IRLIST Digest ISSN 1064-6965 November 6, 1995 Volume XII, Number 43 Issue 280 ********************************************************** II. JOBS 1. Frontier Engineering: Electronic Publishing Position 2. U. Washington: Ass't. Prof., Knowledge Organization 3. NW State U., Louisiana: Government Documents Librarian 4. NW State U., Louisiana: Special Collections Librarian III. NOTICES B. Meetings 1. CAIS/ACSI '96 2. SLA '96 C. Miscellaneous 1. Link Grammar Parser, Version 2 ********************************************************** II. JOBS II.1. Fr: Gail Thornburg Re: Frontier Engineering: Electronic Publishing Position Electronic Publishing/Customer Support Analyst needed. Frontier Engineering is is search of a professional to assist on an electronic publishing project. LAN and end user support experience required; ability to develop basic on-line user applications using Visual Basic, Microsoft Access, or Visual Foxpro required; strong Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office skills required; strong people skills a must. SGML or HTML knowledge a plus. Applicants must have a four year bachelor's degree and 5 years of proven software and/or technical support experience. APPLY TO: Frontier Engineering Sciences, Inc. 5100 Springfield Pike, Suite 401 Phone 513/256-9464, Fax 513/256-9057 EOE/AA M/F/D/V [You may also contact Gail Thornburg, thornbge@cyxsmtp.wpafb.af.mil, if you have further questions about this position.] ********** II.2. Fr: Jerold Nelson Re: U. Washington: Ass't. Prof., Knowledge Organization ASSISTANT PROFESSOR FACULTY POSITION IN KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION People and Knowledge: Building Information Connections! The Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Washington is recruiting an individual who subscribes to this vision to fill a full-time, tenure track position at the Assistant Professor rank beginning in the 1996/1997 academic year. DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS: informed, energetic and creative attention to theoretical and practical issues of the organization of information in all kinds of environments with all types of formats and patterns of publication: >understanding of relationships between cataloging, indexing, and database design; >knowledge of online catalog systems and how technology can be used to facilitate information seeking; >understanding of the nature of digital libraries and efforts to organize information in the networked environment; an earned doctorate or the equivalent in library/information science or cognate area; ability for and interest in doing research; ability to pursue and develop interdisciplinary collaboration; professional experience. DUTIES/RESPONSIBILITIES: The successful candidate will teach courses, including responsibility for courses related to knowledge organization; will lead research and seek grants; will advise students and assume other duties of a faculty member; and will have opportunity to be involved in the development of a proposed new interdisciplinary doctoral program. SALARY: A nine month contract at a salary to be negotiated. Summer employment possible. A full range of benefits, including TIAA/CREF. The University of Washington is a research university in an active information environment. The Graduate School of Library and Information Science offers an ALA accredited masters degree program. Seattle is a multicultural, modern city with numerous cultural, outdoor and athletic activities. Review of applications will begin December 1, 1995 and will continue until the position is filled. We are building a multicultural work force and strongly encourage women, ethnic minorities and persons with disabilities to apply. Special interest will be given to applicants who can serve well in an increasingly diverse university community. The University of Washington is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. Interviews will be conducted at the ALISE meeting in San Antonio, TX in January 1996. Candidates, please send letters of application, curriculum vitae, and names, addresses and phone numbers of at least three references. Applications and letters of nomination should be sent to: Jerold Nelson, Chair, Search Committee, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Box 352930, University of Washington, Seattle WA 98195-2930. E- mail: jernel@u.washington.edu. GSLIS Home Page: http://www.grad.washington.edu/GSLISHome.html Jerold Nelson Search Committee Chair Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Washington Box 352930 Seattle, WA 98195-2930 (206)543-1894 jernel@u.washington.edu ********** II.3. Fr: Martha Henderson Re: NW State U., Louisiana: Gov't. Docs. Librarian WATSON LIBRARY NORTHWESTERN STATE UNIVERSITY NATCHITOCHES, LOUISIANA 71497 POSITION: Government Documents Librarian (Anticipated) DATE POSITION AVAILABLE: July 1, 1996 RANK AND SALARY: Assistant Professor, $26,000 for 12 months RESPONSIBILITIES (include but not limited to): 1. Develop, organize, and maintain the U.S. Documents Special Collection in accordance with Federal guidelines and the Watson Library mission. 2. Provide service for use of government publications and assist library users with research as needed. 3. Provide library instruction for use of government publications. 4. Promote use of the government publications collection. 5. Assist with general reference service as assigned, including evening and weekend hours. 6. Supervise student employees. QUALIFICATIONS: 1. REQUIRED: a. ALA-accredited MLS; b. Knowledge of Government Printing Office standards and guidelines; c. Service-oriented philosophy and ability to work and communicate effectively with students, faculty, and staff; d. Knowledge of and experience with computerized sources of information and the Internet; e. Scholarly and professional competence. 