IRLIST Digest ISSN 1064-6965 December 9, 1996 Volume XIII, Number 49 Issue 336 ********************************************************** I. QUERIES 1. Cooperative International Partnerships for Sci-Tech Libraries II. JOBS 1. The Robert Gordon U., Scotland: Research in IR 2. Information Science Abstracts: Senior Technical Editor III. NOTICES A. Publications 1. Social Informatics, JASIS issue - CFP #2 2. FARNET's Washington Update 3. Articles for Special Issue of IJHCS: Detecting and Preventing Miscommunication B. Meetings 1. Text Retreival Conference C. Miscellaneous 1. Oregon Health Sciences U.: Training in Medical Informatics IV. PROJECTS E. Miscellaneous 1. CNI's Assessing the Academic Networked Environment ********************************************************** I. QUERIES I.1. Fr: Martin Kesselman Re: The Robert Gordon U., Scotland: Research in IR School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences The Robert Gordon University Aberdeen, Scotland Three posts are available in IR research: two at RA/RF level, and one at research student level: RESEARCH FELLOW/ASSISTANT (2-YEAR FIXED TERM) REF 676 RESEARCH FELLOW/ASSISTANT (1-YEAR FIXED TERM) REF 677 Applicants are sought to work within the existing Information Retrieval Research Group on the following exciting research projects: * Cluster-Based Retrieval for the WWW (Ref 676) * Extensible Information Seeking Environments (Ref 677) Experience in the following is highly desirable: * Object-oriented design and programming * Internet/WWW * Information Retrieval * User Interfaces Applicants should hold qualifications in Computing Science or a cognate discipline: Research Fellow post requires a PhD Research Assistant post requires MSc/BSc(Hons) degree SALARY SCALES: Research Fellow 14607 - 18424 pounds sterling per annum Research Assistant 14607 - 16480 pounds sterling per annum 37 Hour Week. Local Government Superannuation Scheme. Application forms/further details from: (Please quote Ref No.) Personnel Department The Robert Gordon University Schoolhill ABERDEEN AB10 1FR Tel (01224) 262085 INTERVIEWS will take place in January 1997. RESEARCH STUDENT Also required for the Information Retrieval Research Group to work on the Extensible Information Seeking Environments project. This position requires BSc(Hons) degree in Computing Science or a cognate discipline. Tuition fees paid. Allowance of 5190 pounds sterling per annum. Application forms from: Miss Emma Forster Administrative Officer Academic Affairs Department The Robert Gordon University Schoolhill ABERDEEN AB10 1FR Tel (01224) 262163 Email e.forster@rgu.ac.uk ALL POSTS: CLOSING DATE: 20 December 1996 FURTHER INFORMATION is available at: http://www.scms.rgu.ac.uk/vacancies/ ********** II.2. Fr: Kate McCain Re: Information Science Abstracts: Senior Technical Editor BRIEF DESCRIPTION: Editorial Publisher of Information Science Abstracts seeks part-time consultant (5 00 hours per year) with expertise in information science/technology/management print and electronic publishing and editing, particularly with abstracting and indexing related services, to serve as a Senior Technical Editor to maintain technical oversight of the quality of the publication, and make recommendations on its content and marketing strategy. Send resumes to: Dept. TJM, Plenum Press, 233 Spring St., New York, N.Y., 10013-1578. EOE. INFORMATION SCIENCE ABSTRACTS (ISA) SENIOR TECHNICAL EDITOR POSITION BACKGROUND: ISA,(Information Science Abstracts), a leading database for professsionals in the field of library and information science, is owned by Documentation Abstracts, Inc. (DAI), a not-for-profit corporation sponsored by professional societies in the library and information sciences. DAI retains the ownership and copyright of ISA, but Plenum Publishing Corp. is responsible for operations and publication. DAI and Plenum have been working together to continually improve the quality of ISA and have determined that a Senior Technical Editor position should be created. POSITION OBJECTIVES AND RELATIONSHIPS: The Senior Technical Editor will take responsibility and initiative to ensure the technical quality and professional acceptance of ISA and to oversee its publication. The team that shapes ISA consists of The Senior Technical Editor, The Editor, The ISA Marketing Director, The Publisher and The DAI Board. ISA should be responsive in scope and coverage, at minimum, to information researchers, educators, and practitioners in the sponsoring societies. The indexing should provide easy, full, and rational access to useful abstracts, consistent with the best professional standards. The Senior Technical Editor will work for Plenum. Policy input will be provided by the DAI Board. Operating decisions are made by Plenum. The Senior Technical Editor will be responsible to be a liaison between the Owner and The Publisher to ensure a successful, high