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IRList Digest Volume 4 Number 22
IRList Digest Saturday, 30 April 1988 Volume 4 : Issue 22
Today's Topics:
Query - Libraries of the future
- Sample queries needed for thesis
- Distributed information systems
Email - Roy Rada address and workshop on Computer and Writing
Discussion - Computers and Writing, IRList and Hypertext
- Retrievable hypertext report
Interest - Speech recognition and language modelling
Call for Papers - AI and Hypertext: Issues and Directions
News addresses are
Internet or CSNET: fox@vtopus.cs.vt.edu
BITNET: foxea@vtvax3.bitnet
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: well!sac@lll-crg.llnl.gov (Steve Cisler)
Subject: Libraries of the Future
Keywords: library, information retrieval, future
Date: 13 Apr 88 12:32:42 GMT
An Inquiry Into Libraries of the Future
-----------------------------------
I am going to be working on a number of projects
dealing with the concept of libraries of the future.
I would like to have readers of this newsgroup discuss
their ideas about what libraries will and will not be.
If you post a response, it would be helpful if you state
how you currently use or don't use libraries. Some
information junkies satisfy their habit without ever
stepping foot inside a library; others have people to
find the information for them. Many of us visit and
make use of libraries several times a week.
To start this off I'll introduce myself: I am automation
manager in a large county library in the San Francisco
Bay Area, but I will be moving to a corporate library of
a computer firm and will be dealing with both engineers
and librarians involved in projects that will affect the
future technology in libraries of all sorts: academic, school,
public, private, and government. I also publish a newsletter
called Connect: Libraries & Telecommunications.
I am convinced there will be extraordinary gains in the
areas of information retrieval, telecommunications, and
expert systems. But with terabytes of text, images, and
sounds available through fiber optic cable and manipulated
by 'software agents' what will librarians be doing? How
far down the economic ladder will these technologies
penetrate? Will we maintain the idea of Free Public Libraries
in the 21st century, or will it be pay-as-you go?
Feel free to focus on your own special interest or raise more
questions about the big (and still fuzzy) picture.
Steve Cisler
625 Barnacle Way
Suisun, CA 94585
7070 422 5089
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 1988 22:38-EDT
From: Michael.Mauldin@NL.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Need sample queries for my thesis
For my PhD thesis I have implemented an information classification and
retrieval system (called FERRET) that reads (among other things) the
SCI.ASTRO newsgroup. For a comparison study, I need sample user
queries to this system, and I am appealing to the newsgroup readership
for help. In return for a few minutes of your thinking time you will
earn my undying gratitude and a mention in my acknowledgements section.
The study will compare the retrieval effectiveness of my program
against a boolean keyword retrieval for a database composed of
StarDate radio scripts previously posted to this newsgroup. Thus
general questions about astronomy (especially of spacefilght and the
local solar system) are appropriate.
I'd like about 5 different questions from each contributor, plus a list
of keywords you'd try to use to find the answer from a regular keyword
based/free text searching system. For example:
1. What comets come near the earth ?
[ comet near earth ]
2. What space probes were sent to Jupiter ?
[ jupiter (OR probe spacecraft satellite) ]
3. Who discovered Neptune ?
[ neptune discover ]
Don't worry too much about whether the questions you ask make sense
for the database -- I need samples of questions that you would like an
astronomy database to be able to answer. And 5 questions is not a
maximum, you're more than welcome to inundate me with sample questions,
as simple and as complex as you'd like.
If you *don't* want me to mention your name in the acknowledgements
section, please indicate that in your reply.
Thank you very much for your help.
Michael L. Mauldin (Fuzzy) Department of Computer Science
Phone: (412) 268-3065 Carnegie Mellon University
ARPA: Michael.Mauldin@NL.CS.CMU.EDU Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890
UUCP: ...!ucbvax!nl.cs.cmu.edu!mlm
------------------------------
From: dartvax!eleazar!ericb.UUCP@seismo.css.gov (Eric J. Bivona)
Subject: distributed information systems
Summary: what are people doing?
Date: 27 Apr 88 00:32:39 GMT
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
I'm curious about what work people are doing concerning various
information systems. To start things off, we here at Dartmouth
are looking to do a pilot project to create a standard Macintosh
interface that can access a variety of Information Resources that
might exist on the campus network.
Resources we are considering:
Online card catalog
Encyclopedia, dictionaries, thesaurus
Sociology/Census
Campus events
Campus directory
Full text of articles or abstracts
Gateways to other services (off campus)
Many, many others...
We are planning a Server/Client model, with a protocol to provide
data representation (perhaps XDR) and query functions over a
reliable byte stream, or a transaction based protocol. I'd be
very interested in discussing the functionality necessary for
this protocol to work, and be robust. This robustness is
due to the fact that our model demands that the server translate
the request into the local DBMS query language. It is of course
possible for the Mac/workstation to talk directly to the DBMS,
if necessary, in which case the user interface (client) has to
translate from mouse clicks/text directly to the DBMS language.
I've looked at some of the ISO protocols for distributed database
access (that have been proposed), but I've yet to see anything deal
with data representation.
I'm curious to know about current work in user interfaces to databases,
general query languages (are there such things?), what other projects
are working towards, etc. Mail or followups welcome!
-Eric
eric.bivona@dartmouth.edu
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 88 14:18:34 BST
From: roy <SQ45@IBM.LIVERPOOL.AC.UK>
Subject: new address
Thank you for sending the irlist. My new email address is
sq45%ibm.liverpool.ac.uk@cunyvm.cuny.edu; snailmail is
Dept. Computer Science, Univ. Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3BX, England;
and phone is 44-51-790-6022 ext 2854.
