Date: Sun, 22 Sep 85 18:33 EST To: irdis at vpi Subject: IRList Digest V1 #10 IRList Digest Sunday, 22 Sep 1985 Volume 1 : Issue 10 Today's Topics: Query - Books in Print Database? Announcement - Contents of upcoming issue of ACM SIGIR Forum - Seminar on Constructive Lexicon-Grammar (BBN) - Plans for DOE Forum Session on Online Documentation Research Interest - Cooperative structuring of information ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: RGARRETT%LAJ.SAINET.MFENET@LLL-MFE Date: Mon, 9 Sep 85 10:36 PDT Subject: Books-in-Print type database I am looking for a "Books - in - Print" style database for use as the foundation for an expert system retrieval system. Does anyone know where such a thing might be available on magnetic media in the public domain (or otherwise low cost format). I am aware of some commercial on-line sources,but these are quite unsuitable for my purposes. Any help would be appreciated. Randy Garrett (305)626-6700 ------------------------------ From: "Edward A. Fox" Date: Sun, 15 Sep 85 17:15:28 edt Subject: Preview of upcoming issue of ACM SIGIR Forum - Cover Page SIGIR NEWS Volume 18 Issues 2-4 Chairman's Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 SIGIR Officers' Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Conference/Workshop Reports BCS/IR & SIGIR 1984. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 RIAO/85 in Grenoble. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 SIGIR 1985 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 SIGIR 1985 Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 University of Regina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 News from NSF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Announcements IRList - Electronic Mail Digest . . . . . . . . . . 21 CAIS 1986. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Articles Online Access Aids for Documentation . . . . . . . . 23 Some Characteristics of Future Information Systems . 28 Calls for Papers JASIS Submissions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 SIGIR 1986 - Pisa, Italy . . . . . . inside back cover ------------------------------ Date: 4 Sep 1985 17:37-EDT From: AHAAS at BBNG.ARPA Subject: Seminar - Constructive Lexicon-Grammar (BBN) [copied from AIList Digest V 3 N 121 - 11 Sept; which was] [Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.] The next BBN Artificial Intelligence seminar will be held in the 3rd floor large conference room at 10 Moulton Street, 10:30 on Friday September 13. Bruce Nevins of BBN wil speak on "Constructive Lexicon-Grammar". His abstract: Maurice Gross's group in Paris found that, after they had specified French verbs by their syntactic properties, there was no need for lexical features to make further semantic distinctions between them. Because of this perhaps surprising result, they have been able to develop a highly specific lexical representation, using classifier words in sentence forms rather than abstract features. Their lexicon-grammar replaces most context-free parsing with simple lookup in 3-dimensional tables of syntactic properties of words. Constructive grammar, as exemplified by Harris's _A_Grammar_of _English_on_Mathematical_Principles_ (Wiley, 1984), uses only the constructive `has-a' relations of dependency and adjunction, limiting the taxonomic `is-a' relation to classifier hierarchies of words in the lexicon. A given input morpheme can only be one of a few kinds of things: an operator with specified argument requirement, a primitive argument (roughly, a concrete noun), an argument-indicator like -ing, the operator-indicator -s, or a product of certain precisely specifiable reductions of strings to more compact, and more conventional, form. Because each morpheme has at most only a very few possible syntactic roles--frequently, just one--computer analysis of text has much less structural ambiguity to cope with than in other approaches. In this talk, I will show how these two approaches to natural language processing may be combined in a system for construing (as opposed to parsing) natural language input that should be readily adaptable to text generation as well. I will sketch extensions similar to Naomi Sager's system for automatically incorporating new text information into subject-matter specific data bases. ------------------------------ From: "girill terry%e.mfenet"@LLL-MFE Date: Fri, 13 Sep 85 10:49 pst Subject: DOE Forum Session on Online Documentation The U.S. Department of Energy is hosting its 2nd Forum on Computer Systems for Documenation at a conference center in Livermore, California, from October 29-31, 1985. One session at this event has special relevance to IRlist readers, because it concerns the impact and accessibility of online documentation (i.e., material both prepared and distributed through computers). Below are abstracts for the talks slated for the online-documentation session. Whether published versions are prepared depends partly on reader interest. Comments or requests can go to me ("girill%mfe"@lll-mfe.arpa) or directly to Carol Tull ("tull#carol%mfe"@lll-mfe.arpa). DOE Documentation Forum Thursday, October 31, 1985 Technical Session on The Question-Answering Role of Online Documentation T. R. Girill, Session Chair 9:00-10:15 a.m. Carol Tull, National MFE Computer Center "The Impact of Online Documentation on Consulting Services" Commentator: to be arranged Abstract: From a consultant's point of view, the key advantages of online documentation are (1) rapid access to passages, (2) frequent, inexpensive, on-demand updates, and (3) 24-hour/day availability. Active support for the software that distributes documentation online is essential to good consulting. One reason is that the user interface to documentation is often among the first that a new user encounters. In addition, a well-designed user interface promotes effective information retrieval. Finally, collaboration between editorial and consulting staffs dramatically improves the organization and content of online documents, as NMFECC's recent experience with drafting topical and task-oriented documents reveals. Future work on an automated consultant system will require further close cooperation between the two groups. 