IRLIST Digest ISSN 1064-6965 April 1, 1996 Volume XIII, Number 14 Issue 301 ********************************************************** II. JOBS 1. College of Staten Island/CUNY: Reference Librarian III. NOTICES B. Meetings 1. CoopIS '96 C. Miscellaneous 1. AI/Expert Systems and the Web -- Discussion Leaders Needed!! IV. PROJECTS A. Abstracts 1. IR-Related Dissertation Abstracts ********************************************************** II. JOBS II.1. Fr: Michael O'Donnell Re: CoopIS'96 *** PRELIMINARY PROGRAM *** Brussels, Belgium, June 19-21, 1996 Organized by IFCIS, The Intn'l Foundation on Cooperative Information Systems THE CONFERENCE: The First IFCIS International Conference on Cooperative Information Systems (CoopIS) is the premier event Information Systems (IFCIS). The Foundation and the conference series bring together the scientific community previously served by the international workshops on Interoperability in Multidatabase Systems (IMS) and the conference series on Cooperative Information Systems (CoopIS ICICIS). FOR COMPLETE INFORMATION, SEE THE WEB SITE: http://www.cs.uga.edu/LSDIS/activities THE LOCATION Auditorium Aula QC Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) Campus Etterbeek Pleinlaan 2 Gate "VUB-13" B-1050 Brussel TECHNICAL PROGRAM WEDNESDAY JUNE 19, 1996 SESSION 1: Invited Talk, Chair: A. Sheth. "From Interoperability to Cooperation," Marek Rusinkiewicz. SESSION 2: Classification and Ontologies, Chair: Witold Litwin. "Coordinating Knowledge Elicitation to Support Context Construction in Cooperative Information Systems," A. Ouksel, I. Ahmed. "OBSERVER: An Approach for Query Processing in Global Information Systems based on Interoperation across Pre-existing Ontologies," E. Mena, V. Kashyap, A. Sheth, A. Illarramendi. "Dynamic Classification Ontologies for Discovery in Cooperative Federated Databases," J. Kahng, D. McLeod. SESSION 3: Workflow Management, Chair: Mike Huhns. "A General Framework for the Execution of Heterogenous Programs in Workflow Management Systems," Hans Schuster, Stefan Jablonski, Pertra Heinl, Christoph Bussler. "Using Workflow Management in DNA Sequencing," Joao Meidanis, Gottfried Vossen, Mathias Wesek. "Workflow Recovery," Johann Eder, Walter Liebhart. SESSION 4: Potpourri, Chair: Matthias Jarke. "May document analysis tools bridge the gap between paper and workflow? A critical survey," Stephan Baumann, Michael Malburg, Claudia Wenzel. "Identifying a Forest Hierarchy in an OODB Specification Hierarchy Satisfying Disciplined Modeling," Y. Perl, J. Geller, H. Gu. "High-Availability LH* Schemes with Mirroring," W. Litwin, M.-A. Neimat. THURSDAY JUNE 20,1996 SESSION 5: Data Integration, Chair: James Geller. "Protocols for Integrity Constraint Checking in Federated Databases," Paul Grefen, Jennifer Widom. "Data Integration in the RODIN Multidatabase System," J. Albert. "Integrating Data from Possibly Inconsistent Databases," Phan Minh Dung. SESSION 6: Heterogeneous and Federated Databases, Chair: Klemens Boehm. "On Using Historical Update Information for Instance Identification in Federated Databases," A. Si, C. Ying, D. McLeod. "A Translation Protocol Achieving Consensus of Semantics between Cooperating Heterogeneous Database Systems," M. Papazoglou, N. Russell, D. Edmond. "A Methodology for Building a Data Warehouse in a Scientific Environment," Karl Aberer, Klemens Hemm. SESSION 7: Cooperative Query Processing, Chair: Stefano Spaccapietra. "An Adaptive Approach to Query Mediation Across Heterogeneous Information Sources," L. Liu, C. Pu, Y. Lee. "Dynamic Integration and Query Processing with Ranked Role Sets," P. Scheuermann, Wen-Syan Li, Chris Clifton. "Web Intelligent Query - Disconnected Web Browsing using Cooperative Techniques," R. Kavasseri, T. Keating, M. Wittman, A. Joshi, S. Weerawarana. SESSION 8: Architectures for Cooperation, Chair: Marc Volz. A Generic Integration Architecture for Cooperative Information Systems J. Mylopoulos, A. Gal, K. Kontogiannis, M. Stanley Active Information Delivery in a CORBA-based Distributed Information System Guenter v. Bueltzingsloewen, Arne Koschel, Ralf Kramer Active Object-Relational Mediators Thomas Kudrass, Andreas Loew, Alejandro P. Buchmann SESSION 9: Panel I: Database research in Workflow, Management Systems, do we have anything to contribute? Moderator: Gustavo Alonso. Panelists: Ahmed Elmagarmid, Purdue University Gottfried Vossen, University of Muenster Frank Leymann, IBM Germany. FRIDAY JUNE 21, 1996 SESSION 10: Keynote Speech, Chair: Marek Rusinkiewicz. "The Future of Software is Distributed Components," Christopher Stone. SESSION 11: Invited Talks, Chair: Michael Brodie. "Live, Learn, Play, and Do Business With Information," Ray Whitehouse, ICL. "From Distributed Database Management Systems to Cooperative Information Systems -- We have the solutions, what are the problems?" Horst Biller, Software AG. SESSION 13: Panel II: How to Meet the Challenges of the Global Computing Revolution. Moderator: Robert Meersman. Panelists: To Be Announced. TUTORIALS 1. "From Legacy To Cooperative Information Systems: Visions and Challenges For Large-Scale Deployment," Michael L. Brodie, GTE Laboratories. 2. "Standards for Database Interoperability and Portability: CORBA, ODMG, and SQL3," Ramez Elmasri, The University of Texas at Arlington. Abdelsalam Helal, Purdue University. 