From vtisr1!irlistrq Wed Sep 10 16:00:47 1986 Date: Wed, 10 Sep 86 16:00:31 edt From: vtisr1!irlistrq To: fox Subject: IRList Digest V2 #43 Status: R IRList Digest Wednesday, 10 September 1986 Volume 2 : Issue 43 Today's Topics: Announcement - Comserve - free BITNET information service Abstracts - More from latest issue of ACM SIGIR Forum, Part 1 News addresses are ARPANET: fox%vt@csnet-relay.arpa BITNET: foxea@vtvax3.bitnet CSNET: fox@vt UUCPNET: seismo!vtisr1!irlistrq ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DATE: Mon Sept 1, 1986 20:22 EDT TO: FROM: SUBJECT: Announcing Comserve! [Forwarded from: CRTNET NEWSLETTER September 2, 1986 Number 55 - Ed] Dear Tom, It's been with a great deal of interest and excitement that we have followed the CRT.NET discussion about SCANET, the proposed networking system currently under consideration by SCA's Publications Board. For the past two years, we have been designing and writing the software for a networking project called "Comserve" that offers most of the capabilities detailed in the proposal for SCANET. Comserve went officially on-line August 29, 1986. [Note that the proposal for SCANET calls for storage and retrieval of various types of documents as part of the system. - Ed] We've sent along a "press release" for Comserve that describes the system and how to use it. ... Readers will notice that Comserve can be accessed interactively, or using electronic mail messages. The press release contains information about how to access Comserve interactively. The COMSERVE USER'S GUIDE contains detailed information about how to send electronic mail with commands for Comserve, how to access the system from other networks, and how to access it if your university does not have network access at all. We'd be happy to send this portion of the guide over BITNET to individuals wishing to use Comserve immediately. We'll also send the entire guide to anyone who wishes it, but since it is over 25 pages long we prefer to send that using the US Mail. Send requests for either or both to COMSPRT1@RPICICGE. We want to encourage your readers to try Comserve out and let us know their reactions. Tim Stephen Teri Harrison [Note: there has been some follow up discussion too in later editions of CRTNET, but I believe the best way for you to find out more is to look at the announcement (below) for yourselves if you are interested. - Ed] Announcing Comserve! All those interested in the study of human communication are invited to try out "Comserve", an electronic information resource that went on-line August 29, 1986. Comserve is a free information service that can be used to obtain materials to assist in teaching and research activities. Comserve can also be used to locate information about people in the profession, to share your own work, to request information or resources from others or to advertise your department's programs of study. Comserve maintains a growing collection of bibliographies, research instruments, annuncements of professional meetings, grant opportunities, syllabi, class exercises, and other resources of relevance to the field of communication studies, broadly defined. Comserve also supplies information about electronic services available from other organizations (e.g., Psychnet) and cooperates with these services in cross-referencing and listing materials of mutual interest. Comserve manages an electronic phone book -- much like the SCA Directory -- that you can use to locate information about others in the discipline. Individuals may list their university affiliations, BITNET and other network addresses, research and teaching interests, as well as other relevant information. Comserve features a "news" service that automatically provides information about changes in the data base. This focuses the user's attention upon files that have been added, dated material about to be archived, as well as any other announcements of general interest to all. Users may also send questions, make suggestions, and provide other feedback to Comserve's staff. In the future, Comserve will offer two opportunities for person-to-person interaction: (1) Sponsored discussions - on topics of general interest initiated and maintained by users, and (2) Individual conferences - private conversations among two or more individuals currently logged onto Comserve. These features are currently scheduled enhancements to the system. Comserve is made possible by the installation of BITNET (Because It's Time Network), the inter-university computer network that allows electronic message and file exchange between users at geographically separate academic institutions. BITNET now connects more than 1300 computer systems at institutions of higher education throughout North America, Europe, Israel, and Japan. Comserve is an interactive computer program, technically a "file-server," running on a mainframe computer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that can intercept and interpret commands sent to it over BITNET. Anyone who has access to BITNET can also use Comserve. You can command Comserve to tell you about its collection of resources, to send you a copy of a particular file (bibliography, syllabus, etc.), to add information about yourself to the phone book, or to search the phone book for information about others. Comserve will acknowledge your command and tell you what action has been taken to respond to it. Files that you request are delivered to your reader or directory within an interval of 5 seconds to 20 minutes. You can start using Comserve now through one of two methods depending upon the kind of mainframe computing system you have access to. If your mainframe computer is linked directly to BITNET, then you may be able to interact conversationally with Comserve. Users of IBM VM/SP (CMS) computers accomplish this with the "Tell" command. For example: Tell Comserve@Rpicicge Help (press enter key) sends the "Help" command to Comserve. Comserve will respond by sending a list of available commands and their explanations. Users of VM/SP (CMS) systems can also send the command: Tell Comserve@Rpicicge Send Easycom Exec (press enter key) to obtain an interface program that can be used to simplify conversation with Comserve. After you receive the Easycom file, simply type: Easycom (press enter key) This activates the Easycom program. The program provides you with menus and communicates automatically with Comserve eliminating the need for typing lengthy "Tell" commands. As long as you maintain the Easycom file in your account, you can communicate with Comserve simply by typing the "Easycom" command. Users of many VAX/VMS systems can interact conversationally with Comserve using the Send/Remote command. The following command is usually sufficient to begin interaction with Comserve: Send/Remote Rpicicge Comserve "Help" Comserve will respond by sending a list of available commands and their explanations. The Easycom program is not yet available to users of VAX/VMS systems. If your institution's mainframe uses an operating system different from the two described above, or if your mainframe system is linked to BITNET through a satellite network (ARPANET, CSNET, UUCP, MAILNET, etc.), then you may not be able to interact conversationally with Comserve. However, you can still communicate with Comserve using electronic mail. Comserve's documentation contains instructions for how to send electronic mail messages that contain commands for Comserve. You may also want to consult with your local computing support personnel for information about how to use your network to link to BITNET. Full documentation, describing all aspects of Comserve's operation, is currently available. It can be obtained by writing to: Comserve, Department of Language, Literature, & Communication, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180. You may also obtain documentation by sending BITNET mail to COMSPRT1@RPICICGE. Comserve is offered through the cooperation of the Department of Language, Literature, & Communication and the Center for Interactive Computer Graphics -- both at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. It has been partially funded by the Eastern Communication Association. In November 1985 the SCA Task Force on Computer Applications endorsed Comserve. The Task Force also received authorization from the Legislative Council of SCA to seek support for the development and maintenance of Comserve under the auspices of SCA. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1986 13:06 CST From: Vijay V. Raghavan Subject: More SIGIR FORUM Abstracts [Part 1 - Ed] [Note: Members of ACM SIGIR should have received the spring/summer Forum, and can find these on pages 23-24. The remaining parts will appear in machine readable form in later issues of IRList. - Ed] ABSTRACTS (Selected from recent issues of journals) 1. USING INTERDOCUMENT SIMILARITY INFORMATION IN DOCUMENT RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS Alan Griffiths, H. Claire Luckhurst, and Peter Willett Department of Information Studies, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN, United Kingdom The first part of this paper reports a comparative study of the document classifications produced by the use of the single linkage, complete linkage, group average, and Ward clustering methods. Studies of cluster membership and of the effectiveness of cluster searches support previous findings that suggest that the single linkage classifications are rather different from those produced by the other three methods. These latter methods all produce large numbers of small clusters containing just pairs of documents. This finding motivates the work reported in the second part of the paper, which considers the use of clusters consisting of a document together with that document with which it is most similar. A comparison of the use of such clusters with conventional best match searches using seven documents test collections suggest that the two types of search are of comparable effectiveness, but they retrieve noticeably different sets of relevant documents. (JASIS, Vol. 37(1): 3-11, 1986) 2. TOWARDS EXPERT SYSTEMS FOR THE SELECTION OF SEARCH KEYS Raya Fidel Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 Intermediary expert systems are designed to mediate between end-users and complex information retrieval systems. However, since most of these expert systems are based on text analysis rather than on models of human searching, they cannot process request-related criteria, such as precision or recall requirements. Analysis of the searching behavior of human intermediaries revealed a routine for the selection of search keys - freetext or controlled vocabulary - along a decision tree. Examples of decision rules demonstrate that although further research is required, these rules can be automated to significantly enhance the adaptability of intermediary expert systems. (JASIS, Vol 37(1): 37-44, 1986) 3. DESIGNING MENU SELECTION SYSTEMS Ben Schneiderman Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 Menu selection systems reduce training and memorization, simplify entry of choices, and structure the user's tasks. However, the use of menu selection is no guarantee that novices or experts will be satisfied or able to carry out their work. This article focuses on the multiple design issues in creating successful menu selection systems. These include the primary issue of semantic organization and a host of secondary issues such as response time and display rates, shortcuts for frequent users, titles, phrasing of menu items, graphic layout, and selection mechanisms. Novel approaches such as popup menus and embedded menus are covered. Experimental results and design guidelines are presented. (JASIS, Vol. 37(2): 57-70: 1986) 4. Boolean Queries and Term Dependencies in Probabilistic Retrieval Models W. Bruce Croft Computer and Information Science Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003 A method of integrating Boolean queries with probabilistic retrieval models is proposed. Boolean queries are interpreted as specifying term dependencies that can be used to correct the documents scores obtained with a basic probabilistic model. Alternative methods of obtaining dependency information, such as user-specified phrases, can also be used in this approach. The experimental results indicate that significant performance benefits can be obtained, particularly when dependencies are derived from term phrases identified in natural language queries. (JASIS, Vol. 37(2): 71-77: 1986) 5. AN INVESTIGATION OF DOCUMENTS PARTITIONS W. M. Shaw, Jr. School of Library Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27514 In this paper, the empirical significance of document partitions is investigated as a function of term-weight and similarity thresholds. The term-weight threshold selects a particular level of indexing exhaustivity and specificity for the document representation and the similarity threshold selects a specific level of the associated single-link hierarchy. The results show that the same empirically "preferred" partitions can be detected by two independent strategies: an analysis of cluster-based retrieval effectiveness and an analysis of regularities in the underlying structure of the document graph. These results represent the first step in an investigation designed to determine if the statistical significance of document partitions can explain the empirical significance of the same partitions. (INFORMATION PROCESSING AND MANAGEMENT, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 19-28, 1986) ------------------------------ END OF IRList Digest ********************