Information Retrieval List Digest 360 (June 16, 1997) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/irld/irld-360 IRLIST Digest ISSN 1064-6965 June 16, 1997 Volume XIV, Number 22 Issue 360 ********************************************************** II. JOBS 1. MMU, Manchester, UK: NLP, Lecturership 2. Rutgers U.: Immediate Post-doctoral Position, IR III. NOTICES A. Publications 1. The Impact of the Internet on Communications Policy 2. Online Newsletter: Copyright & New Media Legal News 3. Authors Invited for New Series B. Meetings 1. SIGIR-97 workshop on Networked Information Retrieval 2. ALA Program: URIs, Metadata and the Dublin Core 3. Reminder - ACM Digital Libraries IV. PROJECTS C. Fellowships, Grants, & Scholarships 1. New Connections to High-Speed Network ********************************************************** II. JOBS II.1. Fr: Sofia Ananiadou Re: MMU, Manchester, UK: NLP, Lecturership The Department of Computing of the Manchester Metropolitan University has four 4-year research lectureships on offer. One of the specialisms sought is in the area of Natural Language Processing. The successful candidate would be attached to the MMU Natural Language Processing Research Group, Details of the posts at: http://www.doc.mmu.ac.uk/STAFF/S.Oakey/lectres.html Details of the NLP Group at: http://www.doc.mmu.ac.uk/RESEARCH/nlpgp/nlpgp.html Sophia Ananiadou S.Ananiadou@doc.mmu.ac.uk Department of Computing effie@ccl.umist.ac.uk MMU John Dalton Building Chester Street tel: +44.161.200.3082 (direct) Manchester, UK fax: +44.161.200.3099 M1 5GD http://www.doc.mmu.ac.uk/RESEARCH/nlpgp/nlpgp.html ********** II.2. Fr: Paul Kantor Re: Rutgers U.: Immediate Post-doctoral Position, IR Post-Doctoral Position in Information Retrieval A new DARPA-funded 3-year research project "A Novel Approach to Information Finding in Networked Environments" is starting July 1997, at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. There is an immediate opening for a Post-Doctoral appointment in this project, which involves the development of models, algorithms and programs to facilitate information finding in complex networks. The successful applicant will have experience programming in C or C++, and some knowledge of object-oriented programming and of information retrieval. Experience with pattern recognition and or machine learning is a definite plus. Excellent salary and benefits. Send letter of interest and brief CV to the Principal Investigator, Prof. Paul Kantor at (kantor@scils.rutgers.edu). Top candidates will be interviewed at the RIAO conference in Montreal, at the Digital Library Conference in Philadelphia, and at the ACM- SIGIR conference in Philadelphia. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Rutgers is an equal opportunity employer. ********************************************************** III. NOTICES III.A.1. Fr: Joan K Lippincott Re: The Impact of the Internet on Communications Policy HARVARD INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECT First Announcement and Call for Papers THE IMPACT OF THE INTERNET ON COMMUNICATIONS POLICY Cambridge, Massachusetts December 4-5, 1997 Co-Sponsors: International Telecommunication Union Center for Law and Information Technology, Harvard Law School The Harvard Information Infrastructure Project announces the launch of an activity to explore the impact of the Internet on existing national and international communications policies. This activity is intended to assist policy makers as they grapple with the fundamental challenges presented by the Internet to the assumptions that underlie current policies. A conference will be held in late 1997 at Harvard University. It will convene key policy makers, government officials, industry representatives and academics to explore new models for policy development. Accepted contributions will inform discussion at the conference, and will be subsequently published as a volume in the Harvard Information Infrastructure Project's series with MIT Press. This activity is undertaken in collaboration with the International Telecommunication Union and the Center for Law and Information Technology, Harvard Law School. The following is a sketch of the forces that are changing the world of communications as the Internet assumes greater commercial importance. This sketch is not intended to constrain the views of contributors, but rather to stimulate the identification of important policy issues that should be addressed. With the emergence of a mass market for Internet services, the relationship between the Internet and traditional media - the public switched network, cable, and broadcast - is growing close and complex. The Internet's rapid expansion is challenging the assumptions of traditional communication policies and raises the possibility that these underlying principles may be recast around basic Internet access. The Internet blurs traditional demarcations in the regulation of communication services, combining features of telephony, broadcast, multicast, and