Information Retrieval List Digest 015 (March 23, 1990) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/irld/irld-015 IRLIST Digest March 23, 1990 Volume VII Number 9 Issue 15 ********************************************************** This issue and future issues of IRLIST Digest will be much shorter than the issues in 1989 and early 1990. The basic outline, or table of contents, will be included in every issue, although we may not have received submissions for each topic. Issues will be compiled and produced as material is received. I. NOTICES: A. Meetings annoncements/Calls for papers 1. Turing 1990 Collogquim, April 3-6, 1990, England B. Publications announcements C. Miscellaneous II. QUERIES: A. Questions and answers B. Requests for information 1. Request for word kill list III. JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS: IV. PROJECTS: A. Initiatives and proposals B. Bibliographies 1. Selected IR-related dissertation abstracts (This will be an ongoing submission as there are hundreds of abstracts.) C. Abstracts D. Miscellaneous ********************************************************** I. NOTICES I.A.1. Fr: Turing Conference Re: Turing 1990 Colloquium, April 3-6, 1990, England TURING 1990 COLLOQUIUM At the University of Sussex, Brighton, England 3rd - 6th April 1990 PROGRAMME OF SPEAKERS AND REGISTRATION DOCUMENTS INVITED SPEAKERS Paul CHURCHLAND (Philosophy, University of California at San Diego) Title to be announced Joseph FORD (Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology) CHAOS : ITS PAST, ITS PRESENT, BUT MOSTLY ITS FUTURE Robin GANDY (Mathematical Institute, Oxford) HUMAN VERSUS MECHANICAL INTELLIGENCE Clark GLYMOUR (Philosophy, Carnegie-Mellon) COMPUTABILITY, CONCEPTUAL REVOLUTIONS AND THE LOGIC OF DISCOVERY Andrew HODGES (Oxford, author of "Alan Turing: the enigma of intelligence") BACK TO THE FUTURE : ALAN TURING IN 1950 Douglas HOFSTADTER (Computer Science, Indiana) Title to be announced J.R. LUCAS (Merton College, Oxford) MINDS, MACHINES AND GODEL : A RETROSPECT Donald MICHIE (Turing Institute, Glasgow) MACHINE INTELLIGENCE - TURING AND AFTER Christopher PEACOCKE (Magdalen College, Oxford) PHILOSOPHICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES OF CONCEPTS Herbert SIMON (Computer Science and Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon) MACHINE AS MIND OTHER SPEAKERS Most of the papers to be given at the Colloquium are interdisciplinary, and should hold considerable interest for those working in any area of Cognitive Science or related disciplines. However the papers below will be presented in paired parallel sessions, which have been arranged as far as possible to minimise clashes of subject area, so that those who have predominantly formal interests, for example, will be able to attend all of the papers which are most relevant to their work, and a similar point applies for those with mainly philosophical, psychological, or purely computational interests. Jonathan Cohen (The Queen's College, Oxford) "Does Belief Exist?" Mario Compiani (ENIDATA, Bologna, Italy) "Remarks on the Paradigms of Connectionism" Martin Davies (Philosophy, Birkbeck College, London) "Facing up to Eliminativism" Chris Fields (Computing Research Laboratory, New Mexico) "Measurement and Computational Description" Robert French (Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana) "Subcognition and the Limits of the Turing Test" Beatrice de Gelder (Psychology and Philosophy, Tilburg, Netherlands) "Cognitive Science is Philosophy of Science Writ Small" Peter Mott (Computer Studies and Philosophy, Leeds) "A Grammar Based Approach to Commonsense Reasoning" Aaron Sloman (Cognitive and Computing Sciences, Sussex) "Beyond Turing Equivalence" Antony Galton (Computer Science, Exeter) "The Church-Turing Thesis: its Nature and Status" Ajit Narayanan (Computer Science, Exeter) "The Intentional Stance and the Imitation Game" Jon Oberlander and Peter Dayan (Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh) "Altered States and Virtual Beliefs" Philip Pettit and Frank Jackson (Social Sciences Research, ANU, Canberra) "Causation in the Philosophy of Mind" Ian Pratt (Computer Science, Manchester) "Encoding Psychological Knowledge" Joop Schopman and Aziz Shawky (Philosophy, Utrecht, Netherlands) "Remarks on the Impact of Connectionism on our Thinking about Concepts" Murray Shanahan (Computing, Imperial College London) "Folk Psychology and Naive Physics" Iain Stewart (Computing Laboratory, Newcastle) "The Demise of the Turing Machine in Complexity Theory" Chris Thornton (Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh) "Why Concept Learning is a Good Idea" Blay Whitby (Cognitive and Computing Sciences, Sussex) "The Turing Test: AI's Biggest Blind Alley?" TURING 1990 COLLOQUIUM At the University of Sussex, Brighton, England 3rd - 6th April 1990 This Conference commemorates the 40th anniversary of the publication in Mind of Alan Turing's influential paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence". It is hosted by the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences at the University of Sussex and held under the auspices of the Mind Association. Additional support has been received from the Analysis