IRLIST Digest August 17, 1992 Volume IX, Number 29 Issue 125 ********************************************************** I. NOTICES B. Publications Announcements 1. Hunman-Computer Interaction Videotapes 2. Interpersonal Computing and Technology: New Electronic Journal IV. PROJECT WORK D. Miscellaneous 1. SIGIR '92 Minutes ********************************************************** I. NOTICES I.B.1. Fr: Gary Marchionini Re: Human-Computer Interaction Lab Videotapes NOW AVAILABLE: HCIL OPEN HOUSE'92 VIDEOTAPE Compiled by Catherine Plaisant A 90 minute tape containing reports and demonstrations of 1992 HCIL projects. - Introduction - Dynamic Queries - Treemaps - Three strategies for directory browsing - Filter/Flow metaphor for boolean queries - The AT&T Teaching Theater - ACCESS: an online public access catalog - RDM: a telepathology workstation - Guiding automation with pixels ALSO AVAILABLE: HCIL OPEN HOUSE'91 A 60 minute videotape containing reports and demonstrations of 1991 HCIL projects. 1-Introduction 2-Scheduling home control devices 3-Touchscreen toggles 4-A home automation system 5-PlayPenII: A novel fingerpainting program 6-Touchscreen Keyboards 7-Pie menus 8-Three interfaces for browsing tables of contents CONTACT AND PURCHASING INFORMATION: HCIL Center for Automation Research A.V. Williams Building University of Maryland College Park MD 20742 For information about the contents of the video: Catherine Plaisant, (301) 405-2768 plaisant@cs.umd.edu For technical reports and purchasing information: Teresa Casey, (301) 405-2769 tcasey@cs.umd.edu ********** I.B.3. Fr: Don Kraft Re: New Journal Announcement and Call ANNOUNCING THE FOUNDING OF IPCT Interpersonal Computing and Technology: An Electronic Journal for the 21st Century IPCT: An Electronic Journal for the 21st Century is based on the following premises: The electronic journal is the wave of the future. By the year 2000, the bulk of information will be exchanged electronically and the nature of print media will have changed drastically. There are, currently, several barriers to the use of electronic journals as outlets for scholarly research. These include: copyright problems, the problem of coordinating with print publication, and especially the validation of the electronic journal as a legitimate outlet for dissemination of scholarly studies, suitable for credit toward promotion and tenure in colleges and universities. IPCT: An Electronic Journal for the 21st Century will attempt to address these three concerns. The first issue of the journal is planned for January, 1993. Depending on the quantity and quality of submissions, the decision will be made as to whether the journal will be issued twice yearly or quarterly. Each journal issue will be the equivalent of 64 print pages. The journal will be coordinated with and issued through the Interpersonal Computing and Technology Discussion List, a list maintained, moderated and operated at Georgetown University. This list will serve as the initial readership. Subscribers to the list will be considered charter subscribers. There will be no charge for the service for the first year. Subscribers will be urged to comment extensively on content and format of the journal. After an experimental year, we will commence library collaboration and may find it necessary to charge for the service. CALL FOR ASSOCIATE EDITORS AND REFEREES This is a formal call for volunteer readers and article referees. Please read the editorial statement carefully. If you feel you are qualified to serve as a referee, please notify the editor and submit a brief vita listing major publications and editorial experience. Please provide the names of person with whom we can check these credentials. Persons selected as referees will listed on the masthead as "associate editors." CALL FOR ARTICLES AND PAPERS This is also a formal call for submission of articles for inclusion in the journal. Please submit full length articles (10-20 pages with notes and bibliography) done in APA format on the following topics: use of electronic networks in the classroom, electronic publishing, use of electronic networks and information exchange, library applications of electronic communication, professional relationships carried on via electronic communication, use of electronic communication in higher education, business, industry and government and related topics. Articles may have a humanistic or social science cast. Technological articles will be considered to the extent that they are intelligible to the bulk of the readers and are not specific to any particular hardware configuration We regret that, at this time, we will be unable to use articles which employ pictures and diagrams and we urge that statistical tables be kept to a mimimum. Our transmission will be in the simplest ASCII format, to make the journal available to greatest number of potential subscribers. All articles will be given at least two blind reviews and published articles will be selected by the editors. In our reviewing process, we will conform to the highest standards of reviewing used in the best print journals. Our associate editors (reviewers) will be selected on criteria of editorial experience and status in their field of expertise. Applications for associate editor positions and article submissions should