IRList Digest Saturday, 12 November 1988 Volume 4 : Issue 51 Today's Topics: Abstracts - Talk at ASIS 88 Announcements - Research opportunity at Rutgers - Program for ACM Document Processing Systems Conf. SIGIR - Corrections to info in recent FORUM News addresses are Internet: fox@vtopus.cs.vt.edu BITNET: foxea@vtcc1.bitnet (replaces foxea@vtvax3) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Oct 88 10:23 PDT From: Christine Borgman Subject: Abstract of talk at ASIS 88 (not in program) ... Speaker: egan@WIND.BELLCORE.COM(Dennis Egan) Title: SuperBook: Design And Behavioral Analysis Of A Hypertext Browser Abstract: "SuperBook" is a hypertext browsing system (see Remde, Gomez, and Landauer, 1987) that is intended to improve the usability of conventional documents. SuperBook takes documents in computer readable form and presents them on a bit-mapped, multi-window display with enhanced search, navigation, and other capabilities. The current version of SuperBook has evolved through several cycles of design--implementatio n-- experimentation with users--redesign, etc. In an experiment with the current version of SuperBook, students searched for information in a statistics text presented either in conventional printed form or in SuperBook form. SuperBook enabled students to answer search questions more accurately than they could with the conventional text. Students also produced higher quality "open-book" essays using SuperBook than they did with the conventional text. Subjective ratings of the documentation also strongly favored SuperBook. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Oct 88 15:11:13 EDT From: njb@flash.bellcore.com (nick belkin) Subject: Research opportunity at Rutgers [Note: I am forwarding this message directly - Ed.] Friends Tefko and I have received a grant to develop design principles for third-generation OPACs, and we are now recruiting a full-time researcher to run the project and do much of the work associated with it. I am appending a description of the position, and hope that you can bring it to the attention of any persons you know who might be interested in it. Thanks very much for your help. Nick Belkin RESEARCH ASSOCIATE/PROJECT MANAGER DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR THIRD GENERATION ONLINE PUBLIC ACCESS CATALOGS Funded by the US Department of Education N.J. Belkin & T. Saracevic, Principle Investigators School of Communication, Information & Library Studies Rutgers University 4 Huntington Street New Brunswick NJ 08903 This project requires a full-time project manager from January 1989, for eighteen months. The successful applicant will manage the research project, including: assisting in design of the experiments and observations; organizing and supervising the empirical study; conducting much of the data gathering; develop- ing analysis methods and analyzing the data collected; and parti- cipating in the writing of the final report. The project manager will supervise the work of one full-time graduate research assis- tant, and will be responsible for maintaining contacts with libraries participating in the study. Applicants must have at least a Master's degree in library or information or computer science, and should preferably either have a Ph.D. or be a Ph.D. candidate in one of these fields. One to two years of experience in empirical research, preferably in a library or information setting is highly desirable, as is knowledge of online public access catalogs and/or information retrieval systems. Programming knowledge of C or Pascal is advantageous, as is experience of interface design, especially for personal computers. Salary is $28,000 per year, with Rutgers' normal faculty fringe benefits in addition. This position has a great deal of respon- sibility associated with it, and offers commensurate indepen- dence. The successful applicant will be strongly encouraged to publish the results of the research, and to apply the results to any other research in which s/he is involved, for instance, a Ph.D. dissertation. This may be a suitable position for someone wishing to take a leave of absence or sabbatical for research purposes. To apply for this position, send a letter of application, two copies of a curriculum vitae, and the names of two referees to Nicholas Belkin or Tefko Saracevic at the address above. For further information about this position, contact either of the two by mail at the address above, by telephone at 201-932-8585 or 201-932-8017, respectively, or email at BELKIN@ZODIAC (bitnet) or njb@flash.bellcore.com (internet). Rutgers University is an Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 Nov 88 13:31:54 PST From: Beach.pa@Xerox.COM Subject: Final program schedule for DocProc88 conference ACM Conference on Document Processing Systems Sante Fe, New Mexico Final Papers Program ------------------------------ Tuesday, 6 December 1988" 8:30-10:00 DOCUMENT PROCESSING SYSTEMS Chair: Brian Reid (DEC) Hypertext Engineering: Practical Methods for Creating A Compact Disk Encyclopedia