Committee, the Aristotelian Society, The British Logic Colloquium, The International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, POPLOG, Philosophical Quarterly, and the SERC Logic for IT Initiative. The aim of the Conference is to draw together people working in Philosophy, Logic, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science and related fields, in order to celebrate the intellectual and technological developments which owe so much to Turing's seminal thought. Papers will be presented on the following themes: Alan Turing and the emergence of Artificial Intelligence, Logic and the Theory of Computation, The Church- Turing Thesis, The Turing Test, Connectionism, Mind and Content, Philosophy and Methodology of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science. Invited talks will be given by Paul Churchland, Joseph Ford, Robin Gandy, Clark Glymour, Andrew Hodges, Douglas Hofstadter, J.R. Lucas, Donald Michie, Christopher Peacocke and Herbert Simon, and there are many other prominent contributors, whose names and papers are listed above. Anyone wishing to attend this Conference should complete the form below and send it to Andy Clark, TURING 1990 Registrations, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QH, England, U.K., enclosing a STERLING cheque or money order for the total amount payable, made out to "Turing 1990". We regret that we cannot accept payment in other currencies. The form should be returned not later than Thursday 1st March 1990, after which an extra fee of #5.00 for late registration is payable and accommodation cannot be guaranteed. The conference will start after lunch on Tuesday 3rd April 1990, and it will end on Friday 6th April after tea. Final details will be sent to registered participants towards the end of February. Conference Organizing Committee Andy Clark (Cognitive and Computing Sciences, Sussex University) David Holdcroft (Philosophy, Leeds University) Peter Millican (Computer Studies and Philosophy, Leeds University) Steve Torrance (Information Systems, Middlesex Polytechnic) ____________________________________________________________________________ REGISTRATION DOCUMENT : TURING 1990 NAME AND TITLE : __________________________________________________________ INSTITUTION : _____________________________________________________________ STATUS : ________________________________________________________________ ADDRESS : ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ POSTCODE : _________________ COUNTRY : ____________________________ Any special requirements (eg. diet, disability) : _________________________ I wish to register for the Turing 1990 Colloquium and enclose a Sterling cheque or money order, payable to "Turing 1990", for the total amount listed below : Please ENTER AMOUNTS as appropriate. 1. Registration Fee: Mind Association Members #30.00 .............. (Compulsory) Full-time students #30.00 .............. (enclose proof of status - e.g. letter from tutor) Academics (including retired academics) #50.00 .............. Non-Academics #80.00 .............. Late Registration Fee #5.00 .............. (payable after 1st March) 2. Full Board including all meals from Dinner #84.00 .............. on Tuesday 3rd April to Lunch on Friday 6th April, except for Thursday evening OR All meals from Dinner on Tuesday 3rd April #33.00 .............. to Lunch on Friday 6th April, except for Thursday evening 3. Conference banquet in the Royal Pavilion, #25.00 .............. Brighton on Thursday 5th April OR Dinner in the University on Thursday 5th April #6.00 .............. 4. Lunch on Tuesday 3rd April #6.00 .............. 5. Dinner on Friday 6th April #6.00 .............. ______________ TOTAL # ______________ Signed ________________________________ Date ______________________ Please return this form, with your cheque or money order (payable to "Turing 1990"), to: Dr Andy Clark, Turing 1990 Registrations, Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QH, England. Email responses to: turing@uk.ac.sussex.syma ( from BITNET: turing@syma.sussex.ac.uk -NM ) ____________________________________________________________________________ IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR STUDENTS AND SUPERVISORS: The Analysis Committee has kindly made a donation to subsidise students who would benefit from attending the Colloquium but who might otherwise be unable to do so. The amount of any such subsidy will depend on the overall demand and the quality of the candidates, but it would certainly cover the registration fee and probably a proportion of the accommodation expenses. Interested parties should write immediately to Andy Clark at the address above, enclosing a brief supporting comment from a tutor or supervisor. ____________________________________________________________________________ PLEASE SEND ON THIS NOTICE to any researchers, lecturers or students in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, Computer Science, Logic, Mathematics, Philosophy or Psychology, in Britain or abroad, and to ANY APPROPRIATE BULLETIN BOARDS which have not previously displayed it. ********************************************************** II. QUERIES II.A.1. Fr: Curt Stevens Re: Request for word kill