IRList Digest Tuesday, 8 March 1988 Volume 4 : Issue 15 Today's Topics: Announcement - Extracts from SIGIR FORUM now in press - NSF awards abstracts may be searchable through DIALOG - HyperCard stack version of report on Hypertext 87 - Common LISP / INGRES interface available - Course on hypertext Abstract - Presentation at SIGIR meeting at Microsoft CDROM Conference News addresses are Internet or CSNET: fox@vtopus.cs.vt.edu BITNET: foxea@vtvax3.bitnet ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 2 Mar 88 11:12:08 CST From: "Dr. Raghavan" Subject: Excerpts from ACM SIGIR Forum that is in press Fall86/Winter87 CONTENTS Volume 22, Number 1-2 SIGIR NEWS Chairman's Message ...................................1 News from the Vice Chairman...........................2 Institutional Sponsorship Program.....................3 ARTICLES Comment on Some Recent Comments on Information Retrieval, C.T.Meadow5 Toward Hypertext Publishing, Robin Hanson.............9 REPORT ON SIGIR SESSIONS At the ASIS 50th Anniversary Conference..............27 At the Microsoft's Third International CD ROM Conference28 ABSTRACTS OF ARTICLES Selected from Recent Issues of Journals..............29 Selected from Dissertation Abstracts International...38 CALL FOR PAPERS International Symposium on New-Technique-Application in Library52 11th World Computer Congress - IFIP'89...............54 OOPSLA-88............................................56 PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS RIAO-88: User-oriented Content-Based Text and Image Handling57 COIS-88: Office Information Systems.................63 International Conference on Extending Database Technology65 BRIEF ANNOUNCEMENTS New Forum Editor.....................................68 SIGIR Conference-1989................................68 ACM Conference on Document Processing................68 Errata...............................................68 _______________________________________________________________ BRIEF ANNOUNCEMENTS New Forum Editor: Ed Fox has stepped down from his role as co-editor of this publication. Dr. Bill Frakes of AT & T Bell Laboratories has kindly agreed to take over the responsibilities. His addresses are given on the inside front cover. Submissions to the Forum, in the future, can be sent to Bill Frakes or Vijay Raghavan. Ed Fox will continue to handle the IRlist Digest, our elec- tronic newsletter. Thanks, Ed, for your valuable contributions. SIGIR Conference-1989: The 12th ACM international SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in IR will be in Boston at the Marriott Cambridge between June 26-28, 1989. The General Chairman is Bruce Croft and the Program Chairman is Nick Belkin. ACM Conference on Document Processing Systems: This Conference is being co- sponsored by SIGGRAPH, SIGCHI and SIGOIS and will be in Santa Fe, NM between Dec. 5-9, 1988. The Conference is under the general chairmanship of Rick Beach. For further information please contact Ann Solem, Los Alamos National Laboratory at (505)667-5460. Errata: In the last issue of the SIGIR Forum (Vol. 21, no., 3-4), the table of contents from the SIGIR-87 Conference was reproduced, which resulted in perpetuation of all original errors. On page 47, the paper by Bruce Croft should have Bruce Croft and David D. Lewis as authors and the title should be ``An Approach To Natural Language Processing for Document Retrieval.'' _______________________________________________________________ INSTITUTIONAL SPONSORSHIPSHIP PROGRAM An Invitation to Sponsor ACM-SIGIR... SIGIR is a special interest group within ACM devoted to the advancement of activities in the subject area of information retrieval. For many years now, SIGIR members have been active in the investigation and the exchange of ideas pertaining to the theory, methodology and applications of information retrieval. The efforts of this group have helped provide the necessary encouragement and the impetus for the recent surge of research and developmen- tal initiatives in this area. The following list gives an indication of the topics that are of interest to the membership. retrieval system modeling combining information retrieval evaluation techniques in IR and database management systems hybrid/extended Boolean models retrieval in office environments user interfaces image retrieval natural language processing indexing and thesaurus constructions knowledge representation multimedia retrieval hardware architectures for IR distributed processing in IR storage and search ret. system efficiency & performance techniques expert systems for ``intelligent'' IR hypertext systems video and optical disks graphic and windowing techniques The international recognition and active involvement of SIGIR members is evidenced by activities such as the following: + The SIGIR sponsored annual conference on Research and Development in Infor- mation Retrieval is held, alternatively, in North America and Europe; + SIGIR organizes interdisciplinary workshops in cooperation with other spe- cial interest groups (e.g. SIGDOC, SIGMOD); + SIGIR Forum, the newsletter of the group is published regularly. The forum serves as an informal medium for the dissemination of information and opinions on matters of interest to the membership; there is also an electronic digest that provides members a medium for rapid information exchange. + Special sessions are organized by SIGIR members at the annual meetings of larger organizations such as the ASIS and the ACM. It is an exciting time now in the history of the SIGIR. SIGIR has a roster of about 2000 professionals, researchers and institu- tional members who have an interest in the area. Until now the community has been well served. But with increasing costs and overhead charges by headquar- ters, the financial ability to serve this community is diminishing, in spite of a the recent increase in membership dues. Consequently, we are introducing an Institutional Sponsorship Program. The idea is to seek financial support from corporations, government agencies and other organizations that have a strong interest in IR related activities. The proposed amount of support is $500 per year. The benefit to the institu- tion will be three fold: (i) The publicity received by having the sponsor's name identified in ____ issue of the Forum. Furthermore, new New institutional sponsors will be recognized with a one page description of their key activities, using a standard format. (ii) Two employees designated by the sponsor will be automatically members of SIGIR and will receive all communications and publications of the group. (iii) The institutional representatives attending the SIGIR sponsored confer- ences will be able to register at the reduced rates offered to ACM members. We the officers of SIGIR invite you cordially to consider this option and support or solicit support for SIGIR through this program. For more details contact Bruce Croft (see inside front cover). ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 Mar 88 13:53:28 -0500 From: "Joseph G. Deken" Subject: award abstracts I saw the following in one of our internal newsletters, and I thought it might interest you: In January of this year, OIS submitted foundation-wide award abstracts to the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) for inclusion in the FEDRIP database... NSF hopes that abstracts will be added to FEDRIP and be available through DIALOG by late March. This may be useful for quick forms of some of the award information we talked about earlier. JGD ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Feb 88 15:22:49 DNT From: Jakob Nielsen Tech Univ of Denmark Subject: HyperCard stack with report on HyperTEXT workshop available To: IRList My report on the recent HyperTEXT workshop is now available in a hypertext version in the form of a 400 K HyperCard stack. To read it, you will need a Macintosh and APple's HyperCard program. To get a copy of this electronic document please send two double sided Macintosh diskettes to the following address. One diskette will be returned to you with the hypertext report and the other will be kept to cover postage and hanling. Jakob Nielsen Technical University of Denmark Dept. of Computer Science Building 344 DK-2800 Lyngby Copenhagen Denmark ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Mar 88 16:08:50 PST From: "Jeffrey C. Sedayao" Subject: Common LISP / INGRES interface available Announcing the availability of CLING, Common LISP INGRES interface. CLING is a Common LISP package that permits a user to manipulate and query an RTI Ingres database. Databases can be created and destroyed, and tuples appended and retrieved, all with Common LISP functions. Versions for Sun Common LISP (Lucid) and Franz Allegro Common LISP are available. CLING cam be retrieved via anonymous FTP from postgres.berkeley.edu. Jeff Sedayao ...ucbvax!postgres!sedayao sedayao@postgres.berkeley.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Mar 88 16:55:13 EST From: Ben Shneiderman Subject: Hypertext Course . . . The University of Maryland University College Center for Professional Development presents HYPERTEXT: A NEW KNOWLEDGE TOOL A 3-day course taught by: Ben Shneiderman, Charles Kreitzberg, Gary Marchionini, and Janis Morariu May 9-11, 1988 Overview This course presents hypertext systems and concepts in order to facilitate the development of hypertext applications. Participants will learn and use avail- able systems, understand implementation problems, recognize which applications are suitable, and design knowledge to fit hypertext environments. Course Outline Monday, May 9 Ben Shneiderman, Introduction to Hypertext and Course Overview Monday and Tuesday, May 9-11 Charles Kreitzberg, Hypertext for Business Applications Tuesday, May 10 Gary Marchionini, Hypertext for Information Retrieval Wednesday, May 11 Janis Morariu, Hypertext in Education and Training Ben Shneiderman, Discussion and Course Conclusion Who Should Attend Software implementers, hypertext database designers, documentation specialists, training developers and managers, database developers, designers of diagnostic problem solving systems, corporate information officers, and user services staff, should benefit from this course. Selected Topics o Review history of paper documents and hypertext systems to understand the relative advantages of paper and electronic information systems. o Define hypertext and recognize when it might be appropriate. o Identify the varieties of hypertext systems and study exisiting commercial and research systems (HyperCard, Hyperties, Notecards, Guide, Hypermedia, etc.) o Discuss key system features (traversal mechanisms, database design, videodisk, string search, indexing, etc.) o Determine how to structure knowledge to suit hypertext and understand the differences between linear and network text. o Learn how to evaluate hypertext systems (user interface for browsing, authoring tools, speed, data storage). o Integrate hypertext with existing systems (automatic loading of existing data, importing/exporting files, printing). Faculty Ben Shneiderman, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science, head of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, and member of the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies at The University of Maryland. Charles Kreitzberg, Ph.D., is president of Cognetics Corporation, a software development firm specializing in the design of human-centered products. Gary Marchionini, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the College of Library and Information Services at The University of Maryland. Janis Morariu, Ph.D., is assistant director of the Center for Instructional Development and Evaluation at The University of Maryland University College. More Information and Registration This course is presented by The University of Maryland University College, Center for Professional Development. The location is the Center of Adult Education, University Blvd. at Adelphi Road, College Park, Maryland. Classes are held from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm daily. A special IBM/PC lab session is scheduled Monday May 9. The course brochure contains more information (description, daily outline, faculty background, registration form). To obtain a copy, please call 301/985-7195, or to register 301/985-7157. For content information, please contact Janis Morariu at 301/985-7897. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Feb 88 12:50:14 EST From: Daniel Ford Subject: RE: Seattle & SIGIR Hi, below is the abstract and biographical sketch you requested. ... Dan In my presentation I will briefly present results from a paper to appear at the SIGMOD '88 conference this June in Chicago. I will outline a model of retrieval from CLV optical disks and then discuss exact and approximate results for their expected retrieval performance for a variety of situations. Our analysis takes into account disks with and without a mirror in the access mechanism, small objects completely placed within block boundaries, placement that allows block boundary crossing, as well as very large objects (such as documents). I will also describe some fundamental implications of physical data base design for data bases stored on CLV optical disks. Biographical sketch Daniel Ford is currently a Ph.D. graduate student in the Office Automation Lab in the Department of Computer science at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. He has a B.Sc. (Hons.) (1984) degree from Simon Fraser University and a M.Sc. (1985) degree from the University of British Columbia, both in Computer Science. His areas of interest are performance analysis of optical disk systems and multimedia databases. Mr. Ford has worked in both North America and Europe and is a member of the ACM. ------------------------------ END OF IRList Digest ********************