Robert J. Glushko (Search Technology) Mark D. Weaver (Search Technology) Thomas A. Coonan (Search Technology) Janet E. Lincoln (Stuyvesant, NY) The LaserROM Project: A Case Study in Document Processing Systems Mike Rafeld (Hewlett-Packard) ------------------------------ 10:30-12:00 HYPERTEXT Chair: Janet Walker (DEC) Auto-Updating as a Technical Documentation Tool George Towner (Apple Computer) Conceptual Documents: A Mechanism for Specifying Active Views in Hypertext J. Nanard (Centre de Recherche en Informatique de Montpellier) M. Nanard (Centre de Recherche en Informatique de Montpellier) H. Richy (Centre de Recherche en Informatique de Montpellier) Adding Browsing Semantics to the Hypertext Model P. David Stotts (University of Maryland) Richard Furuta (University of Maryland) ------------------------------ 2:00-3:30 EXPERIENCE WITH DOCUMENT STANDARDS Chair: Vania Joloboff (INRIA, France) Evolution of an SGML Application Generator Lynne A. Price (Hewlett-Packard) Joe Schneider (Hewlett-Packard) Translating Among Processable Multi-media Document Formats Using ODA Jonathan Rosenberg (Carnegie Mellon University) Mark S. Sherman (Carnegie Mellon University) Ann Marks (Carnegie Mellon University) Frank Giuffrida (University of Michigan) ------------------------------ 4:00-5:30 DOCUMENT STANDARDS Chair: Vania Joloboff (INRIA, France) Difficulties in Parsing SGML Jim Heath (National Bureau of Standards) Larry Welsch (National Bureau of Standards) Expert Assistance for Manipulation of SGML Document Type Definitions W. Timothy Polk (National Institute of Standards and Technology) Lawrence E. Bassham, III (National Institute of Standards and Technology) ------------------------------ Wednesday, 7 December 1988" 8:30-10:00 INTERACTIVE DOCUMENT SYSTEMS Chair: Rick Furuta (University of Maryland) Interactive Effectivity Control: Design and Applications Richard Ilson (Interleaf) Incremental Document Formatting Pehong Chen (University of California, Berkeley) Michael A. Harrison (University of California, Berkeley) Ikuo Minakata (University of California, Berkeley) An Adaptation of Dataflow Methods for WYSIWYG Document Processing Donald D. Chamberlin (IBM Almaden Research Center) ------------------------------ 10:30-12:00 ELECTRONIC MANUALS Chair: David Levy (Xerox PARC) Why Switch from Paper to Electronic Manuals Cheryl A. Ventura (Allied-Signal Aerospace) PANEL: The Issues of Producing Immense Technical Documentation Chair: Robert Morris (Interleaf and University of Massachusetts) Wanda Avery (Lockheed) Randy Ott (Syntex) Cal Marlett (Xerox) ------------------------------ 3:00-4:30 WRITING SYSTEMS Chair: Heather Brown (University of Kent, England) The Role of Modularity in Document Authoring Systems Janet H. Walker (Digital Equipment Corporation) PANEL: What Do Technical Writers Really Want? Janet H. Walker (Digital Equipment Corporation) Mary-Claire van Leunen (Digital Equipment Corporation) John Johnson (Tec-Ed) Tom Parmenter (Digital Equipment Corporation) Robert Krull (Rensselear Polytechnic Institute) ------------------------------ 5:00-6:30 DOCUMENT ACCESS Chair: Dario Lucarella (Universita di Milano, Italy) The Design of a Document Database Chris Clifton (Princeton University) Hector Garcie-Molina (Princeton University) Robert Hagmann (Xerox PARC) Automatic Text Indexing Using Complex Identifiers Gerald Salton (Cornell University) ------------------------------ Thursday, 8 December 1988 8:30-10:00 DOCUMENTATION GRAPHICS Chair: Dick Phillips (Los Alamos National Laboratory) Formalizing the Figural: Aspects of a Foundation for Document Manipulation David M. Levy (Xerox PARC) Daniel C. Brotsky (Xerox PARC) Kenneth R. Olson (Xerox PARC) A Library for Incremental Update of Bitmap Images David Dobkin (Princeton University) Eleftherios Koutsofios (Princeton University) Rob Pike (AT&T Bell Labs) The Escher Document Imaging Model S.N. Zilles (IBM Almaden Research Center) P. Lucas (IBM Almaden Research Center) T.M. Linden (IBM Almaden Research Center) J.B. Lotspiech (IBM Almaden Research Center) A.R. Harbury (IBM Almaden Research Center) ------------------------------ 10:30-12:00 DOCUMENT RECOGNITION AND ANALYSIS Chair: Robert Morris (Interleaf and University of Massachusetts) Two Complementary Techniques for Digitized Document Analysis George Nagy (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) Junichi Kanai (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) Mukkai Krishnamoorthy (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) Mathews Thomas (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) Mahesh Viswanathan (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) Tracking Text in Mixed-Mode Documents J. Patrick Bixler (Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University) ------------------------------ 2:00-3:30 PANEL: ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING Chair: Richard Beach (Xerox PARC) Edward Fox (Virginia Polytechnic) William Woolf (Mathematical Reviews) Daniel Atkin (Carnegie Mellon University) Esther Dyson (EDVenture Holdings) ------------------------------ 4:00-5:30 DOCUMENT PROCESSING RESEARCH Chair: Brian Reid (DEC) Topics in Document Research David M. Levy (Xerox PARC) .PANEL: Where do we go from here? Members of the Program Committee ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 Oct 88 09:01:15 EST From: "Susanne M. HUMPHREY" Subject: dissertations in sigir forum Ed, the listing in Forum is partically missing: p. 51 is missing last few lines of the last abstract and ends with "Rest of message missing". I think the appended is what's missing; I repeated the STERN citation. The last citation is not exactly on information retrieval, but sometimes I take the liberty of including tangential things that I think are somewhat interesting. ... --Susanne .[ AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG88-03517. AU STERN, RICHARD ELLIOT. IN Rutgers University The State U. of New Jersey (New Brunswick) Ph.D 1987, 129 pages. TI UNCITEDNESS IN THE BIOMEDICAL LITERATURE: AN EXPLORATION OF BIBLIOGRAPHIC CORRELATES. DE Information Science. AB The purpose of the study was to determine if selected bibliographic characteristics of biomedical journal papers are associated with the subsequent uncitedness of the papers. Two characteristics specific to the biomedical literature and seven general characteristics were examined. The biomedical characteristics include whether or not the research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the biomedical research level which is a four level classification of journals according to their research orientation: Level 1, Clinical Observation; Level 2, Clinical Mix, Level 3, Clinical Investigation, and Level 4, Basic Research. The general characteristics include the number of authors, title words, key title words, and references; also, the age, price, and circulation of the journal in which the paper was published. The rate of uncitedness, using the 275 source journal set as the citing set is 13.3%. The rate of uncitedness using the Science Citation Index as the citing set is estimated to be 4.4%. Research support and biomedical research level are significantly associated with uncitedness. Uncitedness is lower for NIH-supported papers. Uncitedness decreases with biomedical research level, with uncitedness lowest among papers published in basic research journals. A discriminant analysis function with the general bibliographic characteristics correctly predicted cited and uncited papers with 70% accuracy. Uncited papers alone were predicted with 75% accuracy. In partitioning the components of the discriminant model, the number of references accounted for 76.4% of variability, and the number of authors accounted for an additional 9.7% of the variability. This reinforces the finding that the number of references and authors are significantly related to uncitedness. Uncitedness papers have fewer references and authors compared to cited papers. Future studies of uncitedness should proceed in two directions. One, additional bibliographic characteristics such as author affiliation and length of paper ought to be tested. Second, further study of the significantly associated characteristics ought to be examined more closely to determine whether their numbers differentiate between levels of quality in papers or whether there is some other mechanism at work that accounts for the significant differences in rates of uncitedness. .] .[ AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG88-03222. AU THORNBURG, GAIL ELLEN. IN University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Ph.D 1987, 111 pages. TI LOOK: IMPLEMENTATION OF AN EXPERT SYSTEM IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL FOR DATABASE SELECTION. DE Information Science. AB This project was designed to construct an advisory or expert system in one area of online information retrieval, specifically, choice of online database. Problems of this domain include proliferation of potentially expensive databases, and the difficulty of predicting the specific database(s) most likely to yield optimum results in the climate of extreme "information compartmentalization." This implementation made use of an integrated set of software tools developed in the Artificial Intelligence Lab of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The system was designed to reflect as closely as possible the decision-making expertise of academic online searchers in life sciences. The implemented system, LOOK (non-acronymic), represented general features of 18 online databases, and its advice succeeded in satisfying the experts involved in its development. The system used a rule-based representation, and advisory sessions were guided by an inference algorithm featuring three phases of evaluation. Issues discussed here include the numbers of variables and values required to represent the domain with any adequacy, the levels of abstraction apparent in these variables, and the difficulty of separating domain from world knowledge in constructing an apt representation. .] .[ AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG88-03480. AU GOODIN, M. ELSPETH. IN Rutgers University The State U. of New Jersey (New Brunswick) Ph.D 1987, 186 pages. TI THE TRANSFERABILITY OF LIBRARY RESEARCH SKILLS FROM HIGH SCHOOL TO COLLEGE. DE Library Science. AB The specific purpose of this research was to investigate three interrelated questions: First, can a program of instruction be developed to teach high school seniors efficient and effective search strategies and information-gathering skills useful to them as college freshmen? Second, can these skills be reflected in a research paper? Third, how can these skills be measured for transferability? A program of instruction was developed and taught by the high school librarian that included the responses and recommendations of 62 college faculty members to a questionnaire on library-related course requirements. Participants in the study, 159 seniors from the college preparatory English classes of two comparable high schools, were divided into one control and one experimental group for a pilot test (Study I) and for a second test (Study II). Students in the experimental groups were given a pre-test on basic college library information knowledge, followed by a series of lessons on the research process, the assignment of a research paper, a post-test on basic college Library information knowledge, and the return of their graded papers, the grading being completed by two college English professors. Students in the control groups were given the pre-test, the research paper assignment, the post-test and the return of the graded papers. A Likert-type attitude scale questionnaire was administered to all high school students, and to the participants in Study I during their first semester in college. High school students receiving the instruction scored significantly higher on the post-test than did students not receiveing the instruction. These skills were reflected in a research paper acceptable at the college freshmen level. College students exposed to the program of instruction indicated they were able to effectively utilize the research skills learned in high school when conducting research to meet course requirements. There were no significant differences between the groups on the attitude scale questionnaire, indicating an inability of this questionnaire to adequately measure the transferability of research skills from high school to college. Finally, the high school librarian became a linking agent between the high school and college libraries, by making the librarian in the research setting approachable. .] .[ AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG88-03160. AU OLDEN, EDWARD ANTHONY. IN University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Ph.D 1987, 175 pages. TI THE BENEFICIARIES OF LIBRARY AND INFORMATION POLICY IN BRITISH AND EX-BRITISH AFRICA: STEPS FROM THE WHITE WOMEN'S LEAGUE TO THE ELECTRONIC LIBRARY. DE Library Science. AB This dissertation examines the beginnings and early years of five libraries set up with the stated aim of serving the public in British and ex-British Africa, and argues that the beneficiaries of library and information policy have not been the public at all but only a small minority: the elite and the would-be elite. It suggests a pattern from the 1920s and 1930s to the present: from the fee-charging whites-only leisure reading libraries of the settler colonies to the computerized information services recommended for the use of the black "policy-makers" and "decision-makers" of today. Five episodes from Kenya, the Gold Coast, and Nigeria are used to support the argument: the fee-charging whites-only service that the Carnegie Corporation of New York--the champion of the free public library--sponsored in Kenya Colony in the 1930s; the fee-charging service for the white and black educated elite of Lagos, Nigeria, that Carnegie money helped bring into being around the same time; the fee-charging service that the British Council introduced for the white and black educated elite of the Gold Coast and Nigeria in the mid-1940s; the Northern Nigeria Regional Library, set up in 1952, which with time concentrated more and more on the capital and less and less on the rest of the region; and the National Library of Nigeria, established with Ford Foundation help in the 1960s to assist in the "responsible conduct of modern government." Accounts are based on Carnegie, Ford, and British Council archives, and on published sources. South African, Rhodesian, and other examples are also mentioned. The dissertation attempts to show that librarianship and information science are very much part of the political context in which they operate; that only a small percentage of the African population has benefitted from the western-style libraries and information services that have been introduced; and that the study of such matters adds one more dimension to what is known about cultural and other forms of dependency. .] ------------------------------ END OF IRList Digest ********************