I'm participating in a workshop April 15 and 16 entitled "Computers
and Writing" at Sheffield City Polytechnic, England--there will be
a published report about it.
...
Yours, Roy Rada
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 88 22:17:04 BST
From: Roy Rada <SQ45@IBM.LIVERPOOL.AC.UK>
Subject: hyperdocument note
A newsletter-type message with the following parts:
a) recent meeting on computers and writing;
...
d) IRList.
a) An April 15-16 workshop entitled "Computers and Writing" was held in
Sheffield, England. Attendees included Delin, Goodlet, Hardman,
Rymaszewski, and Sharples. Interest in starting an electronic newsletter
to continue the workshop spirit was expressed, and I volunteered to float
a trial balloon.
...
d) The IRList Digest often carries good hypertext news. Ed Fox, as editor
of that Digest, what do you think of an electronic newsletter devoted to
hypertext or an IRList supplement on hypertext ... or ...?
Roy Rada
BITNET/EARN/NORTHNET/GULFNET/ASIANET Address:
SQ45@IBM.LIVERPOOL.AC.UK
Internet (First choice) Address:
SQ45%IBM.LIVERPOOL.AC.UK@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
Internet (Second choice) Address:
SQ45%IBM.LIVERPOOL@NSS.CS.UCL.AC.UK
JANET Address:
SQ45@LIVERPOOL.IBM
UUCP Address:
....!MCVAX!UKC!LIV!SQ45
[Note: I am happy to include hypertext discussions in IRList - just send
in comments. If someone decides to form a separate group, that is fine,
but my definition of "information retrieval" includes hypertext and
hypermedia as sub-fields. I would like to see more hypertext and hypermedia
activities under the aegis of ACM SIGIR, and will certainly be helping
get out products to ACM members in connection with the ACM Database Products
effort. - Ed.]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 88 03:24:32 PDT
From: :@gnu.ucsf.edu (John Gilmore)
Subject: Is a *retrievable* HyperText report available?
Date: Mon, 29 Feb 88 15:22:49 DNT
From: Jakob Nielsen Tech Univ of Denmark <DATJN@NEUVM1>
Subject: HyperCard stack with report on HyperTEXT workshop available
> 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.
Has anyone extracted the useful information from the gizmos and
gadgets and produced a convenient text version of this document?
I don't see the sense in mailing floppies around the world, and
having to dig up a Mac and run a proprietary program, to read a
simple report on a topic of interest.
Please remember when producing materials for the worldwide network,
that binary dumps of Mac "hype-card" stacks are not generally useful.
At least produce something in a format that can be read on more than
one manufacturer's machines -- or a format that is documented, so
others can implement it on their machines.
[Note: Jakob sent me ascii files as well, which I can resend.
Yes, we need standards! Now it is my turn to give you a hard time:
Speaking of retrievable, I wonder if your email address would let
me send files to you. You would be amazed how difficult it is to
reply back to IRList inquirers - I doubt my mailer can handle it
if your user name is simply ":" as is suggested by the address above.
Please make it easy on mail recipients to reply by "signing"
submissions as I request in the Welcome message, with an address
labelled as "internet" or "bitnet," in canonical form. Thanks, Ed.]
------------------------------
From: Bitnet%MSSTATE::LBOGGESS 15-APR-1988 15:51
To: FOXEA
Subj: interests
Hello -
My name is Lois Boggess (Bitnet address LBoggess@MSState).
For some time Tom English and I have been doing research on speech
recognition and language modelling (a lot of it probabilistic), with
with strong interests in natural language processing and dictionary
analysis, as well as applications for the speech handicapped.
...
Thanks.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 8 Apr 88 10:35:43 EST
From: Bob Allen <rba@FLASH.BELLCORE.COM>
Subject: Workshop on AI and Hypertext
AAAI-88 WORKSHOP: AI AND HYPERTEXT - ISSUES AND DIRECTIONS
Tuesday, August 23, 1988, St. Paul, MN
OBJECTIVES
The development of practical hypertext systems has evoked new interest in
hypermedia through much of the AI community. Concurrently, progress in
knowledge representation, user models, natural language synthesis and
understanding, and in qualitative reasoning all promise to enhance the scope
and utility of hypertext documents. Research into development and utilization
of massive knowledge bases is of intense interest to both disciplines.
The AAAI-88 Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Hypertext will explore
novel and controversial issues at the frontier of AI and hypertext research.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to:
* automatic creation of hypertext from linear documents
* user models and adaptive documents
* integrating hypertext and heuristic systems
* truth maintenance, argumentation, and collaborative writing of text
and of programs
* design, development and utilization of large knowledge bases and
docuverses
This half-day workshop is intended to promote interaction among
leading researchers and practitioners. Several brief position statements will
introduce central issues, to be followed by extensive general discussion.
ATTENDANCE
To promote lively and candid interchange, workshop attendance will be limited
to 35 participants. Invitations to participate in the workshop will be
extended on the basis of a position paper, outlining the writer's relevant
work in, and positions on, the hypertext/AI frontier.
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Mark Bernstein, Eastgate Systems, Inc.
K Eric Drexler, Stanford University
Steven Feiner, Columbia University
REQUIREMENTS
The deadline for submitting position papers is May 1, 1988. Online
submissions will not be accepted; hard copy only, please. Position papers
should not exceed four pages. Send position papers to:
Mark Bernstein
Eastgate Systems, Inc.
PO Box 1307
Cambridge, MA 02238, USA
(617) 782-9044
Invitations to participate will be extended in early June.
------------------------------
END OF IRList Digest
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