IRLIST Digest December 1989 Volume VI Number 3 Issue 3 *************************************************************** IRLIST Digest is distributed from the University of California, Division of Library Automation, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland, CA. 94612-3550. Send subscription requests to: LISTSERV@UCCVMA.BITNET Send submissions to IRLIST to: IR-L@UCCVMA.BITNET Editorial Staff: Clifford Lynch lynch@postgres.berkeley.edu calur@uccmvsa.bitnet Mary Engle engle@cmsa.berkeley.edu meeur@uccmvsa.bitnet Nancy Gusack ncgur@uccmvsa.bitnet The IRLIST Archives will be set up for anonymous FTP, and the address will be announced in future issues. These files are not to be sold or used for commercial purposes. Contact Mary Engle or Nancy Gusack for more information on IRLIST. The opinions expressed in IRLIST do not represent those of the editors or the University of California. Authors assume full responsibility for the contents of their submissions to IRLIST. Continued from Volume VI Number 2, Issue 2 *************************************************************** I. NOTICES: (last minute urgent additions!) A.8. International Conference on Multimedia Information Systems, January 16-18, 1991 IV. PROJECTS: Initiatives and proposals / Bibliographies Abstracts / Miscellaneous A.1. Electronic Proposal Submission A.2. Guidebook to Organizational Databases in the UK A.3. CLARIT Project A.4. APA Electronic Texts in Philosophy Initiative A.5. Text Encoding Initiative A.6. CLARIT Project B.1. References on Matching of KR Structures B.2. Summary of AI and Machine Learning Applications in IR C.1. Abstract on SuperBook C.2. Dissertation Abstracts C.3. Dissertation Abstracts D.1. New and Revised Technical Notes D.2. Hypermedia Journal D.3. Hypermedia Journal D.4. Survey Corpora *************************************************************** I. NOTICES I.A.8. Fr: Edward A. Fox Re: International Conference on Multimedia Information Systems, January 16-18, 1991 CALL FOR PAPERS International Conference on Multimedia Information Systems Singapore, January 16 - 18, 1991 Co-Organizers : ACM SIGIR and The Institute of Systems Science National University of Singapore In Co-operation with : ACM SIGOIS Co-operation sought from : ACM SIGGRAPH, ACM SIGCHI and ACM SIGMOD Theme: Multimedia Information Systems - Towards Better Integration The last few years have seen some dramatic trends in computer technology: Faster workstations, higher resolution displays, cheaper and larger storage, improvements in graphics packages and progress in broad-band communications. While all these topics have forums where the research, development and application efforts are reported, there is yet to be a forum which promotes discussion and exchange of ideas on how all these interesting technologies could converge towards the next generation of tools and applications. This effort is very timely since one perceives a confluence of three major industrial sectors: Publishing and printing, Video and Movie, and Computer technology. Through this conference, we hope to bring together people from various individual technologies to exploit the combined advantages in building integrated systems using some or all of the technologies. Papers Technical papers reporting either original research or interesting applications are invited in areas relevant to the theme. Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following: Hardware: Optical Disk devices and their use, High Bandwidth Buses, Multimedia networking, Communication protocols for Multimedia systems, etc. Systems Software: Distributed Multimedia architectures, Support for Multimedia Databases, Object-oriented Multimedia systems, Co-operative authoring tools for Multimedia Systems, Video and Still Image compression, etc. Content-based retrieval of Multimedia Objects: Object oriented languages for multimedia retrieval, Retrieval in hypertext/hypermedia networks, Hierarchical languages, Access methods for multimedia systems, Indexes for video, images and voice, Browsing in very large images and video, etc. User Interfaces: Visual interfaces to Multimedia systems, Browsing interfaces, Agents in interfaces, Physical metaphors, Adaptive interfaces, Authoring and editing tools. Applications and Systems: Picture and document-image archival systems, Standards for electronic document preparation and submission, Engineering applications, Medical Information Systems, Libraries of the future, Multimedia in education, Home entertainment systems. Panels Proposals are invited for panels relevant to the theme of the conference. The person proposing a panel should identify the topic and the participants. The co-ordinator should also identify alternates. Written consent is required from the proposed panelists agreeing to participate in the panel. Proposals for panels should be received by 31 March, 1990 Tutorials Proposals for tutorials are also welcomed on topics relevant to the theme of the conference. The person proposing the tutorial should give an outline of the topic and indicate the duration of the tutorial. Proposals for tutorials should be sent in by 31 March, 1990. Demonstrations Proposals are sought for