10:30-NOON Vicki Jackson and Mary Ethel Jae, Fireman's Fund Insurance Companies "A Practical Inquiry System for Accessing Online Documentation" Commentator: to be arranged Abstract: The Documentation Support System (DSS) developed by Fireman's Fund is an online inquiry system containing information previously communicated in offline manuals and memos. Features include retrieval via hierarchical subject categories, retrieval via search terms and pointers (e.g., business site), and news messages. Subject and search-term retrieval have been successfully tested at one field location. This presentation will cover system development from design (by an interdisciplinary team) through implementation. ------------------------------ From: Lowe@NYU-CSD2 Date: 14 Sep 1985 16:07-EDT Subject: Cooperative structuring of information Readers of IRList may be interested in research I have been doing on methods for information retrieval that are not based on the use of keywords. Most IR researchers are aware of the many shortcomings of keywords as a method for accessing useful information: keywords are ambiguous, have synonyms, do not specify structured concepts, and make no attempt to evaluate important attributes of documents such as accuracy, clarity, or currency of information. The alternative that I have been working on is to allow many users of an information system to structure the information themselves. The users can create an extensive network of links joining related concepts as well as providing new information and commentary. The users can contribute to areas in which they are knowledgeable, rather than relying upon some database cataloger who is unlikely to have much knowledge or understanding of the material that is being indexed. The obvious problem in allowing a large number of individuals to contribute to a common database is one of quality control. This problem can be partially handled through the use of voting techniques in which material is structured according to a consensus opinion of the users. However, simple voting would be just an opinion poll and does not do enough to assure the best possible accuracy of information. Therefore, I have been developing a structured representation for debate in which the computer maintains a record of the reasoning behind each decision. Rather than simply voting on the correctness of each item in the database, users are required to indicate which items of evidence support or refute a particular conclusion. Not only are users more likely to agree on whether specific evidence supports a conclusion than they are to agree on the conclusion in the abstract, but the representation provides a record for each user of what others have considered to be the best available evidence bearing on each conclusion. The representation is used not only to debate aspects of presentation and indexing, but also to represent the content of much of the material in the database as a snapshot of the reasoning process that links the concepts in mind of each user. The specific representation that is used for debate is derived from the theory of argument developed by the British philosopher Stephen Toulmin. There is not space here to give a full explanation of the system, but I have written a fairly detailed paper on the topic. This paper was published as "The representation of debate as a basis for information storage and retrieval" by David G. Lowe, AFIPS Conference Proceedings Volume 53, 1984 National Computer Conference, pp. 595-603. A more extensive version of this paper will soon be published in the International Journal of Man Machine Studies. I will be happy to mail copies to anyone who sends me their U.S. mail address. I can be reached at LOWE@NYU-CSD2 on the ARPANET or the following address: Prof. David Lowe Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences 251 Mercer Street New York, NY 10012 Finally, let me point out the importance of performing further research in the area of cooperative information systems as an alternative to current methods of information access. The shortcomings of keyword based systems have already been mentioned. Another form of information exchange is the electronic digest, such as the one you are reading. However, the information in these digests is seldom retained for further use as there is just too much junk mixed in with the useful information. Another potential solution to the information retrieval problem would be natural language understanding, in which the computer could access the relevant information by making use of a representation of its content. However, natural language understanding of arbitrary text to the degree that would be required is still many years or decades away. My own research background is in artificial intelligence, but I have come to believe that the best route to progress lies in having the computer represent the content of information in the manner of AI systems while leaving the input task up to human users. This type of system is well within the scope of existing technology and would greatly increase the range of applications for information retrieval. ------------------------------ END OF IRList Digest ********************