2. DESIRABLE: a. Previous government documents experience; b. Previous academic library experience; c. Previous experience with NOTIS; d. Previous library instruction experience. DESCRIPTION OF THE LIBRARY: The Library has a total of 24 staff members, including 14 professional employees. Its collection comprises more than 300,000 bound volumes, over 650,000 microform equivalents, more than 480,000 government documents, and over 6,000 media items. The Library includes an online catalog, a strong archival program, a large archives collection, a media center, and branches in Shreveport and Leesville. The building, completed and occupied in 1972, is an attractive modern building of three floors with about 94,000 square feet of space and ample parking facilities. DESCRIPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY: Northwestern State University, with an enrollment of over 9,000 students, is located on a 916-acre tract in historically rich Natchitoches, the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase. Founded in 1714, Natchitoches is 70 miles southeast of Shreveport and 50 miles northwest of Alexandria. APPLICATIONS: Send letter of application, resume, and names and addresses of three (3) references by November 27, 1995 to: Dr. Ada D. Jarred, Director of Libraries Watson Library Northwestern State University Natchitoches, LA 7l497 Telephone: 3l8/357-4403 NORTHWESTERN STATE UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA IS AN EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY/AFFIRMATIVE ACTION EMPLOYER. Women, minorities, and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply. ********** II.4. Fr: Martha Henderson Re: NW State U., Louisiana: Special Collections Librarian WATSON LIBRARY NORTHWESTERN STATE UNIVERSITY NATCHITOCHES, LA 71497 POSITION: Special Collections Librarian with faculty rank (Anticipated) DATE POSITION AVAILABLE: July 1, 1996 RANK AND SALARY: Assistant Professor, $25,000 for 12 months RESPONSIBILITIES (include but not limited to): 1. Provide reference service to special collections during assigned hours, including some evening hours. 2. Manage special collections of Louisiana materials and rare books. 3. Assist archivist in management and service of archival materials. 4. Plan for future development of collections and online access to materials. 5. Process Louisiana documents received from State Library. 6. Supervise student employees and graduate assistants. 7. Report to University Archivist. QUALIFICATIONS: 1. REQUIRED: a. ALA-accredited MLS; b. Knowledge of MARC formats and APPM standards; c. Facility with word processing, database, and spreadsheet programs; d. Service-oriented philosophy of work; e. Ability to work and communicate effectively with faculty, students, staff; f. Knowledge of computerized reference services, online databases, and the Internet. 2. DESIRABLE: a. Previous academic library experience; b. Reading ability of French language; c. Previous experience with special collections; d. Previous experience with NOTIS; e. Previous experience with MARC formats and APPM formats. DESCRIPTION OF THE LIBRARY: The library has a total of 24 staff members, including 13 professional employees. Its collection comprises more than 300,000 bound volumes, over 650,000 microform equivalents, more than 480,000 government documents, and over 6,000 media items. The Library includes an online catalog, an in-house network of CD-ROM databases, a strong archival program, a large archives collection, a media center, and branches in Shreveport and Leesville. The building, completed and occupied in 1972, is an attractive modern building of three floors with about 94,000 square feet of space and ample parking facilities. DESCRIPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY: Northwestern State University, with an enrollment of over 9,000 students is located on a 916-acre tract in historically rich Natchitoches, the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase. Founded in 1714, Natchitoches is 70 miles southeast of Shreveport and 50 miles northwest of Alexandria. APPLICATIONS: Send letter of application, resume, and names and addresses of three (3) references by November 27, 1995 to: Dr. Ada D. Jarred, Director of Libraries Watson Library Northwestern State University Natchitoches, LA 71497 Telephone: 318/357-4403 NORTHWESTERN STATE UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA IS AN EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY/AFFIRMATIVE ACTION EMPLOYER. Women, minorities, and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply. Martha V. Henderson, Ed.D. Voice: (318)357-4403 Professor and Coordinator Library Automation FAX: (318)357-4470 Northwestern State University Natchitoches, LA 71457 Henderson@alpha.nsula.edu ********************************************************** III. NOTICES III.B.1. Fr: Canadian Association for Information Science Re: CAIS/ACSI '96 Call for Papers CAIS/ACSI '96 - CALL FOR PAPERS 24th Annual Conference Canadian Association for Information Science Association canadienne des sciences de l'information to be held at Faculty of Information Studies University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario June 2, 3 and 4, 1996 THEME: THE IMPACT OF ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING We hear a great deal about the technology of electronic publishing, but much less about its effects: on the book trade, on the art of creative writing, on education, on entertainment. This year's conference, which enjoys the support of the Canadian Library Association, the Canadian Booksellers' Association, and the Association of Canadian Publishers is aimed at exploring these topics. The conference will feature invited speakers who will set the scene on such topics as: * The market and marketing strategies for publishers * The technology of electronic publishing: where is it going? * The view from the bookstore: strategies to cope with a revolution * Impact on education * Impact on libraries Contributed paper submissions are invited on any of these or closely related topics. Please send an abstract of 300-500 words by January 15, 1996 to Prof. Charles Meadow Faculty of Information Studies University of Toronto 140 St George Street Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1. FAX: (416) 971-1399 E-mail: meadow@fis.utoronto.ca Final