be sent to: GMP@PSUVM.BITNET or gmp@psuvm.psu.edu (internet). After two issues a decision will be made whether to coordinate publication with a print publisher. Meanwhile endorsements will be solicited from relevant organizations, e.g. organizations like American Library Association, EDUCOM, Speech Communication Association, etc. and requests will be made for lists of their on-line subscribers. Announcements will be sent to other relevant lists. We urge you to circulate this announcement to relevant lists with which you may be familiar. Since the journal will be distributed by IPCT-L, subscription to IPCT-L will be necessary for those desiring copies. TO SUBSCRIBE TO IPCT-L PLEASE FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW: Send the following one-line message in the body of an email message to LISTSERV@GUVM or LISTSERV@GUVM.GEORGETOWN.EDU SUBCRIBE IPCT-L YOURFIRSTNAME YOURLASTNAME This project will be coordinated and edited by Gerald M. Phillips (emeritus, Penn State), Zane Berge (Georgetown), Gerald M. Santoro (Penn State), and Mauri Collins (Penn State). Technical advisors will include Bradley Erlwein (Zenith Data Systems), Morton Cotlar (Hawaii), Katy Silberger (Marist), and Mark Evangelista (Georgetown). Once an editorial board is selected, formal announcement will be made of the journal via all media including mail contact with deans of major universities, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and other relevant media. Solicitation of all available libraries will also be made. We have already begun negotiations for a print edition of the journal with academic publishers and find the climate for collaboration quite favorable. There are technical problems to be solved relevant to accessing the journals. We will improve the technical sophistication of the journal to include graphics and ftp retrieval as various distribution problems are solved. ********************************************************** IV. PROJECT WORK IV.D.1. Fr: Craig Stanfill Re: SIGIR '92 Minutes SIGIR Annual Business Meeting Copenhagen, Denmark 23 June 1992 Notes by Craig Stanfill The meeting was called to order at 1:17 PM by the chair, Ed Fox. 1. TREASURER'S REPORT: The Treasurer, Donna Harman, reported that we currently have approximately $32K in cash. The SIG's major expenses are printing and distributing SIGIR Forum, and distributing the proceedings of the annual conference to the general membership. Membership dues cover the Forum and ACM-related costs. Profits from U.S. conferences are used to pay for printing and mailing the annual proceedings. These amount to approximately $11K for printing and $5K for mailing. Last year we made approximately $40K at the Chicago conference. 2. REPORT ON EIRSG: Keith van Rijsbergen reported that, on June 15 1992, EIRSG (the European IR Specialist Group) was voted into existence. EIRSG will serve as an umbrella group for various European national IR groups, from which it will draw its membership. The purpose of the group is to encourage and support national IR groups, and to raise money for IR-related activities from European sources. In particular, EIRSG will assist in raising up-front money for European IR conferences. EIRSG will be primarily run by an executive committee. Keith is the current chair; fresh elections will take place in 2 years. The executive committee will included a conference chair who will, by convention, be the chair of the next European IR conference. EIRSG will not, however, directly participate in the running of the conferences. For copies of the constitution, contact Keith van Rijsbergen at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. 3. CONFERENCES 3.1 SIGIR '93: The conference will take place in Pittsburgh on June 27-30 of 1993. Edie Rasmussen (University of Pittsburgh) is the conference chair. The conference will take place at the Hilton Hotel, which is located in the "three rivers" district. There will be a banquet/riverboat cruise. Edie is attempting to arrange a social event at a Major League baseball game. Robert Korfhage and Peter Willett are program chairs. Donna Harman and Joan Morrissey are tutorial chairs. 3.2 SIGIR '94: The conference will take place in Dublin, Ireland at the Dublin City University, July 3-6 1994. Alan Smeaton is the chair. Keith van Rijsbergen and Bruce Croft are the program chairs. 3.3 SIGIR '95: The conference will take place in Seattle, in June 1995. The chair will be Raya Fidel (University of Washington). The local arrangements chair will be Michael Grandall (Boeing). Volunteers are needed to serve as Program, Tutorial, and Exhibit chairs, and as Treasurer. 3.4 SIGIR '96: There were two proposals: Hans-Peter Frei proposed to hold the conference in Zurich, Switzerland, at the Swiss Institute of Technology. The planned date would be sometime after Mid-July in 1996, probably in late August so as to avoid, as much as possible, the peak vacation season, the European school year, and the U.S. school year. He listed ease of transportation as an important consideration in favor of the Swiss site. Alistair Moffat proposed to hold the conference in Melbourne at the University of Melbourne, in mid-September 1996. He listed the following factors in favor of the Australian site: the beautiful and diverse city of Melbourne, the pleasant early spring weather (mean temperature 13 degrees C), an international arts festival to take place at the same time, the fact that the University has successfully hosted several international conferences in recent years, and strong interest in the far east in the field of Information Retrieval. He acknowledge the expense of air fare (currently about $800 - $1000 from west coast U.S., about $1500 from Europe) to be a significant difficulty. Arcot Desai Narasimhalu expressed interest in holding a small workshop in Singapore prior to an Australian conference. An informal show of hands showed 17 in favor of Zurich, 22 in favor of Melbourne. 