3. "Data Mining Techniques: An Overview From A Database Perspective," Jiawei Han, School of Computing Science, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6. 4. "An Agenda for Research on Cooperative Information Systems," John Mylopoulos (University of Toronto), Giorgio De Michelis (Universita di Milano), Florian Matthes (University of Hamburg). ********** III.C.1. Fr: Martin Kesselman Re: AI/Expert Systems and the Web -- Discussion Leaders Needed!! The LITA Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems Interest Group is planning a discussion on artificial intelligence / expert systems and the Web. We're seeking 2 presenter/discussion leaders on any aspects related to this theme. There is the possibility of having computer equipment available but I would need to know by April 22 at the very latest. The discussion will take place at the American Library Association annual meeting in NYC on Sunday, July 7 at 2PM. If interested, send a brief proposal ASAP, and by April 22 at the latest, to: Martin Kesselman, Chair, LITA Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems Interest Group. Email: martyk@rci.rutgers.edu -- Fax: 908/445-3208. ========== PLEASE MAKE A NOTE OF NEW EMAIL ACCOUNT!!! Martin Kesselman Special Project Librarian Rutgers University Library of Science and Medicine P.O. Box 1029, Bevier Road Piscataway, New Jersey 08855 Tel: 908/445-3850 "All I can do is hang in there Fax: 908/445-3208 and take one day at a time!" Email: martyk@rci.rutgers.edu ********************************************************** IV. PROJECTS IV.A.1. Fr: Susanne M. Humphrey Re: Selected IR-Related Dissertation Abstracts The following are citations selected by title and abstract as being of potential interest to the Information Retrieval (IR) community, resulting from a computer search, using the CDP/Online system, of the Dissertation Abstracts International (DAI) database produced by University Microfilms International (UMI). Included are accession number (AN); author (AU); title (TI); degree, institution, year, number of pages (IN); UMI order number (DD); reference to the published DAI (SO); abstract (AB); one or more DAI subject descriptors chosen by the author (DE); thesis adviser (AR); and dates associated with the monthly update file (UP). Unless otherwise specified, paper or microform copies of dissertations may be ordered from University Microfilms International, Dissertation Copies, Post Office Box 1764, Ann Arbor, MI 48106; telephone for U.S. (except Michigan, Hawaii, Alaska): 1-800-521-3042, for Canada: 1-800-343-5299; fax: 313-973-1540. Price lists and other ordering and shipping information are in the introduction to the published DAI. An alternate source for copies is sometimes provided. Dissertation titles and abstracts contained here are published with permission of University Microfilms International, publishers of Dissertation Abstracts International (copyright by University Microfilms International), and may not be reproduced without their prior permission. AN AAI9504832 AU Hearst, Martha Alice. TI CONTEXT AND STRUCTURE IN AUTOMATED FULL-TEXT INFORMATION ACCESS. IN Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, 1994, 168p. DD Order Number: AAI9504832. SO Dissertation Abstracts International. Volume: 55-09, Section: B, page: 3977. AB This dissertation investigates the role of contextual information in the automated retrieval and display of full-text documents, using robust natural language processing algorithms to automatically detect structure in and assign topic labels to texts. Many long texts are comprised of complex topic and subtopic structure, a fact ignored by existing information access methods. I present two algorithms which detect such structure, and two visual display paradigms which use the results of these algorithms to show the interactions of multiple main topics, multiple subtopics, and the relations between main topics and subtopics. The first algorithm, called TextTiling, recognizes the subtopic structure of texts as dictated by their content. It uses domain-independent lexical frequency and distribution information to partition texts into multi-paragraph passages. The results are found to correspond well to reader judgments of major subtopic boundaries. The second algorithm assigns multiple main topic labels to each text, where the labels are chosen from pre-defined, intuitive category sets; the algorithm is trained on unlabeled text. A new iconic representation, called TileBars uses TextTiles to simultaneously and compactly display query term frequency, query term distribution and relative document length. This representation provides an informative alternative to ranking long uxts according to their overall similarity to a query. For example, a user can choose to view those documents that have an extended discussion of one set of terms and a brief but overlapping discussion of a second set of terms. This representation also allows for relevance feedback on patterns of term distribution. TileBars display documents only in terms of words supplied in the user query. For a given retrieved text, if the query words do not correspond to its main topics, the user cannot discern in what context the query terms were used. For example, a query on contaminants may retrieve documents whose main topics relate to nuclear power, food, or oil spills. To address this issue, I describe a graphical interface, called Cougar, that displays retrieved documents in terms of interactions among their