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IRList Digest Volume 2 Number 43
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
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DATE: Mon Sept 1, 1986 20:22 EDT
TO: <TB3@PSUVM>
FROM: <COMSPRT1@RPICICGE>
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 <RAGHAVAN@UREGINA1.bitnet>
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)
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END OF IRList Digest
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