IRList Digest Monday, 2 January 1989 Volume 5 : Issue 1 Today's Topics: Email - Revised Version of Welcome Msg: Please Read! News addresses are Internet: fox@vtopus.cs.vt.edu BITNET: foxea@vtcc1 Happy New Year! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 2 Jan 89 09:21:48 EST From: Edward A. Fox Subject: New Version of Welcome Information - please read! 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. Please read the relevant parts of the message below so we can all benefit as much as possible from IRList. SUBMISSIONS AND INQUIRIES You may submit material for the digest, or ask administrative type questions, 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 individual mail deliveries, but they do vary in speediness and reliability. Possibilities include: If on ARPANET and can use domains, or on CSNET, use one of fox@vtopus.cs.vt.edu fox%fox.cs.vt.edu@dcssvx.cc.vt.edu (if above fails) foxea%vtcc1.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu If on BITNET, use foxea@vtcc1 If on UUCPNET, (since I have no direct link) use something like ... seismo!vtcc1.bitnet!foxea I handle my correspondence on a variety of machines so please note the addresses above and use them unless I say otherwise, even if you get a message from me from another machine. Note that there is a parallel USENET discussion group comp.theory.info-retrieval which you can participate in - feel free to ask to be removed from the direct distribution list if you choose to participate that way instead. Posting of IRList to USENET is handled by Ray Liere Vantage Consulting and Research Corporation 1017 Molalla Avenue, Suite 3 Oregon City, Oregon 97045, USA (503) 657-7294 hplabs!hpfcla!hpubvwa!vantage!ray but you probably won't have to contact him unless you think there is a problem with the USENET feed. ARCHIVES As you might expect, archival copies of all digests will be kept; feel free to ask for some recent back issues. Note that FTP is now finally possible; here are the details. Use something like one of the following to connect: ftp fox.cs.vt.edu or ftp 128.173.2.110 The password for account "guest" is "anonymous". The archives are inside the "guest" directories: irlist_v1, irlist_v2, irlist_v3, irlist_v4, etc. Most are single issues but early issues are grouped together. Also, the 3 volumes of IRList from 1985 through the end of 1987 were on beta copies of the CD-ROM, Virginia Disc One, that was produced by Nimbus Records under my direction in 1988. The final version of that disc will be produced in ISO form in Jan. 1989 and will have the above-mentioned 3 volumes in searchable form using Personal Librarian, as before, but will also have downloadable ASCII files for volumes 1-4. Virginia Disc 3, which will be mountable under A/UX for Apple Macintosh II systems running that version of UNIX, will also have an archive of volumes 1-4 and should be distributed early in 1989. Contact me for free copies of either disc. Finally, people who know how can use BITNET "listserv" software to access the irlist-l archive on BITNET node vtvm2 for searching and extraction. However, if these are not possible for you, then all communication about the archive must be with me, using EMAIL or phone or letter. TOPICS 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 ACM -- 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 Hypertext and Hypermedia Abstracting Indexing/Classification CD-ROM / CD-I / ... Information Display/Presentation Citation Studies Information Retrieval Applications Cognitive Psychology Information Theory Communications Networks Knowledge Representation Computational Linguistics Language Understanding Cybernetics Library Science Data Abstraction Matching Dictionary Analysis Message Handling Document Representations Natural Languages, NL Processing Electronic Books Optical Disc Technology and Applications Electronic Publishing Pattern Recognition Evidential Reasoning Probabilistic Techniques for IR Expert Systems in IR Speech Analysis Full-Text Retrieval Statistical Techniques Fuzzy Set Theory Storage Media and Devices Hardware Aids for IR Thesaurus Construction Human-Computer Interaction User Interface Design 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 YOUR NEWS AND INQUIRIES! PLEASE "sign" subscriptions with full name and address so that people can access you from Internet and/or BITNET and/or USENET (many other networks can be reached through them and are certainly urged to participate). Note that it is very hard to reach many sites, so be sure you make it simple by having the "high level domain" be one of: ARPA BITNET COM EDU GOV MIL NET UK UUCP If your address does not end in one of those, add in the name of the appropriate relay machine that is on one of those networks, if you can. It may be impossible for me or others to reach you if you do not follow this simple procedure -- you know where you are but we still lack a global directory system that allows others to find you flexibly and reliably! PLEASE SEND IN DROP OR ADDRESS CHANGE REQUESTS! Please let me know if you no longer want to receive the digest, since it is much harder to track that down by my getting mailer error messages. Note that IRList does not come out on a regular schedule. It will often come out in batches, since it is so hard to get all of the address changes made more frequently. Thus, you can help us all by letting me know promptly about address changes. You can inquire if you think you may have missed an issue, since I enforce the policy of dropping any members off the list if I keep getting delivery errors and can't get an answer from you or your postmaster. EDITORIAL POLICY Editing of contributions will usually be limited to text justification 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 support ACM SIGIR Forum and unless you request otherwise may encourage inclusion of submissions in whole or in part in future paper versions of the FORUM. Indeed, this is one form of appeal 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 be happy to entertain a discussion with you as well. Also about The Laserdisk Professional, an excellent publication about CD-ROM and optical discs. Another home for IR publications is ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems which will probably be renamed to reflect this but can be submitted to now - for more information contact the ACM SIGIR Chairman and TOOIS editorial board member, W. Bruce Croft at croft%cs.umass.edu@relay.cs.net or the Editor in Chief of TOOIS, Robert Allen at rba@flash.bellcore.com One last announcement - feel free to contact me regarding book or "electronic products" to be distributed under the ACM Press label - see the article by Peter Wegner in Feb. 1988 CACM or my article that appeared in the Aug. 1988 CACM. The list does not assume copyright, nor does it accept any liability arising from remailing of submitted material. Further, no liability is accepted for use of such materials for information retrieval research, including distribution of test collections. I reserve the right, however, to refuse to remail any contribution that I judge to be of commercial purpose, obscene, libelous, irrelevant, or pointless. I also reserve the right to republish and/or redistribute IRList submissions or collections thereof in electronic form, on CD-ROM, etc. 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, Associate Professor, Dept. of Computer Science, Virginia Tech (VPI&SU), McBryde Hall Rm. 562, Blacksburg VA 24061-0106 (703) 231-5113 or 6931 fox@vtopus.cs.vt.edu ------------------------------ END OF IRList Digest ********************