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IRList Digest Volume 1 Number 23
IRList Digest Thursday, 5 Dec 1985 Volume 1 : Issue 23
Today's Topics:
E-Mail - More Downtime at Virginia Tech
Query - How to correctly access BITNET server?
- Online bibliography on IR?
Announcement - SIGIR Business Meeting Report - correction
- How to join conversational relay on BITNET
Cog-Sci Seminars - Explanation Based Learning
Article - Report on ASIS SIG/SRT session on optical disk and
electronic publishing
References - relevant materials chosen by Leff on IR (long)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: FOX 5-DEC-1985 17:45 *
Subj: more downtime
Ugh! The machine normally used for creating IRList has been down for 3 weeks,
this machine was down for 2 weeks, we were unable to receive CSNET for 1 week,
and the BITNET addresses I use have also been down about a week. So, please
bear with the delays - I will try to get everything received out soon and
then ask that people resubmit if things were lost. Thanks! - Ed
------------------------------
From: Werner Uhrig <CMP.WERNER%r20.utexas.edu@CSNET-RELAY>
Date: Mon 25 Nov 85 03:24:23-CST
Subject: [Werner Uhrig <CMP.WERNER@R20.UTEXAS.EDU>: querry for help files]
Ed,
I sent the querry below in response to an October issue of IRLIST
(at least, that's where I think I had read about it) - and never got a reaction.
have you ever tried? if not would you mind asking in the next IRLIST issue
if anyone has been successful - and maybe, post instructions again, given that
we can't FTP back-issues ...
thanks , Werner
Date: Sun 27 Oct 85 13:20:38-CST
From: Werner Uhrig <CMP.WERNER@R20.UTEXAS.EDU>
Subject: querry for help files
To: DATABASE%BITNIC@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
help
help arpanet
help design
------------------------------
From: ICS.DEKEN%r20.utexas.edu@CSNET-RELAY
Date: Thu 21 Nov 85 12:35:33-CST
Subject: Bibliography of Information Retrieval
If you have any kind of an online listing of recent articles in the
area of information retrieval, I'd greatly appreciate your e-mailing
it to me. ...
[See last item in this issue. Does anyone else
have a collection of such a form? - Ed]
Best regards,
Joe Deken
------------------------------
From: "V.J.Raghavan"<ihnp4!sask!regina!raghavan%ucbvax.berkeley.edu@CSNET-RELAY>
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 85 23:12:40 cst
Subject: corrections to report [in IRList #20]
Dear readers,
If you received the report on SIGIR business meeting prior to
November 18th, you should take note of the following corrections
or clarifications:
1. The deficit mentioned is as of June end, 1986 and is simply the
difference between expected income and expenses. SIGIR has more
than adequate reserves to cover the deficit.
2. The chairman of SIGIR Award committee is Prof. Maron; not
Prof. Kraft.
3. The mentioned award is not for "service" as my earlier report
suggested. Rather it is for "Important Contributions to the
field". Nomination forms are available through Prof. Maron
and Prof. Yu.
I hope the above clears up any concerns.
Vijay Raghavan
(Co-editor, SIGIR Forum)
------------------------------
From: T3B%PSUVM.BITNET%wiscvm.wisc.edu@CSNET-RELAY
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 85 14:58 EST
Subject: CRTNET NEWSLETTER #15 [extract - Ed]
+----------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| |
| |
| HOW TO JOIN A CONVERSATIONAL RELAY |
___ __ ____ _ ______________ _____
| |
| |
+----------------------------------------------------------+
| If you are on a BITNET machine that allows the |
| TELL command, try the following: |
| |
| TELL FORUM AT BITNIC /HELP |
| TELL RELAY AT BITNIC /SERVER |
| TELL RELAY AT BITNIC /HELP |
| TELL RELAY AT BITNIC /INFO |
| |
| These commands should provide you with enough |
| information to get started. |
+----------------------------------------------------------+
[Note: this leads to personalized IR! - Ed]
------------------------------
Subj: From: Peter de Jong <DEJONG%MIT-OZ%mit-mc.arpa@CSNET-RELAY>
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1985 12:31 EST
Subject: Cognitive Science Calendar [extracts - Ed]
Monday 25, November 10:30am Room: 2nd Floor Large Conference room
BBN Laboratories Inc.
10 Moulton Street
Cambridge, MA.
BBN Labs SDP AI Seminars
"Explanation Based Learning"
Professor Gerald DeJong
Coordinated Science Laboratory
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Machine learning is one of the most important current
areas of artificial intelligence. With the trend away from
"weak methods" and toward a more knowledge intensive approach
to intelligence, the lack of knowledge in an AI system becomes
one of the most serious limitations.