data communications. In the area of telephony, policy makers have sought to advance competition by promoting open access to unbundled services, while maintaining the goals and principles of universal service. In this process, they have distinguished between basic telephony and those services and products that remain outside the regulatory regime. In many countries, therefore, Internet services have been treated as "enhanced services", exempt from regulation. In the case of broadcast, distribution networks - spectrum or cable - have presented significant barriers to entry. Internet broadcast is not limited by access to such high value and limited assets and brings added two-way communications capabilities. While the Internet is not yet mature as a real-time, high quality, multi-media broadcast network, service bundling with cable and satellite services is rolling out quickly, and experimentation with web-oriented click-through features is expanding. Use of the Internet is becoming pervasive in business and in the home. As this installed base expands, the fixed cost and flat rate pricing structure of the Internet is leading to arbitrage against usage pricing and the regulatory and cost structures of circuit-switched telephone services. Dial-up access to the Internet is placing demands on the local exchanges as users stay connected for long periods of time, provoking debate as to whether Internet service providers should remain exempt from access fees. Over the long term, the market for the public switched network seems likely to erode as the Internet draws away fax traffic and Internet email substitutes for both fax and voice. Internet access is presently viewed as something of a commodity service that, like personal computers, can be put together from off-the-shelf components. The advent of resource reservation and the ability to prioritize among service classes will enable rapid development and growth of real-time audio and video services (including telephony) not normally suited to packet-switching. Product differentiation and market segmentation, including the premium option of end-to-end service from a single provider, will lead to a proliferation of pricing models, some of which may cannibalize demand for broadcast services. Already, substitution effects are reducing television viewing in Internet connected households. Demand for high-speed Internet access is already the major driver for two-way broadband. Depending on whether and the manner in which access fees are imposed for Internet service providers, Internet demand may encompass some piece of the traditional broadcast market and become the dominant driver for alternatives to the local loop, broadband or narrowband. The functionality of the Internet is far greater than circuit-switched telephony and its capabilities are incrementally scaleable. The Internet embraces telephony, broadcast and multicast (and will more completely as priority service is implemented), but transcends the physical and logical limitations with which they have each been associated. Traditional services may enjoy a similar degree of multiplexing and compression, but Internet-based applications escape many of their infrastructure investment, management, and regulatory costs, while benefiting from the sharing of joint costs with a multiplicity of services and applications. These developments suggest a possible paradigm shift in which ordinary un-prioritized Internet service rather than circuit-switched telephone is cast as the basic service that policy-makers seek to make universal. In this scenario, circuit-switched telephony may increasingly be viewed as a technology used to implement Internet access only where no better alternative can be cost-justified. Implementing anything analogous to "universal service" may be difficult in the fast-moving, unregulated, computer-based environment of the Internet. However, the principles of universalism may become more important because of the high social value of efficient access to government services and other Internet-enabled applications. Policy processes are often hampered by an incomplete understanding of continually expanding and changing Internet applications, especially when policy-makers have little experience with the Internet. Where national governments are committed to liberalizing telephone service, the advent of the Internet accelerates both market and policy processes. Many countries are looking to the United States, Finland, and other countries with high Internet penetration to gain perspectives on the manner in which the issues play out under different business and regulatory scenarios. ========== Prospective authors should submit short abstracts for review and comment as soon as possible. Extended abstracts or outlines should be submitted by July 31, 1997, to ensure consideration for this activity. Acceptances of abstracts and outlines are conditional pending receipt of a satisfactory draft by November 13, 1997. This activity seeks to advance