demonstrations during the conference. These can be either stand alone or on-line connected to overseas facilities. Proposals should be sent by July 1, 1990. Special Sessions Proposals are invited for organizing special sessions which focus on emerging technologies. Proposals for special sessions should be received by May 1, 1990. Deadlines Four copies of full papers should be (20 pages or approximately 500 words) sent to the following addresses by 10 April, 1990. North America and Europe: Professor Stavros Christodoulakis Institute for Computer Research University of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3 G1 Bitnet: Watmath!WatDaisy!Schrisodoul @ uunet.uu.net FAX: 1-519-8851208 Australia, Asia and Others: Dr Desai Narasimhalu Institute of Systems Science National University of Singapore Heng Mui Keng Terrace Singapore 0511 Bitnet: ISSAD @ NUSVM FAX : 65-7782571 % Notification of acceptance of papers will be mailed to authors on or before 1 July, 1990. % Accepted papers, camera ready, are due no later than 1 September, 1990. Venue The conference sessions will be held in the premises of the Institute of Systems Science (ISS). General Chairman : Dr Juzar Motiwalla, ISS Organizing Chairman : Professor Nick Belkin, Rutgers University Program Chairs : Professor Stavros Christodoulakis, U of Waterloo Dr A Desai Narasimhalu, ISS Tutorials Chair : Dr Huang Kuan Tsae, ISS International Publicity Chair : Dr Vijay Raghavan, S W Louisiana State U Regional Publicity Chair : Dr Ang Yew Hock, ISS Local Arrangements Chair : Ms Vicky Toh, ISS Preliminary Program Committee (to be expanded): M Adiba Genoble, France Robert Allen Bellcore Nick Belkin Rutgers University David Choy IBM P Constantopoulos Crete, Greece Bruce Croft UMass, Amherst Umesh Dayal DEC Chris Faloutsos University of Maryland Ed Fox Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State University N Georganas Ottawa, Canada Don Herbison-Evans Sydney University K T Huang ISS, IBM Watson Research Labs Y Ichikawa Hiroshima University T Kunii University of Tokyo Luke Lien IBM Tokyo Research Labs Peter Lockemann Karlshruhe Vincent Lum Naval Postgraduate School Tim Oren Apple R MacNamara BNR, Canada N Naffah Bull, France Jack Orenstein Object Design Inc. Dick Phillips Los Alamos National Labs Keith Rijsbergen University of Glasgow D Thanos CNR, Italy D Tsichritzis Geneva Janet Walker DEC Clement Yu University of Illinois, Chicago For all information contact: Desai Narasimhalu Institute of Systems Science National University of Singapore Heng Mui Keng Terrace Singapore 0511 Telephone : 65-772-2002 or 65-772-2096 Telefax : 65-7782571 Bitnet : ISSAD @ NUSVM *************************************************************** IV. PROJECTS IV.A.1. Fr: Jim Morris Re: Electronic Proposal Submission The National Science Foundation is accepting proposals in electronic form as part of an experimental program called EXPRES. This is being done to speed and simplify the proposal review process. Specifically, you are encouraged to send proposals as PostScript files. PostScript (a trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc.) is a standard language for driving laser printers. There are several advantages to preparing your proposal in PostScript: 1. It will be less expensive in duplication and mailing costs because you need send only one paper copy to the NSF. 2. Electronic transmission from you to the NSF and from the NSF to reviewers takes only minutes. 3. Proposals look better because they are printed freshly on laser printers rather than being duplicated on copiers multiple times. 4. The NSF can extract data from the electronically-prepared forms, making it easier to track your proposal. In order to create a PostScript proposal you must perform all the paper fiddling operations -- cutting, pasting, collating -- electronically. Assuming that you are already capable of doing that for the technical part of your proposal using your favorite document processor, we have created some software to help you with the rest of the job: creating the forms and combining the pieces. It can be run on UNIX, VMS, Macintosh, and PC systems. Proposal templates for some common document processors are available, too. There are different ways to obtain the software depending upon your computing circumstances. In any case, you will receive a file guide.ps which you should print on a PostScript printer, and read for further instructions. 