quality publication. POSITION DUTIES: Maintain technical oversight of the quality of the publication within the scope definition and policies set by the DAI Board including * specific scope and coverage of the field(s) * abstracting and indexing * front matter and supporting documentation. Set professional standards for the publication including the index and classification schemes. Ensure that high quality standards are met. Oversee the selection of materials for inclusion. Maintain liaison between the DAI BOARD and the Publisher. Provide assistance to the Publisher in market identification and penetration. JOB QUALIFICATIONS: Professional experience in print and/or electronic database publishing. Recognized expert in at least one of the mainfocus areas: information science, information technology, or information management. Effective written and oral communication skills. Publishing and editing experience, particularly with abstracting and indexing related services. Experience with working in an environment that emphasizes consensus building and collegial cooperation. LEVEL OF COMMITMENT: The level of effort is expected to be approximately 500 hours per year. This effort level will not necessarily be linear throughout the year. The Senior Technical Editor will be expected to attend all DAI Board meetings and have frequent interaction with both the Board and the Plenum staff, with the base of operations, Plenum's corporate headquarters in New York City. Some travel will be required. SEND RESUMES TO: Dept TJM, Plenum Press 233 Spring Street NY, NY 10013-1578 EOE ********************************************************** III. NOTICES III.A.1. From: Rob Kling Re: Social Informatics, JASIS issue - CFP #2 CALL FOR PAPERS SOCIAL INFORMATICS Special Topics Issue of JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF INFORMATION SCIENCE (_JASIS_) The next Special Topics Issue of the _Journal of the American Sociey of Informatin Science) (JASIS) is scheduled to come out in early 1998 and will focus on the topic of SOCIAL INFORMATICS. The guest editors for this special issue will be Professors Rob Kling, Carol A. Hert, and Howard Rosenbaum of the School of Library and Information Science and Center for Social Informatics at Indiana University. Social Informatics (SI) refers to the body of research and study that examines social aspects of computerization -- including the roles of information technology in social and organizational change, the uses of information technologies in social contexts, and the ways that the social organization of information technologies is influenced by social forces and social practices. SI studies are often cognizant of the ways that people and organizations act in support of differing social values and beliefs, and have different positions of power in their various relationships. Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: * impacts of information technologies in groups, organizations, and larger scale social settings; * analysis of computerization and the use of information technologies, in social context; * life with computer-mediated communication (CMC); * the social shaping of information systems; * the production, distribution and consumption of texts; * the roles of information technologies in changing or reinforcing patterns of worklife, community life, and the character of institutions. For additional information about social informatics, see the Social Informatics Home page at: http://www.slis.indiana.edu/SI The editors seek papers that are empirically anchored and/or grounded in significant theoretical approaches. Inquiries can be made to any of the guest editors at kling@indiana.edu, chert@indiana.edu, or hrosenba@indiana.edu. Manuscript submissions (four copies of full articles) should be addressed to: Professors Hert, Kling and Rosenbaum Center for Social Informatics School of Library and Information Science 10th and Jordan Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405-1801 (812) 855-9763 voice || (812) 855-6166 fax Manuscripts may be submitted in hard copy, on disk (MS-DOS format, either plain ASCII text, or WordPerfect for DOS or WinWord ), or by electronic mail (plain ASCII text or UUencoded Word-Perfect 5.1, 6.0, WinWord, or RTF). Electronic submissions will be sent to a special email address; please contact the editors for details. The deadline for accepting manuscripts for consideration for publication in this special issue is January 15, 1997. All manuscripts will be reviewed by a select panel of referees, and those accepted will be published in a special issue of _JASIS_. Original artwork and a signed copy of the copyright release form will be required for all accepted papers. A copy of the call for papers is available on the World Wide Web at http://ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu/~kling/jasis/. Further information about _JASIS_ is now