list I am writing a program which looks at words in sentences but I need only "interesting" words. Can someone point me to, or possibly supply me with, a reasonable word kill list? Please respond by e-mail and thanks very much in advance. =============================================================================== |Curt Stevens (303) 492-1218 | / |arpa: stevens@boulder.colorado.edu| |University of Colorado at Boulder | o o |uucp:{ncar|nbires}!boulder!stevens| |Computer Science Dept. ECOT 7-7 | | |----------------------------------| |Campus Box 430 | \_/ |I don't believe in intuition, but | |Boulder, Colorado 80309-0430 USA | |I have strangest feeling I will!! | =============================================================================== ======== | Curt | ======== ********************************************************** IV. PROJECTS IV.B.1. Fr: Susanne Humphrey Re: Selected IR-Related Dissertation Abstracts Compiled by: Susanne M. Humphrey National Library of Medicine Bethesda, MD 20894 The following are citations selected by title and abstract as being related to Information Retrieval (IR), resulting from a computer search, using the BRS Information Technologies retrieval service, of the Dissertation Abstracts International (DAI) database produced by University Microfilms International. Included are the UMI order number; author; university, degree, and, if available, number of pages; title; DAI subject category chosen by the author of the dissertation; and abstract. 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: 1-800-268-6090. Price lists and other ordering and shipping information are in the introduction to the published DAI. An alternate source for copies is sometimes provided at the end of the abstract. The 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 University Microfilms Order Number ADG88-15305. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG88-15220. AU REDDY, MARY ANN. IN University of Pittsburgh Ph.D. 1988, 149 pages. TI SEARCH STRATEGY SKILLS: A TWO METHOD COMPARISON OF TEACHING CD-ROM BIBLIOGRAPHIC SEARCHING TECHNIQUES. DE Education, Technology. Library Science. AB This study was designed to test the mastery of CD-ROM online bibliographic searching skills through the comparison of two methods of instruction: CAI and the traditional lecture method. One hundred and two ninth grade students were the subjects of the study: fifty-one students comprised each group. Both groups received instruction in online technology, online technology, the Reader's Guide, CD-ROM and search strategy skills. For the online and Reader's Guide portion of the study, the CAI group, using nine Apple IIe computers, received its instruction from three Combase, Inc. computer software programs: Online Retrieval I; Online Retrieval II; and the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, Level II. The classroom group received the identical lessons through the traditional lecture method using the overhead projector as an aid. The testing instrument used in this study was WILSONDISC, a CD-ROM database that contains the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature and utilizes an IBM PC/XT computer and CD-ROM player. The study began August 31, 1987 and was completed on November 20, 1987. The overall design of the study was a Pretest-Posttest Control-Group design. Two t-tests and two Chi square tests were used to measure the results of the study. At the.05 level, the statistics yielded no significant differences in learning CD-ROM online technology regardless of the method of instruction. However, several interesting factors emerged from the data collected. First, the Attitude Survey revealed that the classroom students were far more enthusiastic about CD-ROM than the computer group. Secondly, the computer group did not excel as predicted by statistics from other studies, perhaps because 68% of the computer group was female and because of class scheduling the initial computer lessons were presented during an interrupted time frame which might have impeded the concentration of the group. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG88-16874. AU PROBERT, JOHN ELLWOOD. IN United States International University Ed.D. 1988, 250 pages. TI A SURVEY TO DETERMINE REASONS FOR LOW LEVEL COMPUTER USE BY LAW ENFORCEMENT INVESTIGATORS. DE Education, Vocational. Education, Adult and Continuing. Sociology, Criminology and Penology. AB The problem. Many investigators were not using the computerized inquiry system to its fullest potential. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the use of computerized centralized criminal history files with the following variables: age, attitude, and the amount of computer training the investigators possess. Method. A correlational study was conducted. Fifty-two investigators from seven San Diego County area law enforcement agencies, eight departmental administrators and 8 computer trainers were given questionnaires designed to determine why the computerized inquiry system was not being used to its fullest potential. Results. The first hypothesis, which predicted that age inversely correlates with the use of computers for information retrieval, could not be supported. The second hypothesis, which predicted that adequate terminal and computer program training according to the needs of each investigator will have a positive relationship on the use of computerized information retrieval system, could not be supported. The third hypothesis, which predicted a positive correlation between favorable attitude towards the computer and frequency of the use of computerized information retrieval system, could not be supported. Investigation revealed first that the experience of using the computerized criminal history files and not the training or administration's attitude created a highly favorable attitude towards its use. The investigators frequently being overloaded with assigned cases to investigate went to manual files for data because this procedure was quicker. Second, two messages were emanating from the departmental administrations. The first was encouragement to use the computerized inquiry system, and the second message was to cut costs. The investigators perceived the messages to mean that they should reduce the use of the computerized inquiry system because of the high cost of using it. AN This item is not available from University Microfilms International ADG05-63684. AU EZIGBALIKE, INNOCENT F. CHUKWUDOZIE. IN The University of New Brunswick (Canada) Ph.D. 1988. TI LAND INFORMATION SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT: SOFTWARE AND MANAGEMENT CONSIDERATIONS. DE Engineering, Civil. AB The development and management of information systems have been studied in various fields of research including: database management, distributed processing, software engineering, management information systems, and information resource management. By identifying the similarities between land information processing and these fields, the techniques and procedures developed and proved for other information processing applications can be adapted for the land information system (LIS). This thesis examines the activities that process parcel level information in New Brunswick, and proposes a conceptual structure for an LIS to deliver information to the processes, and strategies for developing an LIS and managing a land information environment in a provincial jurisdiction. The thesis recommends that a query management strategy by adopted to integrate the various departmental systems into one logical distributed system, that an independent management function be established to manage the LIS as a corporate resource of the provincial government, rather than as departmental property, and that the system be developed from existing systems by a phased prototyping approach. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG88-09547. AU BOUAZZA, ABDELMAJID. IN University of Pittsburgh Ph.D 1986, 154 pages. TI USE OF INFORMATION SOURCES BY PHYSICAL SCIENTISTS, SOCIAL SCIENTISTS, AND HUMANITIES SCHOLARS AT CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIVERSITY. DE Information Science. AB This study investigated the frequency of use of information sources in general and for research and teaching purposes in particular by physical scientists, social scientists, and humanities scholars at Carnegie-Mellon University. Out of 390 subjects, 240 answered the questionnaire, making the response rate 61.53 percent. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive (Means, standard of deviation, and proportions) and inferential (One-way ANOVA, Two-way ANOVA, and the Scheffe Test) statistics. The null of the three hypotheses of the study were tested at the.05 level of significance. The results obtained in this study showed that the three hypotheses were partially supported. It was found that physical scientists, social scientists, and humanists differed only in their use of informal sources of information in general, in data collection phase, and when developing a new course. No difference was registered in their use of formal sources of information for the same purposes. The impact of the variables tenure and experience on the use of information sources by the subjects has been investigated as an auxiliary factor and found nonsignificant. The findings of this study pointed to the importance of exhibitions, concerts, performances, A.V. materials, and the library resources to humanists. The same information sources were found of negligible importance to both physical scientists and social scientists when conducting a research project. The importance of using personal files by the three groups was observed. It was found that journals were especially important to physical scientists and social scientists. Also, it was found that the use of information sources by respondents varied from one phase of a research project to another. Thus, physical scientists, social scientists, and humanists tended to rely heavily on personal contact in the proposal phase and data analysis and interpretation phase, whereas this reliance appeared to decline in the data collection phase. Other findings were: the importance to respondents of personal contact and personal files as a stimulus for ideas in research; physical scientists and social scientists rated the use of journals for obtaining new ideas in research higher than that of textbooks; similarly, physical scientists and social scientists rated the use of textbooks as sources of new ideas in teaching higher than that of journals. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADGDX-82159. AU DANIELS, PENNY JANE. IN The City University (London) (United Kingdom) Ph.D 1987, 167 pages. TI DEVELOPING THE USER MODELLING FUNCTION OF AN INTELLIGENT INTERFACE FOR DOCUMENT RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS. DE Information Science. AB Available from UMI in association with The British Library. This research forms part of a larger project, the eventual aim of which is the design and implementation of an intelligent interface for document retrieval systems. A number of functions which must be performed by the human intermediary in order to successfully interact with the user have been identified. The research presented here is concerned with one function in particular: the user modelling function, which aims to describe and model various aspects of the user's background, personal characteristics, goals and knowledge. An assumption underlying this research is that an intelligent interface should simulate the functional behaviour of a competent human intermediary. Therefore the ways in which human intermediaries carry out user modelling and employ these models, have been investigated. The primary method was to make audiorecordings of seven human user/human intermediary interviews in online search service settings, and to subject the transcripts to detailed functional discourse analysis. This analysis produced a specification for the User Model, and identified its components and the knowledge resources that are needed by the intermediary, whether human or automatic, to carry out the function of user modelling. This analysis was supplemented by the examination of a number of users' problem statements, together with their accompanying recordings, which had been collected for another project, and by interviews with three intermediaries. The discourse analysis revealed that the User Model interacts with the other interface functions, and this interaction was also investigated. The results showed that the User Model comprises a number of subfunctions, requires extensive knowledge resources, and interacts with the other functions, in particular providing information necessary for the other functions' own processing. A formalism for representing the User Model in a computer system is suggested, and an attempt is made to validate the User Model by applying it to a new dialogue. The results of the validation suggested that the User Model is independent of the data on which it is based, and that the formalism can adequately handle a new interaction. The implications of these findings for the design and implementation of the user modelling function in an intelligent interface, and for the design and implementation of the interface as a whole, are outlined. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADGD--82394. AU EPISKOPOU, DIANE M. IN University of East Anglia (United Kingdom) Ph.D. 1987, 460 pages. TI THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS METHODOLOGIES: A GROUNDED THEORY OF METHODOLOGICAL EVOLUTION. DE Information Science. AB Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. An indepth study of forty computer-related companies and sixty user organizations over a three year period (1983-86) investigating the practice of systems development methodologies, focuses on organisational, technical and personal aspects. A grounded theory research approach is used to develop a theory derived directly from the experiences of the participants, examined using phenomenological, case study and survey methods. The product of the research is a theory of information systems methodology evolution, which explains what constitutes a methodology and how it behaves in an organizational context. It includes categories concerning methodology nature, methodology constraints, formalisation of methods, historical influences, context inseparability, communication between developer and client, power and influence in the system development process and methodology evolution. The theory challenges and augments the contingency view of methodology selection and shows how methodologies evolve over time, effected by the people and circumstances surrounding them. The results and implications of the research tackle the issues of the integration of methodologies into an organisational environment and the development of methodologies in context, including the need to develop and maintain methodologies and control evolutionary phenomena of the drifting and dragging of procedures. Guidelines are offered to systems and methodology developers concerning the development and use of suitable methodologies for the future challenges of information systems development. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADGDX-82189. AU REYNOLDS, JAMES E. F. IN The City University (London) (United Kingdom) Ph.D 1987, 360 pages. TI THE DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF A FULL-TEXT DRUGS DATABASE: MARTINDALE ONLINE. DE Information Science. AB Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Martindale Online is a full-text database on drugs produced from a structured neutral database that is also used to produce a print product. Special characheristics of the database include a hierarchical record structure and a facility for linking records within the same hierarchy. The development of this database is described. Investigation at the development stage indicated a need to index the database and this was carried out using descriptors from a specially designed thesaurus. To evaluate the effect of this indexing, three information pharmacists selected 98 queries for an assessment of retrieval effectiveness; they and the author formulated sets of search statements that were used to search the file in several different ways. It was found that searching the indexed database via descriptors and free text (when appropriate) produced significantly better results, as judged by scores that incorporated precision and recall, than searching either the indexed or the unindexed database solely in a free-text manner. As there was evidence that searchers were slow to make use of the descriptors, highly structured search statements were created for each query using all the details from the relevant sections of the thesaurus and these statements were tested on the unindexed database. While this test produced some conflicting results, it did suggest that as far as major relevance was concerned such a method of searching might be effective with Martindale Online and is worth exploring further, especially with a view to producing a front-end system. Detailed failure analysis was carried out on the searches performed in the recommended manner. With the information pharmacists' search statements the database was operating at a recall ratio of 60.2 for all relevant records (69.3 for records of major relevance); with the author's statements the recall ratio was 65.4 (73.2 for major relevance). Corresponding precision ratios were 63.5 (58.3 for major relevance) for the information pharmacists and 67.5 (59.6) for the author. The largest cause of both recall and precision failure was in limitations of the search statements whether produced by the information pharmacists who had varied experience of Martindale Online, or by the author who has a detailed knowledge of the system and the contents. Limitations in the indexing also accounted for both types of failure; account has already been taken of these limitations and modifications have been made to some of the indexing guidelines. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG88-14221. AU CHEN, TSUNG-TENG. IN The University of Arizona Ph.D 1988, 279 pages. TI INFORMATION MANAGEMENT IN INTEGRATED INFORMATION SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS. DE Information Science. Business Administration, General. Computer Science. AB Information System development involves various activities; the process of developing information systems is considered to be the production of a series of documents. The information derived from the activities of the life cycle needs to be stored in a way that will facilitate the carrying out of subsequent activities. That is, information must be stored with a consistent, semantically rich, flexible, and efficient structure that will make it accessible for use by various tools employed in carrying out the development process. In this research, knowledge base management system (KBMS) to manage the information created by the information system development process was designed and implemented. Several contemporary popular knowledge representation schemes can be managed conveniently by this KBMS, which utilized efficient database techniques to facilitate fast retrieval and traversal of the underlying semantic inheritance net and frame knowledge structure. Inference and logic deduction capability was made a part of the static knowledge structure to further extend the functionality of the KBMS. Furthermore, a specially designed relational database management system was implemented and interfaced with the KBMS to alleviate the possibility of a storage saturation problem and to facilitate the storage of detailed exclusive information of terms defined in the knowledge base. Models that are applicable to various information system development activities were identified and stored in the knowledge base. The aggregation of those models is, in fact, a conceptual non-procedural language that provides a concise descriptive framework to help the user gather and manage information derived from various activities during the information system development process. The knowledge base, the language, and several knowledge-base related tools were used by more than seventy graduate students in a case study for a system analysis and design course. An information system methodology specifically tailored for this knowledge base supported environment was proposed and applied in a simplified case to illustrate the process of how a database-centered information system can be derived from the initial strategic planning phase. The methodology explored and made use of the storage structure of the closely coupled knowledge base and database. Finally, future research direction was identified. ********************************************************** 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.