automatically-assigned main topics, thus allowing users to familiarize themselves with the topics and terminology of a text collection. DE Computer Science. Information Science. Language, Linguistics. AR Wilensky, Robert. UP 9502. Revised: 950224. AN AAI9504745 AU Berger, Michael George. TI INFORMATION-SEEKING IN THE ONLINE BIBLIOGRAPHIC SYSTEM: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY. IN Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, 1994, 224p. DD Order Number: AAI9504745. SO Dissertation Abstracts International. Volume: 55-09, Section: A, page: 2617. AB The online bibliographic system has become the primary means of end-user access to library collections. This dissertation examines how users search the monograph and periodical databases of a large academic online bibliographic system, the University of California's MELVYL system. The analysis of user behavior and performance is based on a sample of 144 sessions extracted from the MELVYL system transaction logs for a typical week. The analysis divides user interactions into three levels: (1) the individual command issued by the user, (2) the search objective, which includes one or more searches for a single objective, such as a particular book, and (3) the session, which includes one or more search objectives. During the course of the study, it became evident that examining the search objective provided the best clues to the user's intentions and searching performance. By examining the series of user commands that constitute a search objective, it was possible to group search objectives into five search categories: (1) known item, (2) personal author, (3) periodical title, (4) topical, and (5) other, which included a small number of corporate author and series searches. An expert then reviewed each of the users' search objectives and assessed the users' performance. From the assessment of the 445 search objectives in the 144 sessions, performance was judged by the expert as successful (67%), suboptimal (17%), or unsuccessful (16%). The best performance was achieved for known item, personal author, and periodical title searches, and the poorest performance for topical searches. The results of this study suggested a number of conclusions that differ from those in the literature on online bibliographic systems. First, users are more successful than is usually reported in the literature. Secondly, searches that retrieve no results pose less of a problem than previously believed. Thirdly, searches can easily be grouped into a limited number of categories for analysis and improvement. The types of problems users encountered are described. Based on the conclusions of the study, a series of improvement strategies for the online bibliographic system are proposed, as well as suggestions for future work. DE Library Science. Information Science. AR Buckland, Michael K. UP 9502. Revised: 950224. AN AAI9503238 AU King, David Neale. TI CLINICAL SEARCH EFFECTIVENESS: AN ASSESSMENT OF THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE COMPUTER-ASSISTED INFORMATION SERVICES OF HOSPITAL LIBRARIES TO CLINICAL DECISION-MAKING BY PHYSICIANS. IN Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, 1994, 201p. DD Order Number: AAI9503238. SO Dissertation Abstracts International. Volume: 55-09, Section: A, page: 2618. AB The contribution of libraries to health care is among the most important issues in medical librarianship. This study examined the contribution of the computer-assisted information services of hospital libraries to clinical decision making. Four lines of research intersect in this study: research on information transfer among health professionals, research on clinical problem solving and decision making, evaluation of information retrieval system performance, and evaluation of health sciences library information services. Four notions of effectiveness that emerge from these lines of research were identified and the perspective of situational effectiveness was selected as most appropriate for this study. A research design combining qualitative and quantitative methods was devised for the study. A random sample of hospital libraries was selected. Critical incident techniques were used to explore the circumstances of 132 physicians who requested the assistance of their library in locating information pertinent to the care of one of their patients. Incidents in which physicians obtained the information needed for clinical decision making and judged the information important for resolving the clinical problem that prompted their request were considered effective. Incidents in which important changes in patient care resulted were considered critical. Incidents in which, for any reason, the information provided to the physician failed to contribute to case-related decision making were considered ineffective. Physicians in twenty-nine medical specialties participated in the study. Their patient cases represented all National Library of Medicine disease classifications. More than three-quarters of the incidents examined in this study were effective and more than one-half were critical. The distribution of participating hospitals was representative of the regional distribution of hospitals which maintain libraries. Factors related to the collections, services, budget, and staffing of the libraries were not explanatory of ineffective incidents. Illustrative scenarios (i.e., case reports) of