This talk advances a technique called explanation based
learning. It is a method of learning from observation.
Basically, it involves endowing a system with sufficient
knowledge so that intelligent planning behavior of others
can be recognized. Once recognized, these observed plans are
generalized as far as possible while preserving the underlying
explanation of their success. The approach supports one trial
learning. A new general concept can be acquired from an observation
of just one observed example. The approach has been applied
to three diverse areas: natural language processing, robot
task planning, and proof of propositional calculus theorems. The
approach holds promise for solving the knowledge collection
bottleneck in the construction of current knowledge-based systems.
------------------------------
From: "Charles M. Goldstein" <chuck%nlm-vax.arpa@CSNET-RELAY>
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 85 20:57:37 est
Subject: Re: IRList Digest V1 #20
Organization: National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md
Ed, here is a more detailed summary of the session that I have prepared for
the SIG/SRT Newsletter.
RESUME: ASIS SIG/SRT Session on
Optical Disk and Electronic Publishing
The session was very well attended. A capacity crowd. Unfor-
tunately the speaker from the Library of Congress was able to attend
ASIS this year, and the speaker from Silver Platter recently left the
firm and no substitute was available. To the gratitude of all, Nancy
Roderer, evaluation consultant to LC, pitched in at the final hour and
gave the presentation for the Library of Congress. Brett Butler,
President of InFour, and former President of IAC, described the IAC
InfoTrak videodisc product, gave a general introduction to optical
disks from the publishers viewpoint, and also substituted for the
speaker from Silver Platter by giving a brief overview of that pro-
duct. Mike Adams, Project Manager for CDROM Publishing Services at
DEC, gave a provocative presentation of the prospects and realities of
CD-ROMs and their use a publication medium. Following is a brief
resume of some of the salient points from each of the presentations.
Library of Congress
Since system problems at LC have delayed the actual user evalua-
tion, Nancy gave an overview of the LC prototype optical disk system
and discussed the planned evaluation criteria. Initially, the docu-
ment images of articles from a selection of current journals are being
captured and stored on optical digital disk. Each disk is presently
holding approximately 10,000 pages. LC is utilizing a juke-box which
allows random selection from 100 optical disks. While the storage per
disk and juke-box may appear very large by present storage standards,
Nancy pointed out that it would, nevertheless, require on the order of
4,000 juke boxes to hold the LC collection. For purposes of evalua-
tion, terminals and printers will be available in the Reading Rooms
at LC. Access to items will be via the LC SCORPIO System which will
allow the patron to locate the articles available as online documents.
The documents will then be displayed on a separate high resolution
display screen. There will be terminals available for both staff and
public use.
The overall purpose of the evaluation is to compare the system
with available alternatives such as access to the actual journals or
interlibrary loan. The data collection will include transaction
analysis, online questionnaire, and user interviews. Nancy presented
and discussed three questions being addressed: What materials should
be included in the LC optical disk system from the perspectives of
user, library, and cost? How do patrons respond to the optical disk
system in terms of SCORPIO access, system availability, and image
quality? How does the system compare with the patron alternatives in
terms of cost, convenience, and added access?
InfoTrak
The InfoTrak 12 inch videodisk product has a storage capacity of
800 megabytes. The database presently contains approximately 500,000
citations from over 1000 publications with a coverage extending back
to 1982. Each videodisc interface marketed by InfoTrak will support
up to 4 microcomputer search stations sharing one videodisc player.
Access to the citations is via word or phrase appearing in an index of
LC Subject Headings, corporate and personal names, authors, and
titles. Subscribers receive a monthly, cumulative, updated videodisc.
Major advantages cited are cost and ease of use.
Brett emphasized that the optical disk and CD-ROM products will,
in the near future, complement the online services and will be of spe-
cial importance in areas where telecommunications are still prob-
lematic and/or very expensive such as in under-dveloped countries.
Other areas within the library enviornment wherein optical disks and
CD-ROM's are making inroads include Cataloging Workstations and Public
Access Catalogs (PAC's). The former are exemplified by MiniMARC and
Bibliophile while the latter are exemplified by the LePac CD-ROM Pub-
lic Catalog offered by Brodart.
CD-ROM: Prospects and Realities
Mike first presented a vu-graph listing a number of popular myths
about CD-ROM (note that DEC calls it CDROM, no hyphen; most others use
the hyphen - will be interesting to see which prevails). Myths
explored included: CD-ROM will replace online access; CD-ROM will be
replaced by Write-Once optical technology; mastering costs $1-2,000;
disks will cost $10-25;different disks can be used on the same player.