1. Macintosh and PC users can request a disk by sending email to ps-expres@andrew.cmu.edu or regular mail to. PS-EXPRES Information Technology Center Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Be sure to specify Mac or PC and the disk size. 2. People with NSFNet/DARPANet connections can get the code in source and executable form via ftp. First, connect with a particular machine at CMU by typing the following commands. ftp 128.2.12.15 ftp>Name: anonymous ftp>Password: anythingyoulike ftp>prompt ftp>ascii ftp>cd common ftp>mget * ftp>cd .. (You will get a lot of back-talk from ftp besides the "ftp>" prompts shown.) This will retrieve some files everyone needs. If you simply want to run the software, copy everything from the appropriate machine-specific binary directory below. For example, to retrieve the pc executable programs type ftp>binary ftp>cd pc ftp>mget * ftp>cd .. ftp>ascii The machine-specific directories are: mac (apply BinHex 4.0 to Hqx files after retrieving) pc rt sun3 vax-unix We haven't figured out how to distribute VMS binaries yet, so VMS users will have to rebuild the software themselves. The following directories contain document processor templates for proposals: scribe tex latex troff For example, to retrieve the tex template, type ftp>cd tex ftp> mget * ftp> cd .. The src directory is of interest if you want to modify or rebuild the software. It contains SREADME: instructions for building executables C-Programs and Header files: *.c and *.h UNIX-specific files: Makefile VMS-specific files: compile.com, descrip.mms Macintosh-specific files: *.r, NSFForms.make, nsfmenus.c, window.c, nsfwndw.h PC-specific files: *.MAK To exit ftp type ftp>quit 3. If you are a UNIX user and cannot use the ftp connection, request the software by email. If you send a request to ps-expres@andrew.cmu.edu we will send you the non-binary software in the form of shar files. 4. If you don't need any of the software and are prepared to send a proposal electronically, instructions on how to transmit proposals my be obtained from Gerald B. Stuck National Science Foundation 1800 G Street NW Room 401 Washington, DC 20550 (202)357-9767 gstuck@photo.expres.nsf.go ********** IV.A.2. Fr: AEB_BEVAN@VAX.ACS.OPEN.AC.UK Re: IRLIST submission. Project on info on organisations GUIDEBOOK TO ORGANISATIONAL DATABASES IN THE UK There are various initiatives in the (British) Open University School of Management that may be of interest to IRlist members. As you may know,The Open University is a distance teaching institution. The Business School is developing an MBA course, to be taught to students working from their own homes; that is, chiefly to managers who are still doing their regular jobs. Components of this course will require students to familiarise themselves with online data resources and evaluate the costs and benefits of seeking this information. The School is also developing a programme of research. I am particularily concerned with the research project on data resources for the study of organisations. My task is to carry out a feasibility study for a possible long-term project. The outcomne of this initial study is intended to be a guidebook to information resources relevant to research on organisational structures. This will require me to identify relevant data hosts and carry out test drives and comparative studies of databases, archives andvarious datasets availlable in the UK. Parallell studies are under way in the USA led by Professor Lynne Zucker of UCLA, and there may be a similiar project starting soon in other parts of the European Community. This one-year initial study has been funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council. It has the direct participation of Professor Derek Pugh, director of research at the Open Business School, and Professor Andrew Thomson, Dean of the school. It is believed that there are considerable resources in commercial databases as well as in research datasets held in archives, that are underused or not readily usable to interested rsearchers in the field of organisational studies. The initial publication will be a kind of "community Guidebook" for the field and if I can mobilize the resources it will be produced in Hypertext format. It is also thought that mapping out these resources may result in commercially useful information on organisational factors. I would very much appreciate the comments and help of the IRlist community on the following points: Methodologies for comparing databases and datasets. Methodologies for evolving search and classification categories. Bear in mind that there is no agreed classification of terms in the organisational studies field so no agreed thesaurus exists. Part of the longer term project is to evolve such a thesaurus. Methods and experiences in producing "Community Handbooks" for intellectual disciplines. Experience in using hypertext products to write such handbooks. (Or indeed any comments on the use of a hypertext based application to control an ongoing project so that a final publication results in hypertext form). I would welcome suggestions for people to contact, existing work in progress to consider, and other lists that may cover relevant questions. Thank you for your attention and for any comments you may feel able to make. I would be pleased to give IRList participants further information on our projects if you want to contact me direct. Please note however that since I am deaf, telephone conversations are difficult. But I love e-mail! Edis Bevan (Mr.) JANET: AEB_BEVAN@UK.AC.OPEN.ACSVAX BITNET:AEB_BEVAN%ACS.VAX.OPEN.AC.UK@AC.UK EARN: AEB_BEVAN@ACS.VAX.OPEN.AC.UK INTERNET: AEB_BEVAN%UK.AC.OPEN.ACS.VAX@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU UUCP: mcvax!ukc!ouacs!aeb_bevan ********** IV.A.3. Fr: Thomas M. Kuhn Re: CLARIT project I am contacting you on behalf of the Laboratory for Computational Linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University