versions of papers selected will be due by May 1, 1996 in order to allow time for publication of a proceedings to be distributed at the conference. ********** III.B.2. Fr: TRACY@sla.org Re: Technology and Tools in the Information Age The Special Libraries Association's 1996 Winter Education Conference, "Technology and Tools in the Information Age," will be held January 28-30 at the Stouffer Tower City Plaza Hotel in Cleveland, OH. Offered annually, this three-day event includes a variety of half- day workshops, full-day courses, technology-related exhibits and demonstrations of the newest products and services designed to enhance your special library needs. Course offerings include: CD-ROM, Internet, new technologies, information management, and much, much more! To receive a brochure and registration information, contact Tracy Lofty, SLA's Manager of Professional Development, at (202) 234- 4700, ext. 649 or send an Internet message to tracy@sla.org. Please provide your postal mailing address. ********** III.C.1. Fr: sleator@BOBO.LINK.CS.CMU.EDU R: Link Grammar Parser, Version 2 In Spring 1992, we released version 1 of our "link grammar parser". This is a syntactic parser for English, based on an original theory of syntax related to dependency grammar. Several hundred people took copies of the parser, and a number of people reported that they were using it or were planning to use it for various projects. However, the parser had a number of weaknesses, and its coverage was not sufficient for it to be of much use to people. With the help of Dennis Grinberg and John Lafferty, we have now released version 2, which is significantly better than version 1. Some of the advantages are described below. We have also created a web site about the system: http://bobo.link.cs.cmu.edu/grammar/html/intro.html This site contains a lot of information about the parser, and allows you to experiment with it. The parser and its documentation are available via anonymous ftp: /afs/cs/user/sleator/public/link-grammar on host ftp.cs.cmu.edu We think the parser could now be useful for a variety of applications that involve recovering the syntactic structure of text. These might include speech recognition, speech generation, grammar checking, machine translation, and language understanding systems. Davy Temperley Daniel Sleator Daniel Sleator Office: 412-268-7563 Professor of Computer Science Fax: 412-268-5576 Carnegie Mellon University Home: 412-362-8675 Pittsburgh, PA 15213 sleator@cs.cmu.edu IMPROVEMENTS 1. The new version is "robust". The old version could not assign any syntactic structure to a sentence unless it could completely interpret the sentence. The new version is able to skip over portions of the sentence that it cannot understand, and assign some structure to the rest of the sentence. 2. Quite apart from the "robustness" feature, the parser's coverage is vastly improved. The old system could only fully parse about 30% of sentences in a typical Wall Street Journal article. The new version can find complete parses for 70-75% of such sentences. 3. The new version has a much larger dictionary. The old version had about 25000 words; the new version has about 59000. (Here we count individual forms of verbs and nouns: e.g., "chase", "chases", "chased", and "chasing" are counted as separate words. The number of "stem" words is probably about 30000.) 4. The new version has an "unknown word" feature. It has a general syntactic category which it assigns to any word which it does not recognize. (In the process, it labels the unknown word as a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb.) 5. The parser has a "two-stage" system. At the first stage, it considers common syntactic constructions; the "stage one" coverage is roughly comparable to the coverage of the earlier version. In the second stage, it considers many less common constructions. Here are a few examples of "stage-two" constructions: Plural nouns acting as noun modifiers ("He was booked on a weapons violations charge") Adjectival nouns preceding adjectives ("City clerical workers went on strike today") Prepositional phrases modifying verbs, but preceding the direct object ("She sold for five dollars the ring her mother gave her"). Manner adverbs modifying adjectives ("The delicately quiet tone of the cello blended well with the fiercely percussive piano chords") Unusual cases of subject-verb inversion ("Also invited to the meeting were several prominent scientists") Auxiliaries without main verbs ("If you don't want to do it, you should find someone who will") Unusual uses of gerunds ("We have to talk about this sleeping in class and girl chasing") Noun-phrases introducing proper names ("The actress Whoopi Goldberg and the singer Michael Jackson attended the ceremony") Hyphenated expressions as noun-phrases ("The buy-out caused a free-for-all in the mid-afternoon") 6. The post-processing system released with the earlier version has been improved. There is now a "wild-card" character for post-processing, allowing rules to be expressed much more parsimoniously. 7. The new version has greatly improved documentation. We have compiled a "guide-to-links", describing every connector type and every syntactic construction covered by the parser. The guide also contains a complete description of post-processing. We also provide a general introduction (in a file called "manual") to the system, describing the general logic of link grammars and the post-processing system and the notational system we use for expressing them, as well as a number of special features of the parser. We hope this will allow people to modify the system substantially if they wish or design their own versions (e.g. dictionaries for other languages). 8. The dictionary is using a different (and much more logical) link naming scheme. ********************************************************** IRLIST Digest is distributed from the University of California, Division of Library Automation, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland, CA. 94612-3550. 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