Under realities he identified the following: CD-ROM is real and it is
here now; popular database titles are now available [almost]; elec-
tronic publication on CD-ROM represents a major shift in the economics
of information; big players [e.g., DEC] have entered the marketplace;
internal applications are emerging; and disk production capacity has
been established.
Mike then gave an interesting overview of the very aggressive
marketing effort of DEC in the CD-ROM area. DEC has announced a CD-
ROM player that can presently be interfaced to both DEC and IBM micro-
computers. Each CD-ROM provides approximately 600 megabytes of
storage and two players may be attached to one system to support up to
120 MB of total online storage. A given database may be stored across
the two players. DEC has already started marketing subsets of exist-
ing databases on CD-ROM. To date, 5 CD-ROMS have been announced: 2
from COMPENDEX (Electrical & Computer Engineering; Aerospace Engineer-
ing), 2 from NTIS (Computers, Communication & Electronics; Environmen-
tal Health & Safety), and one from Chem Abstracts (Health & Safety in
Chemistry). The full-text retrieval system, MicroBASIS from Battelle,
along with the appropriate operating system is included on each disk.
Mike left no doubt in anyone's mind regarding the commitment of DEC to
both the technology and to electronic publications on this media.
In considering the future for CD-ROM, Mike was optimistic with
regard to the following prospects: standardization of file formats;
mastering improvements in terms of time and cost; hardware improve-
ments in terms of features and cost; improvements in retrieval
software; effective database searching by end users; and the promise
of access to database searching among the less developed countries
(LDC's).
------------------------------
From: leff@SMU
Date: 24 Nov 1985 19:58-CST
I believe you requested from me a list of references related to
info retrieval. I did a search of my bib database for information
retrieval stuff and for natural language stuff and here is what was returned.
This covers everything submitted to AIList in the new bib format.
There is a good possibility that some general mechanism might be set up
so that people can query this database by electronic mail. I will let
everyone know when this happens.
[Note: Many thanks for this! I hope you can continue to supply us,
and that others will join in with comments on articles of interest. - Ed]
____________________________________________________________________________
%A B. P. McCune
%A R. M. Tong
%A J. S. Dean
%A D. G. Shapiro
%T RUBRIC: A System for Rule-Based Information Retrieval
%J IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
%V SE-11
%N 9
%D SEP 1985
%P 939-944
%A Janet L. Koldoner
%T Indexing and Retrieval Strategies for Natural Language Fact Retrieval
%J ACM Transactions on Database Systems
%V 8
%N 3
%P 434-464
%D SEP 1983
%K Cyrus information retrieval
____________________________________________________________________________
I also ran a search on "natural language" since you sometimes post
some of that stuff in your electronic newsletter: A lot more stuff
but not all that relevant.
____________________________________________________________________________
%A Katthleen R. McKeown
%T The Text System for Natural Language Generation
%R CUCS-23-82
%I Columbia University
%A Kathleen R. McKeown
%T Natural Language Systems: How are They Meeting Human Needs?
%R CUCS-76-83
%I Columbia University
%A Kathleen R. McKeown
%T Natural Language For Expert Systems: Comparisons with Database Systems
%R CUCS-91-84
%I Columbia University
%A Kenneth Wasserman
%T Physical Object Representation and Generalization A Survey of Natural Language Processing Programs
%R CUCS-62-83
%I Columbia Univeristy
%A Fernando Gomez
%T TQ: A specification Language Based on Conceptualizations Underlying Natural Language
%R CS-TR-83
%I University of Central Florida
%A Fernando Gomez
%T Prepositions and Participles in LLULL
%R CS-TR-62
%I University of Central Florida
%K natural language
%A K. Marik
%T Customers Requirements of Natural Language Systems
%J International Journal of Man-Machine Stuides
%V 21
%N 5
%D NOV 84
%P 401
%A Tim Johnson
%T Natural Language Computing: The Commercial Applications
%I Ovum Ltd
%C London
%X Price $395.00
%A I. Peterson
%T Conversing with Computers Naturally
%J Science News
%V 128
%D JUL 27, 1985
%N 4
%P 53
%K microcomputers natural language database Bozena H. Thompson
Frederick B. Thompson Microrim Savvy Caltech Natural Access System
%X discusses Intellect Microrim, and Savvy and a Natural Language System
developed by Bozena H. Thompson and Frederick B. Thompson for IBM PC's
%T Updates
%J Datamation
%P 117
%D AUG 1, 1985
%V 31
%N 15
%K Gary Moskowitz, Xerox, natural language, office systems
%X says that AI should be aim to proofread documents for grammar errors;
and to help collaboration between humans
%A Jonathan Slocum
%A Carol F. Justus
%T Transportability to Other Languages: The Natural Language
Processing Project in the AI Program at MCC
%J ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems
%D APR 1985
%A Samuel S. Epstein
%T Transportable Natural Language Processing Through Simplicity
%J ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems
%D APR 1985
%A Fred J. Damerau
%T Problems and Some Solutions in Customization of Natural Language Database
Front Ends
%J ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems
%D APR 1985
%A Roger Schank
%A Steven Shwartz
%T The Role of Knowledge Engineering in Natural Language Systems
%J BOOK17
%A Jaime Carbonnel
%T The Role of User Modeling in Natural Language Interface Design
%J BOOK17
%A S. Jerrold Kaplan
%T Designing a Portable Natural Language Database Query System
%J ACM Transactions on Database Systems
%V 9
%N 1
%D MAR 1984
%P 1-19
%T Frey Associations to Exhibit Enhanced Version of Themis
%J DEC HARDCOPY
%V 14
%N 5
%P 94
%D MAY 1985
%K natural language database
%X this is one of those systems that allow the user to give his queries
in English t0o the database. It supports 1000 word vocabulary which
can be expanded by the user. It works with Oracle's Relational
Database Managmenet System and VaX Datatrieve. It sells for $24,000.