and Prof. David A. Evans. We are working on a project (called CLARIT -- short for Computational Linguistic Approaches to Retrieval and Indexing of Text) funded by the Digital Equipment Corporation to develop some fairly straightforward computational linguistic enhancements to conventional key-word searching systems. The project is targetted specifically at indexing and retrieval over large bodies of free text. We have recently found out about the IR-list bulletin board and would like to subscribe. Could you please add clarit@prospero.lcl.cmu.edu (internet net address 128.2.229.10) to your mailing list? Thank you for your assistance. I will be sending a more complete description of the CLARIT project in a following message. Thomas Kuhn Administrative Assistant CLARIT Project ********** IV.A.4. Fr: "Allen Renear, CIS, Brown Univ. 401-863-7312" Re: APA Electronic Texts in Philosophy Initiative In response to the increasing interest and activity in the creation, distribution and use of electronic texts in philosophy, the American Philosophical Association's Committee on Computer Use in Philosophy, at its December, 1988 meeting, formed a subcommittee on Electronic Texts in Philosophy. Co-chaired by Richard Lineback, of the Philosophy Documentation Center, and David Norton of McGill University, the committee aims to encourage and co-ordinate the creation and use of electronic texts in philosophy. The subcommittee to hopes to minimize wasteful duplication of projects and incompatibilities of markup, while maximizing accessibility of electronic texts to all bona fide users. As a start, it is creating an up to date list of all major philosophical texts that already exist in electronic form, as well as a list of all current and proposed projects. It will be working with the Association for Computers and the Humanities joint initiative with the National Endowment for the Humanities on standardized markup procedures. The subcommittee hopes that the information thus obtained will enable it to advise those engaged in current and future projects so as to avoid unnecessary overlap between projects and maximize compatibility between them. Any member of the subcommittee listed below would be glad to hear from all those interested in this project. And could all those who are currently engaged in the creation of an electronic version of a philosophical text please send details of their project to Leslie Burkholder? Richard Lineback, Co-chair, Philosophy Documentation Center, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio 42403 David Norton, Co-Chair, Dept of Philosophy, 855 Sherbrooke St. West, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 2T7 Leslie Burkholder LB0Q+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU CDEC, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA 15213 Lois Frankel, Dept of Philosophy, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO 80933 David Owen OWEN@ARIZRVAX Dept of Philosophy, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ 85721 Allen Renear ALLEN@BROWNVM Computer Center, Box 1885, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912 Charles Young YOUNGC@CLARGRAD Dept of Philosophy, Claremont Graduate School, 736 N. College Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711-6199 ********** IV.A.5. Fr: amsler@flash.bellcore.com (Robert A Amsler) Re: The public statement of the TEI TEXT ENCODING INITIATIVE Initiative to Formulate Guidelines for the Encoding and Interchange of Machine-readable Texts Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC) What is the Text Encoding Initiative? The Text Encoding Initiative is a major international project to develop guidelines for the preparation of machine-readable texts for scholarly research and for the interchange of such texts. It has been undertaken in response to the pressing need for a common text encoding scheme demonstrated by the present chaotic diversity of formats now in use. The impact of this project on humanities computing will be substantial, both for encoding new texts and for the interchange of existing data. The planning phase of this project was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) with support from Vassar College and took the form of a conference on Text Encoding Practices convened in November 1987 at Vassar College to determine the feasibility and desirability of the proposed guidelines and to formulate aims and technical specifications for them. As a result of this conference, three overall goals for the initiative were defined: To specify a common interchange format for machine readable texts. To provide a set of recommendations for encoding new textual materials. To document the major existing encoding schemes, and develop a metalanguage in which to describe them. After the Vassar meeting, ACH, ACL and ALLC joined as co-sponsors of the project and defined a four-year work plan to achieve the project's goals. Funding for the work plan has since been provided by substantial grants from the American National Endowment for the Humanities and the European Economic Community. Project Structure The work plan is coordinated by a six-member steering committee, comprised of two