval, but we can all do even more! The message below is sent out to new members - please examine it to remind yourself about the various particulars. I look forward to hearing from you and to a lively year of IRList issues! Thanks, Ed Fox. ------------------------------ Date: Sat Jan 17 13:42 EST 1987 From: fox Subject: Revised Welcome Msg - Reminder What IRList is About Welcome to the IRList. I am the moderator of the IRList discussion. I am responsible for composing the digest from pending submissions, controlling the volume and frequency of mail, keeping an archive, and answering administrative requests. You may submit material for the digest to a variety of places, depending on what network you are on and how quickly and reliably you want mail to reach me. We do not have to pay for our BITNET mail, and do pay for CSNET and UUCP services, so if you can use BITNET that is best. That means: If on ARPANET using domains use one of the following fox%vtcs1.bitnet@wiscvm.wisc.edu foxea%vtvax3.bitnet@wiscvm.wisc.edu If on ARPANET and can't use domains use one of the following fox%vtcs1.bitnet@wiscvm.arpa foxea%vtvax3.bitnet@wiscvm.arpa If on BITNET, use fox@vtcs1 or foxea@vtvax3 If on CSNET, use an ARPANET form shown above If on UUCPNET, use something like one of the following ... seismo!vtcs1.bitnet!fox ... seismo!vtvax3.bitnet!foxea If you don't want to use BITNET (ex. because the BITNET-ARPANET gateway is too clogged) then there are some other options: If on ARPANET and can use domains IRList%vt@relay.cs.net IRList-Request%vt@relay.cs.net fox%vt@relay.cs.net If on ARPANET and can't use domains IRList%vt@csnet-relay.arpa IRList-Request%vt@csnet-relay.arpa fox%vt@csnet-relay.arpa If on CSNET IRList@vt or IRList-Request@vt or fox@vt If on UUCPNET ... seismo!vtisr1!fox As you might expect, archival copies of all digests will be kept; feel free to ask for recent back issues. Note that FTP is not possible, so all communication must be by EMAIL or phone or letter. IRList is open to discussion of any topic (vaguely) related to information retrieval. Certainly, any material relating to ACM SIGIR (the Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval of the Association for Computing Machinery) is of interest. Our field has close ties to artificial intelligence, database management, information and library science, linguistics, ... A partial list of topics suitable are: Information Management/Processing/Science/Technology AI Applications to IR Hardware aids for IR Abstracting Indexing/Classification Citations Information Display/Presentation Cognitive Psychology Information Retrieval Applications Communications Networks Information Theory Computational Linguistics Knowledge Representation Computer Science Language Understanding Cybernetics Library Science Data Abstraction Message Handling Document Representations Natural Languages, NL Processing Electronic Books Pattern Recognition, Matching Expert Systems for IR Probabilistic Techniques Full-Text Retrieval Speech Analysis Fuzzy Set Theory Statistical Techniques Contributions may be anything from tutorials to rampant speculation. In particular, the following are sought: Abstracts of Papers,Reports,Dissertations Address Changes Bibliographies Conference Reports Descriptions of Projects/Laboratories Half-Baked Ideas Histories Humorous,Enlightening Anecdotes Questions Requests Research Overviews Seminar Announcements/Summaries Work Planned or in Progress The only real boundaries to the discussion are defined by the topics of other mailing lists. Please do not send communications to both this list and AIList or the Prolog list, except in special cases. I will try not to overlap much with NL-KR, except when we both receive materials from contributors or from some bulletin board or researchers. PLEASE "sign" subscriptions with full name and address so that people can access you from Internet and/or BITNET (many other networks can be reached through them and are certainly urged to participate). Editing of contributions will usually be limited to text justifications and spelling corrections. Editorial remarks and elisions will be marked with square brackets. The author will be contacted if significant editing is required. I have no objection to distributing material that is destined for conference proceedings or any other publication. I am involved in SIGIR Forum and unless you request otherwise may include submissions in whole or in part in future paper versions of the FORUM. Indeed, this is one form of solicitation for FORUM contributions! Both IRList and the FORUM are unrefereed, and opinions are always those of the author and not of any organization unless there are other indications. Copies of list items should credit the original author, not necessarily the IRList. If you are interested in submitting to Information Processing and Management (IP&M), I would to entertain a discussion with you as well. The list does not assume copyright, nor does it accept any liability arising from remailing of submitted material. I reserve the right, however, to refuse to remail any contribution that I judge to be of commercial purpose, obscene, libelous, irrelevant, or pointless. Replies to public requests for information should be sent, at least in "carbon" form, to this list unless the request states otherwise. If necessary, I will digest or abstract the replies to control the volume of distributed mail. However, PLEASE DO contribute! I would rather deal with too much material than with too little. -- Ed Fox Edward A. Fox, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Computer Science, Virginia Tech (VPI&SU), McBryde Hall Rm. 562, Blacksburg VA 24061 (703) 961-5113 or 6931 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Jan 87 11:42:10 est From: kraft@LSU.CSNET Subject: ACM/SIGIR Conference travel grant announcement for IRlist ll l l l ssss u u LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY l s s u u Department of Computer Science l ss u u 298 Coates Hall l ss u u Baton Rouge, LA 70803-4020 l s s u uu (504) 388-1495 lll ssss uuu u kraft%lsu@csnet-relay January 9, 1987 Dear World: I have just received the news from the System Develop- ment Foundation that we have been given some funding for travel grants to the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)/Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR) International Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval. This conference will be held in the Monteleone Hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA on June 3-5, 1987. The travel stipends are for distinguished non-U.S. residents to travel to New Orleans to attend and participate in the conference. The selection of the stipend awards will be made by the Chairman of ACM/SIGIR and myself in accor- dance to the following criteria: 1) acceptance of a paper to be presented at this conference, 2) participation in this conference program, 3) value of the attendee to this and future conferences, and 4) potential growth of the attendee by attending this conference. Anyone not residing in the U.S. who would like some financial support to attend this conference should contact me before the deadline of March 1. It is not too late to begin planning now. This conference is sponsored by ACM/SIGIR in coopera- tion with BCS/IRSG, AICA, and IMAG. It is supported by OCLC, Inc. and System Development Foundation, with other support being generated. The topics to be covered by the conference include retrieval system modeling, system development and evaluation, knowledge representation, mul- timedia retrieval, cognitive and semantic models, user interfaces, natural language processing, linguistic models, storage and search techniques, retrieval system performance, retrieval in office environments, mathematical models, hardware developments, complexity problems, and information retrieval and database management. The Technical Program Committee is being co-chaired by C. J. "Keith" van Rijsber- gen and Clement Yu; in addition, the members include Abraham Bookstein, Yves Chiaramella, Jochum Friedbert, W. S. Luk, Fausto Rabitti, Nick Cerone, Martha Evens, Richard Frost, Michael McGill, Gerard Salton, Michael Wong, Stavros Chris- todoulakis, Aviezri Fraenkel, Tetsuro Ito, Esen Ozkarahan, and Peter Scheuermann. The Call for Papers said that papers were due on December 15, 1986, with acceptance by February 15, 1987 and final copies due March 20, 1987. If you need to submit a last minute manuscript, contact Clement Yu (North America) or Keith van Rijsbergen (outside North America). Sincerely yours, Donald H. Kraft Professor and Chairman ACM/SIGIR Conference Chair P.S. Laissez les bons temps rouler. ------------------------------ END OF IRList Digest ********************