%T Natural Language Software Builds Mainframe Databases
%J ElectronicsWeek
%D JAN 7, 1985
%V 58
%N 2
%P 49
%K Artificial Intelligence Corporation Intellect
%X They announced Intellect/SX which allows users to set up their own
lexicons, databases and manipulate their own databases.
%A Janet L. Koldoner
%T Indexing and Retrieval Strategies for Natural Language Fact Retrieval
%J ACM Transactions on Database Systems
%V 8
%N 3
%P 434-464
%D SEP 1983
%K Cyrus information retrieval
%A David Matthew Dahlbacka
%T An ATN-Based Restricted Natural Language
Front End for A Data-Flow Design Aid
%R Department of Computer Science File No. 944
%I University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
%D JUL 1985
%K software engineering
%A Roger Schank
%A Larry Hunter
%T The Quest to Understand Thinking
%J MAG1
%P 143
%K scripts natural language conceptual dependency
%X discusses natural language reading including the famous restaurant
script. Also discusses models of memory and "What is AI?"
%A Jerome A. Feldman
%T Connections
%J MAG1
%P 277-284
%K Necker cube semantic nets connectionist natural language
%J InfoWorld
%D July 1, 1985
%P 55
%K Microcomputer Data Base Systems MDBS GURU natural language Knowledgeman
database systems
%X An ad which says "Isn't it time you had a Guru? Artificial
Intelligence From MDBS. Coming Soon. MDBS is the company which makes
knowledgeman, a relational data base management system for micros.
I would suspect this would be a product to compete with CLOUT from RBASE
%J InfoWorld
%D July 1, 1985
%P 55
%K Microcomputer Data Base Systems MDBS GURU natural language Knowledgeman
database systems
%X An ad which says "Isn't it time you had a Guru? Artificial
Intelligence From MDBS. Coming Soon. MDBS is the company which makes
knowledgeman, a relational data base management system for micros.
I would suspect this would be a product to compete with CLOUT from RBASE
%J InfoWorld
%D July 1, 1985
%P 55
%K Microcomputer Data Base Systems MDBS GURU natural language Knowledgeman
database systems
%X An ad which says "Isn't it time you had a Guru? Artificial
Intelligence From MDBS. Coming Soon. MDBS is the company which makes
knowledgeman, a relational data base management system for micros.
I would suspect this would be a product to compete with CLOUT from RBASE
%T Nanobytes
%J BYTE
%D JUL 1985
%P 10
%K natural language translation linguistic products English Spanish
%X "Lingusistic Products: The Woodslands, TX announced two
language-translation programs for the IBM PC. English/Spanish and
Spanish/English programs are $490 each or $790 together."
%A Koji Kobayashi
%T Computers and Communcations: Toward Peace and Prosperity
%J High Technology
%D AUG 1985
%P 10-11
%K natural language machine translation voice recognition NEC
%X discusses activities of NEC in computers and communications including
a proposed system that will translate voice input from one language
to another in real time to be readied by year 2000.
%A Henry Beechold
%T File Gateway Adds to Clout
%J Infoworld
%D APR 22, 1985
%P 48-49
%K database query natural language microcomputer microrim rbase
%X review of Clout, a natural language interface to microcomputers
sold by Microrim for $249.00
two out of a possible four disks (due to overpriced support plan)
performance: excellence
documenation: good
ease of use: excellent
error handling: excellent
support: fair
%
------------------------------
END OF IRList Digest
********************