representatives from the three sponsoring organizations. They are: Nancy M. Ide (ACH), chair of the Steering Committee Robert Amsler (ACL) Susan Hockey (ALLC) C.M. Sperberg-McQueen (ACH) Donald Walker (ACL) Antonio Zampolli (ALLC) Two Editors, C. M. Sperberg-McQueen and Lou Burnard, coordinate the work of the project's four Working Committees, each of which is responsible for a distinct part of the work plan. The Working Committees are Committee 1, Text Documentation, with a membership drawn largely from the library and archive management communities, is dealing with issues concerning the cataloguing and identification of key features of encoded texts. Chair: Dr C.M Sperberg-McQueen, University of Illinois at Chicago Committee 2, Text Representation, is concerned with the encoding of such features as character sets, layout and other features physically rerpresented in the source material. It will provide precise recommendations covering those features of continuous discourse for which a convention already exists in printed or written sources. Chair: Professor Stig Johansson, University of Oslo Committee 3, Text Analysis and Interpretation, will provide discipline-specific sets of tags appropriate to the analytic procedures favored by that discipline, but in such a way as to permit their extension and generalization to other disciplines using analogous procedures. Chair: Professor D. Terence Langendoen, University of Arizona Committee 4, Syntax and Metalanguage, has determined that the syntactic framework of the Standard Generalized Markup Language, SGML, is adequate for all forseeable applications within the TEI's scope, and thus will provide the basic syntax. This committee is also surveying major existing schemes and developing a formal metalanguage with which to describe these schemes and the scheme developed for the Guidelines, and to provide a formally specifiable mapping between them. Chair: Professor Sandra Mamrak, Ohio State University Advisory Board In addition to the three sponsoring organizations, the following associations are currently represented on an Advisory Board to the project: American Anthropological Association American Historical Association American Philological Association American Philosophical Association American Society for Information Science Association for Computing Machinery Association for Documentary Editing Association for History and Computing Association Internationale Bible et Informatique Canadian Linguistic Association Dictionary Society of North America Electronic Publishing SIG International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions Linguistic Society of America Modern Language Association The Advisory Board is intended to ensure that of members of their organizations are kept informed of work within the TEI and that appropriate individuals within their organizations are suitably involved in the effort. The Advisory Board has approved the plan of work and will be asked to endorse the guidelines when they are completed. Affiliated Projects Several projects are currently undertaking to encode large bodies of texts or other linguistic data, and are interested in encoding their materials to conform to the guidelines. These projects, in which the encoding task will begin while the guidelines are under development, can become affiliated projects. They will provide valuable feedback to the Initiative about the tag sets it is creating. Further Information For further information please contact the Editor of the Project: Dr C. Michael Sperberg-McQueen, Computer Center (M/C 135), University of Illinois at Chicago, Box 6998, Chicago, IL 60680, USA Electronic mail: u35395@uicvm.bitnet Phone (312) 996-2477 or the Associate Editor Mr Lou D Burnard, Oxford University Computing Service, 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN, England Electronic mail: LOU@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK Telephone: 44-865-273238 Fax: 44-865-273275 or any of the Steering Committee members Dr Robert A. Amsler, Bellcore, MRE 2D398, 445 South Street, Box 1910, Morristown, NJ 07960-1910, USA Electronic mail: amsler@flash.bellcore.com Telephone: (201) 829-4278 Fax: (201) 292-0067 Mrs Susan Hockey, Oxford University Computing Service, 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN, ENGLAND Eletronic mail: SUSAN@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK Telephone: 44-865-273226 Fax: 44-865-273275 Professor Nancy M. Ide, Department of Computer Science, Box 520, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601, USA Electronic mail: ide@vassar.bitnet Telephone: (914) 437-5988 Dr Donald E. Walker, Bellcore, MRE 2A379, 445 South Street, Box 1910, Morristown, NJ 07960-1910, USA Electronic mail: walker@flash.bellcore.com Telephone: (201) 829-4312 Fax: (201) 292-0067 Professor Antonio Zampolli, Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale, Via Della Faggiola 32, I-56100 Pisa, Italy Electronic mail: glottolo@icnucevm.bitnet Telephone: 39-50-560481 Fax: 39-50-576751 *************************************************************** Continued in Volume VI Number 4, Issue 4 ***************************************************************