available at http://www.asis.org/ (under Publications). Rob Kling http://ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu/~kling The Information Society (journal) http://www.slis.indiana.edu/TIS Center for Social Informatics http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI Indiana University 10th & Jordan, Room 005C Bloomington, IN 47405-1801 812-855-9763 // Fax: 855-6166 ********** III.A.2. Fr: Heather Boyles Re: FARNET's Washington Update FARNET's Washington Update --- December 6, 1996 IN THIS ISSUE: o International intellectual property issues up for grabs in Geneva: sticky questions remain on Internet-related copyright issues o Next skirmish in cryptography export battle initiated by administration: some in industry 'defect' to administration's position >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Written from FARNET's Washington office, "FARNET's Washington Update" is a service to FARNET members and other interested subscribers. We gratefully acknowledge EDUCOM's NTTF and the Coalition for Networked Information for additional support. If you would like more information about the Update or would like to offer comments or suggestions, please contact Heather Boyles at heather@farnet.org. ********** III.A.3. Fr: Susan McRoy Re: Articles for Special Issue of IJHCS: Detecting and Preventing Miscommunication DETECTING, REPAIRING, AND PREVENTING HUMAN-MACHINE MISCOMMUNICATION A Special Issue of the International Journal of Human Computer Studies/Knowledge Acquisition Guest Editor: Susan McRoy Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI 53211, USA mcroy@cs.uwm.edu Deadline for submissions is December 31, 1996 http://tigger.cs.uwm.edu/~mcroy/mnm-si/ CALL FOR PAPERS: Any computer system that communicates must be able to cope with the possibility of miscommunication--including misunderstanding, non-understanding, and misinterpretation: * In misunderstanding, one participant obtains an interpretation that she believes is complete and correct, but which is, however, not the one that the other speaker intended her to obtain. * In non-understanding, a participant either fails to obtain any interpretation at all, or obtains more than one interpretation, with no way to choose among them. * In misinterpretation, the most likely interpretation of a participant's utterance suggests that their beliefs about the world are unexpectedly out of alignment with the other's. All three forms of miscommunication can eventually lead to repair in a dialogue; however, misinterpretations and non-understandings are typically recognized immediately, whereas a participant is not aware, at least initially, when a misunderstanding occurs. Additionally, misinterpretation can be a source of misunderstanding. Early work on robust interaction with computers concerned the correction of spelling or grammatical errors in a user's utterance so that the system could more easily match them against a fixed linguistic model; work has also been done in the area of speech recognition, attempting to find the best fit of a sound signal to legal sequences of linguistic objects. Other systems have attempted to detect misconceptions in the user's model of the domain of discourse. All of these approaches have assumed that the system's model is always correct. More recently, researchers have been looking at detecting and correcting errors in the system's model of an interaction. This work includes research on speech repairs, miscommunication, misunderstanding, non-understanding, and related work in planning, such as plan misrecognition and plan repair. The purpose of this special issue is to present important results by researchers who are developing theoretical models of robust interaction or are designing robust systems. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: * Theories that delineate what knowledge must be represented, how it will be obtained and updated, and how responsibility for achieving robustness might be distributed among the interactants. * Strategies for identifying POTENTIAL causes of breakdowns, such as ambiguities, misconceptions, and plan misrecognition, in order to avert miscommunication. * Strategies for identifying symptoms of ACTUAL breakdowns, such as deviations from expected behavior, unresolvable ambiguities, and speech errors. * Techniques for correcting errors in interpretation that have been used in other areas of AI, such as plan recognition and computer vision, and in related areas, such as human-computer interaction and multimedia. * Approaches to minimizing and correcting miscommunication in tutoring systems and education. * Empirical data regarding the occurrence of miscommunication and approaches to robust communication that derive from empirical methods. * Research in knowledge representation that would be useful in detecting, repairing, and preventing miscommunication. We welcome papers that