fifteen effective, critical, and ineffective incidents are presented. DE Library Science. Information Science. Health Sciences, Medicine and Surgery. AR Smith, Linda C. UP 9502. Revised: 950224. AN AAI9503185 AU Floren-Romero, Maria Soledad. TI THE IMPACT OF INFORMATION LOSS ON RESEARCH: A CASE STUDY IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC. IN Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, 1994, 275p. DD Order Number: AAI9503185. SO Dissertation Abstracts International. Volume: 55-09, Section: A, page: 2617. AB The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of information loss in industry in a developing country. The assessment of information loss was accomplished by studying instances of information missed by scientists working in a pharmaceutical firm in the Dominican Republic and appraising the impact that this loss had on the research of the firm. Fourteen scientists working with the firm were interviewed. Ten research projects done between 1988 and 1993 were selected. Bibliographies were compiled on the topics of the research projects using databases accessible in the United States and the Dominican Republic covering information from the developed and developing countries. The study showed that all scientists missed information relevant to their research. Eighty percent of the literature retrieved in database searches was previously unknown to the scientists. Forty-one percent was relevant to their research topics and 15% of the items would have had an impact on the research if they had had them at the time the research was underway. Scientists identified potential impacts at three levels: at the user level (cognitive impacts); at the work level (changes in research); and at the firm level (effects on design and manufacturing of the drugs). The literature overlooked would have among other things increased their knowledge on the diseases and the drugs under study; it would have contributed knowledge on new laboratory techniques to diagnose diseases; it would have made possible a better and more in-depth research and better informed decision making. Access to information was associated with the information-seeking behavior of the scientists and obstacles to access to information. The study revealed that scientific research is not a national priority for development and scientists depend for access to information on their own network of information providers; their personal libraries and colleagues' resources inside or outside the country are the first choices for access to information. DE Library Science. Information Science. AR Lancaster, F W. UP 9502. Revised: 950224. AN AAI9503175 AU Dickerson, Randy Clay. TI A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO STANDARDIZED DOCUMENTATION OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENT CATALOGUES WITHIN THE MUSEUM SETTING. IN Thesis (ED.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, 1994, 129p. DD Order Number: AAI9503175. SO Dissertation Abstracts International. Volume: 55-09, Section: A, page: 2757. AB The purpose of this study was to develop a new system for documentation of musical instrument collections that would standardize the list of information that is kept on each instrument and generate a format for information storage and retrieval, making information more easily accessible to researchers. To survey current documentation procedures the investigator visited the musical instrument collections at the following museums: the Smithsonian Institute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments, the Stearns Collection at the University of Michigan, and the Shrine to Music at the University of South Dakota. Based upon information obtained through interviews of curators and/or directors of these museums, a list of information schedules was compiled, as was an inventory of modes of data registry. Conclusions about documentation effectiveness and commonalties were drawn. The most effective modes of data registry were determined to be a paper document file and computer database. The investigator developed a working model of the system including a database that contained the consolidated information schedule. The system was implemented by entering statistical information on ten instruments of the University of Illinois Collection of Musical instruments into the database. The study defined a model for a recommended system of documentation, sample screens illustrating the format of the computer database program, and a definition of the complete program operations. DE Education, Music. Music. Information Science. AR Peters, G David. UP 9502. Revised: 950224. AN AAI9502815 AU Lopez-Ramirez, Elsa Maria. TI THE ADEQUACY OF THE STRUCTURE OF THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE CLASSIFICATION SCHEME FOR ORGANIZING PHARMACY LITERATURE. IN Thesis (PH.D.)--THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY, 1994, 272p. DD Order Number: AAI9502815. SO Dissertation Abstracts International. Volume: 55-09, Section: A, page: 2618. AB The National Library of Medicine Classification Scheme (NLMC) was developed in 1946 utilizing basic ideas from Eileen Cunningham's Medical Library Classification, a classification scheme developed from the viewpoint of teaching medicine. Three classification schemes have been developed for the organization of pharmaceutical literature: (1) Eli Lilly Company, (2) Sheppard Library at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, and (3) Lloyd Library, University of Cincinnati. There is no evidence in the literature that these classification schemes are kept up-to-date. Since the NLMC is the only up-to-date classification scheme available in the United States for the organization of health sciences literature, it would be an important contribution to determine how adequate the system is for organizing health sciences literature other than medicine. The purpose of this study was to examine how the structure of the NLMC accommodates pharmaceutical literature, to determine its adequacy in organizing this body of literature, and to contribute seminal knowledge on the history and development of this classification scheme. The basic tools used in the study were a list of disciplines of the pharmacy field published by the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP), the NLMC, the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), six bibliographies representing the recommended resources necessary to support the pharmacy discipline, and CATLINE. The six bibliographies were merged using the computer program Pro-Cite to generate a database named Asklepios. The study was limited to an analysis of the NLMC classification numbers assigned to bibliographic records of monographs representing the body of literature on pharmacy. The study population was 1,979 records. In the NLMC pharmacy literature is accommodated in subclass QV 701-835 Pharmacy and pharmaceutics. The research revealed five fundamental categories provided in the NLMC for pharmacy literature. Ten fundamental categories were identified in the published pharmacy literature. The analysis revealed that the structure of the NLMC brought together 42 percent of the literature, 41 percent was scattered throughout the classification scheme, and 17 percent was classified in the Library of Congress Classification. DE Library Science. Health Sciences, Pharmacy. AR Clack, Doris H. UP 9502. Revised: 950224. AN AAINN90568 AU Baron, Lisa. TI THE EFFECTIVENESS OF LABELLED, TYPED LINKS AS CUES IN HYPERTEXT SYSTEMS. IN Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO (CANADA), 1994, 211p. DD Order Number: AAINN90568. SO Dissertation Abstracts International. Volume: 55-09, Section: A, page: 2617. AB This research examines the classification of link types within hypertext databases. It is proposed that labelled links act as cues, enabling understanding of the structure and leading to more informed navigational choices. Although there is anecdotal evidence that indicating link types to readers is useful in hypertext systems, there is no experimental data to support this position. The goal of the proposed research is to provide a basis for the development of labels identifying link types, by focusing primarily on the hypertext readers' use of links. It addresses whether labelling the different types of links changes the effectiveness of searching a hypertext database by providing or enhancing a structure for readers of nonlinear texts. An experiment was run to determine which of the following 3 conditions serve users with better cues and lead to increases performance in both browsing and querying scenarios: (1) Providing only organizational links; (2) Adding unlabelled semantic, rhetorical, and pragmatic links in addition to the organizational links; and (3) Adding labelled semantic, rhetorical, and pragmatic links to the organizational links. The experiment used a between subject design. Thirty-six students from the University of Western Ontario, Graduate School of Library and Information Science volunteered for the experiment. All subjects had a minimum of one semester of cataloguing. The hypertext document was the OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) Cataloguing Utility manual and the hypertext platform was SuperBook. The results showed that there was no significant difference between the three conditions in the browsing task, however, subjects who had labelled content-based links performed significantly better on the query task. The case study analysis of a subset of the experimental subject population showed that in the query task, labelled links led to the correct answer more often than unlabelled links. It was also shown that while link usage was small, subjects who had labelled links used more rhetorical and pragmatic links. Subjects who performed well on the browsing and querying tasks exhibited similar navigational behaviours. DE Library Science. AR Tague-Sutcliffe, Jean. Kinnucan, Mark. IB 0-315-90568-9 UP 9502. Revised: 950224. ********************************************************** IRLIST Digest is distributed from the University of California, Division of Library Automation, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland, CA. 94612-3550. Send subscription requests and submissions to: NCGUR@UCCMVSA.UCOP.EDU Editorial Staff: Clifford Lynch calur@uccmvsa.ucop.edu Nancy Gusack ncgur@uccmvsa.ucop.edu The IRLIST Archives is set up for anonymous FTP. Using anonymous FTP via the host dla.ucop.edu, the files will be found in the directory pub/irl, stored in subdirectories by year (e.g., /pub/irl/1993). Search or browse archived IR-L Digest issues on the Web at: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/idom/irlist/ These files are not to be sold or used for commercial purposes. Contact 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