3.5 ACM MULTIMEDIA '93: Ed Fox reported that the 1993 ACM Multimedia conference will be held August 1-4 1993 in Anaheim, California. It will be co-located with the SIGGRAPH conference. It is sponsored by ACM SIGIR, SIGCOMM, SIGGRAPH, SIGLINK, and SIGOIS; it will include a number of workshops. This conference is "separate from and broader than" the previous Singapore conference. 3.6 IR & THE NET WORKSHOP: Craig Stanfill will serve as a contact point to organize a workshop on IR and the network, including such topics as OPACS and Wide Area Information Servers. 3.7 WORKSHOP IDEAS: Ed Fox conducted an informal poll by show of hands to determine what topics might merit SIGIR-sponsored workshops: OPACs 15 CD ROM 20 Electronic Publishing/Libraries 27 Personal Computing & IR 25 HCI & IR 36 Embedded IR 12 Databases & IR 47 Office Information & IR 8 Hypertext/Hypermedia & IR 36 Multimedia & IR 45 This prompted vigorous discussion. The consensus was that there are already too many conferences/workshops (Dave Lewis noted 7 IR-related workshops last year), and that it was much better to co-locate workshops with existing conferences and/or to expand the scope of existing conferences than to create new ones. The idea of lengthening the existing IR conference from 3 to 4 days in order to accommodate workshops had some support. An informal poll by show of hands indicated 70% support to add an extra day of workshops. 4. CONFERENCE FORMAT: Ed Fox conducted a poll by show-of-hands on the format of the IR conference. A. How long should the conference be? 2 days 2 3 days 39 4 days 11 B. Should the conference include an exhibition? Talk-Related Only 2 + a small invited exhibition 21 + a medium sized exhibition 21 C. Should the conference include a poster session? Yes 19 No 4 D. Should the conference offer student rates & student housing? Yes 62 E. Should the conference offer a "best student paper" award? Yes 16 F. How many parallel sessions should there be? More 10 Same 11 Fewer 12 G. How many panels should there be? Same 29 Fewer 5 H. How many invited talks and overviews should there be? 1 full day's worth 1 1/2 day's worth 19 Only One 19 I. How many tutorials should there be? More 0 Same 46 Fewer 3 5. NEWS 5.1 MEMBERSHIP DRIVE: At the last SIGIR meeting Susan Gauch (Northwestern University) volunteered to organize a membership drive. She has prepared a new membership brochure which will be distributed at various conferences. She is now working on a attracting corporate members. For $500 a company can become a corporate sponsor. The benefits to corporate sponsors include 1) receiving 2 copies of the Forum, including the annual conference proceedings; 2) various discounted rates available through the ACM; and 3) a 2-page article every other year in SIGIR Forum describing the company's IR-related research and products. 5.2 ACM NEWS: ACM has moved from 42 Broadway to a new Manhattan address. It is reviewing its SIG policies. ACM TOIS is expressing continued interest in IR-related papers. A new ACM Transactions-series journal (TOCHI - Transactions on Computer Human Interaction) was also announced. 5.3 WORKSHOP ON FUTURE OF TEXT PROCESSING RESEARCH: Last Fall a workshop on the future of text processing research was held just before the SIGIR conference. The workshop has recommended more federal support for IR research, and an initiative for the creation of a national electronic library. 5.4 PROJECT ENVISION: There is an NSF-ACM project to create an electronic library of computer-related publications. Submissions are possible in either electronic or paper form. 5.5 FORUM DATELINE: It was proposed that a "Dateline" section be added to the Forum as a means of looking for partners in collaborative research. 6.0 SIGIR OFFICERS: The Executive Committee will exercise its option to renew the terms of the current officers for an additional 2 year term unless petitioned otherwise. The meeting closed at 2:30 PM. ********************************************************** 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@uccmvsa.ucop.edu or calur@uccmvsa.bitnet Nancy Gusack ncgur@uccmvsa.bitnet Mary Engle meeur@uccmvsa.bitnet The IRLIST Archives will be set up for anonymous FTP, and the address will be announced in future issues. To access back issues presently, send the message INDEX IR-L to LISTSERV@UCCVMA.BITNET. To get a specific issue listed in the Index, send the message GET IR-L LOGYYMM, where YY is the year and MM is the numeric month in which the issue was mailed, to LISTSERV@UCCVMA (Bitnet) or LISTSERV@UCCVMA.UCOP.EDU. These files are not to be sold or used for commercial purposes. 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