present emipirical results, theoretical models, or implemented systems addressing the problem of detecting, repairing, or preventing human-machine miscommunication. SUBMISSIONS: Please send your submission to the directly to the guest editor, Susan McRoy. Email submissions in postscript (but not mime encoded) are preferred and should be sent to mnm-si@tigger.cs.uwm.edu the subject line ``IJHCS submission''. Otherwise, four copies of the paper can be sent by surface mail to the street address given below. Your submission should be prepared in single column, double-spaced format using at least an 11 pt font. Sections should be numbered and references should use (author, year) style. (Complete instructions for authors are available at the IJHCS website, given below.) SCHEDULE: Submissions are due December 31, 1996 Decisions will be made by March 31, 1997 Production copy will be due May 31, 1997 GUEST EDITOR: Susan McRoy, Computer Science University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 3200 North Cramer Street Milwaukee, WI 53211 mcroy@cs.uwm.edu (414) 229-6695 (phone) (414) 229-6958 (fax) http://www.cs.uwm.edu/cs/faculty/mcroy/ ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Additional information about the International Journal of Human Computer Studies/Knowledge Acquisition and instructions for authors are available at: http://ksi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/IJHCS/ ********** III.B.1. Fr: Ellen M. Voorhees Re: Text Retreival Conference CALL FOR PARTICIPATION TEXT RETRIEVAL CONFERENCE January 1997 - November 1997 The Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) workshop series encourages research in information retrieval from large text applications by providing a large test collection, uniform scoring procedures, and a forum for organizations interested in comparing their results. Now in its sixth year, the conference has become the major experimental effort in the field. Participants in the first five TREC conferences have examined a wide variety of retrieval techniques, including methods using automatic thesauri, sophisticated term weighting, natural language techniques, relevance feedback, and advanced pattern matching. You are invited to submit a proposal for participation in TREC-6. TREC has two main tasks, ad hoc and routing retrieval. The ad hoc task investigates the performance of systems that search a static set of documents using new user need statements ("topics"); the routing task investigates the performance of systems that use standing queries to search new streams of documents. In addition, TREC has smaller "tracks" that allow participants to focus on particular subproblems of the retrieval task. Participants will be expected to work with approximately a million documents (2 gigabytes of data), retrieving lists of ranked documents in response to the topics. NIST will distribute the data and will collect and analyze the results. Dissemination of TREC work and results other than in the (publically available) conference proceedings is welcomed, but the conditions of participation preclude specific advertising claims based on TREC results. As before, the WORKSHOP IN NOVEMBER WILL BE OPEN ONLY TO PARTICIPATING GROUPS THAT SUBMIT RESULTS and to government sponsors. The full call for participation including submission details can be found at the trec home page: http://potomac.ncsl.nist.gov/trec All responses should be submitted by Jan. 6, 1997 to Ellen Voorhees, TREC project leader, at ellen.voorhees@nist.gov Any questions about conference participation, response format, etc. should be sent to the same address. ********** III.C.1. Fr: William Hersh Re: Oregon Health Sciences U.: Training in Medical Informatics Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) is seeking qualified applicants for its training programs in medical informatics. OHSU offers two programs: a postdoctoral fellowship for those who hold doctoral degrees (M.D., Ph.D., or others) and a master of science degree for individuals at any post-bacclaureate level. The postdoctoral fellowship is a full-time program with funding options from both the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and Veterans Administration. Individuals spend 2-3 years pursuing an individualized plan of study that culminates in a research project. Fellows can optionally enroll in the master of science of program as well as take courses from other Portland-area institutions, such as Portland State University and Oregon Graduate Institute. The fellowship program pays a stipend and covers a portion of tuition costs for coursework. Individuals are provided a workspace and computer with a connection to the campus network. Those with a clinical background are allowed to pursue clinical practice on a part-time basis. A Web page providing more details about the fellowship program is available at: http://www.ohsu.edu/bicc-informatics/fellowship/ The master of science program is offered through the OHSU School of Medicine. The goal of the program is to train individuals to find employment in the development and management of health information systems. Individuals can pursue the program on a full-time or part-time basis. The required coursework spans four areas -- medical informatics, health and medicine, computer science, and quantitative methods -- and culminates in a masters thesis. Students can also obtain practical experience in hospital and industry settings. A full-time student can complete the program in 4-5 quarters. A World Wide Web page describes admission requirements, the curriculum, and other details of the masters degree program at: http://www.ohsu.edu/bicc-informatics/ms/ An application form for the program in PDF format is available from this Web page (though electronic submissions are not yet allowed). OHSU is a leading center of medical informatics. It is one of the largest recipients nationally of funding from the NLM, the main funder of medical informatics research in the United States. Its Division of Health Informatics contains 12 core faculty, along with affiliates from prominent local HMOs and medical software vendors. Faculty interests include: - The electronic medical record - Information retrieval - Clinician information needs - Consumer health informatics - Medical decision making - Telemedicine - Artificial intelligence and machine learning - Clinical epidemiology - Outcomes research For more information on the postdoctoral fellowship program, contact: Kent Spackman, M.D., Ph.D. Director, Division of Health Informatics Oregon Health Sciences University 3181 W Sam Jackson Park Rd. Portland, OR 97201 email: spackman@ohsu.edu voice: 503-494-4502 For more information on the master of science program, contact: William Hersh, M.D. Director, Master of Science in Medical Informatics Program Oregon Health Sciences University 3181 W Sam Jackson Park Rd. Portland, OR 97201 email: hersh@ohsu.edu voice: 503-494-4563 ********************************************************** IV. PROJECTS IV.E.1. Fr: Joan K Lippincott Re: CFP: CNI's Assessing the Academic Networked Environment I am pleased to announce the posting of a Call for Participation in CNI's Assessing the Academic Networked Environment project. The full text of the Call is available at http://www.cni.org/projects/assessing/ CNI is seeking six to ten academic institutions to participate in this project; institutions do not have to be members of the CNI Task Force to participate. An informal meeting for potential participants will be held in conjunction with the CNI Task Force meeting on Friday, December 6, 1996 from 9:00 am to noon in the Rubens room at the Crowne Plaza Parc 55 Hotel. In addition, a Project Briefing on the initiative will be held during the Task Force meeting. The project will build on the work of Charles McLure and Cynthia Lopata, whose manual "Assessing the Academic Networked Environment: Strategies and Options" was published by CNI in February, 1996. The participating institutions will field test measures described in the manual and possibly develop additional measures on such topics as network use and availability, the impact of the network on teaching and learning, and networked library resources and services. The participating institutions will share information electronically and through participation in two institutes in 1997. The result of the project will be a handbook of field-tested measures for use by other institutions. Each participating institution will be asked to designate a liaison to the project as well as a team representing various sectors of the university. CNI will cover the administrative costs of the project, and participating institutions will fund the travel expenses for their team's participation in the institutes as well as expenses incurred on campus. The project is being coordinated by CNI staff, Visiting Fellow Christopher Peebles, Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University, and Charles McClure, Distinguished Professor, Syracuse University. Institutions are asked to declare their interest in applying to participate in the project by December 20, 1996 (via e-mail to joan@cni.org) and to file their response to the Call by January 31, 1997. Additional information is available in the full text of the Call. Joan K. Lippincott, Interim Executive Director Coalition for Networked Information 21 Dupont Circle, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 296-5098 FAX: (202) 872-0884 Internet: joan@cni.org ********************************************************** 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 ftp.dla.ucop.edu, the files will be found in the directory /data/ftp/pub/irl, stored in subdirectories by year (e.g., data/ftp/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