policy development processes by combining regulatory, economic and technological perspectives. Papers should be written in a clear, non- technical manner (technical appendices are permitted) for a mixed, interdisciplinary audience. Although the activity will focus on the impact of the Internet in advanced communications environments, papers that address implications and lessons for policy development in other countries are also invited. Papers will be published as a volume in the Harvard Information Infrastructure Project's series with the MIT Press. Copyright assignment is not required and parallel or subsequent publication of individual papers in journals is encouraged. Please send paper proposals and requests for subsequent announcements to: Ms. Nora O'Neil Project Coordinator Information Infrastructure Project Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government 79 John F. Kennedy St. Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 USA Tel. +1 617-496-1389 Fax: +1 617-495-5776 Email nora_o'neil@harvard.edu ********** III.A.2. Fr: Greg Re: Online Newsletter: Copyright & New Media Legal News There's a new newsletter on copyright and new media law issues for librarians and information specialists -- it's published three times a year in print -- and has e-mail updates between print issues. Subscription includes: -three comprehensive print newsletters -free e-mail subscription to the on-line newsletter Copyright & New Media Legal News -free e-mail subscription to important capsuled news events sent to you between issues of the print version -free e-mail notification of relevant seminars and conferences Information on the newsletter is available from its Editor at CopyrtLib@aol.com. or check out the Web Site at http://copyrightlaws.com Greg S. Osgoode Law yu148733@yorku.ca ********** III.A.3. Fr: Mary K. Chelton Re: Authors Invited for New Series SCARECROW PRESS ANNOUNCES NEW SERIES: Society, Culture and Context: The Library Reframed This new series is intended to be a venue for expanding what is traditionally meant by "the library" and intends to encourage research in areas where society and the library intersect. The intention is to publish work that will lead to a more critical, analytic understanding of both society and library. The series will look for and accept submissions from the library and information science research community, from outside this research community, from first authors as well as from established authors. There are as well no prior assumptions regarding style and format: Series titles may be textbooks, monographs or collected papers. A wide variety of research methodologies and research sites, macro and micro, are sought as well. What Scarecrow Press seeks are authors who see the library primarily as a social institution-as an artifact that both reflects and reinforces particular readings of the social order. The series editors are interested in studies that look at libraries and library practice as a production (or reproduction) of culture, society and history. Taking this stance will allow us to support and publish work of all kinds. The only proviso is that social and cultural enactment must be seen as central to an understanding of what the library is. We are less interested in works that assume, not discover, what the library means. To put it another way, this series will offer alternatives to reading the library in individualist or cognitive terms. Nor will it support work that makes uncritical transpositions between library and context and, say, information and information systems. This new series will publish work that is micro or macro in nature. It is also catholic in respect to analytical perspectives. In short, neither level nor theoretical model will be an issue for the series. What authors must attend to and work through is a notion of social context in reference to the study of the library. However it is left to the author to define both *context* and *library* in his or her terms. Analytic frames may be drawn from, but are not limited to, anthropology, communication studies, history, philosophy and sociology. Of particular interest are approaches, however defined, that bring discourse, language and human interaction to the study of "library." What determines what the series will publish is the extent to which a manuscript looks at the library in and as social and institutional context. The series editors believe that considering the library from a social perspective offers significant opportunity and yield (both intellectual and pragmatic) in an area that so far has had little publication support. Scarecrow with this new series intends to change this. Letters of inquiry or a prospectus for a title in the series should be sent to Mary K. Chelton and James Nyce, Co-editors, The Library Reframed School of Library and Information Management Emporia State University 1200 Commercial Emporia, KS 66801 Phone: (316) 341- 5320 (Nyce) or (5071) Chelton Fax: (316) 341- 5233 E-mail: cheltonm@esumail.emporia.edu or nycejame@esumail.emporia.edu ********** III.B.1. Fr: Jamie Callan Re: SIGIR-97 Workshop on NetWorked Information Retrieval *** WORKSHOP PROGRAM *** SIGIR-97 Workshop on Networked Information Retrieval July 31, 1997, Philadelphia, PA, USA Welcome and Introduction Jamie Callan WEB SEARCH Session Chair: Jamie Callan Beyond Relevance Ranking: Hyperlink Voting Y. Li, L. Rafsky; Gari Software/IDD Information Services The MetaCrawler Architecture for Resource Aggregation on the Web E. Selberg, O. Etzioni; Univ of Washington Information Fusion with ProFusion S. Gauch; Univ of Kansas Discussion DIGITAL LIBRARIES Session Chair: Chris Buckley Networked Digital Libraries: The Concept and a Case Study J. L. Borbinha, J. Ferreira, J. Jorge, J. Delgado; Engineering Institute for Systems and Computers, Portugal Pharos: A Scalable Distributed Architecture for Locating Heterogeneous Information Sources R. Dolin, D. Agrawal, A. El Abbadi, L. Dillon; Univ of California, Santa Barbara Knowledge Integration for Structured Information Sources Containing Text W. W. Cohen; AT&T Labs Towards a Scalable Networked Retrieval Systems for Searching Multimedia Databases C. Baumgarten, K. Meyer-Wegener; Dresden Univ, Germany Discussion RESOURCE SELECTION Session Chair: Norbert Fuhr Database Merging Strategies for Searching Public and Private Collections E. Voorhees; NIST Meta-Data for Distributed Text Retrieval G. Crowder, C. Nicholas; Univ of Maryland, Baltimore County NIR Standards (Invited) C. Buckley; SaBIR Research DISCUSSION FOR MORE INFORMATION: http://ciir.cs.umass.edu/nir97/ or callan@cs.umass.edu ********** III.B.2. Fr: Ray Schwartz Re: ALA Program Announcement - URIs, Metadata and the Dublin Core ALA ANNUAL CONFERENCE PROGRAM FROM CATALOG TO GATEWAY: URIs, METADATA AND THE DUBLIN CORE. Sponsored by ALCTS Catalog Form and Function Committee RUSA/MOPSS Catalog Use Committee LITA Committee on Technical Standards for Library Automation Sunday, June 29, 1997 9:30am to 12:30pm Sheraton Palace Hotel, Gold Ballroom, 2 New Montgomery St., San Francisco Decisions are being made that will influence the functioning of networked bibliographic access for decades. It is crucial for the library community to be knowledgeable and active in the development of the standards and specifications. The program's objectives are to give participants an understanding of Uniform Resource Identifiers, Metadata, the Dublin Core, and the implications for bibliographic access; and to give the library community an understanding of the importance of participating in their development. Intended Audience: Librarians and other information professionals concerned with the bibliographic control of networked resources. SPEAKERS: Clifford Lynch, Director of Library Automation, University of California, Office of the President. Where do we stand on Uniform Resource Identifiers? Stuart Weibel, Senior Research Scientist, OCLC Office of Research. The Metadata Workshop series, metadata and the Dublin Core/Warwick Framework, and the pilot projects that have evolved from the workshops. Rebecca Guenther, Senior MARC Standards Specialist, Network Development and MARC Standards Office, Library of Congress Metadata, MARC and the Dublin Core Michael Mealling, Software Engineer, Network Solutions, and Internet Engineering Task Force member Uniform Resource Names and Uniform Resource Characteristics: Representation, Operation, and Status Program Chair: Ray Schwartz, John Cotton Dana Library, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey ********** III.B.3. Fr: Fern E Brody Re: Reminder - ACM Digital Libraries ACM DL '97 2nd ACM International Conference on Digital Libraries PRELIMINARY PROGRAM DoubleTree Hotel, PHILADELPHIA, PA JULY 23-26, 1997 Reminder: Early registration closes June 13! ACM DL '97 will immediately precede SIGIR '97 in Philadelphia. The ACM DL series is sponsored by ACM through SIGIR and SIGLINK. ACM DL '97 ACM Digital Libraries is an international conference which is building a community of individuals from diverse fields to study research and development in digital libraries. The collection, access and use of electronic information in a variety of formats requires solutions to problems ranging from the technical to the social, incorporating knowledge and experience from many fields. Individuals with an interest in library and information science, digital information technology, education, information policy and economics, information seeking behavior and other fields contributing to digital library development are invited to attend. CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: Wednesday * Tutorials * Opening reception Thursday * Keynote address by Jim Reimer, IBM Senior Technical Staff Member * Technical sessions * Panel on museum and gallery applications of digital libraries * D-Lib panel on interoperability * Banquet cruise Friday * Plenary address by Pamela Samuelson, U. of California Berkeley * Technical sessions * D-Lib panel on interoperability * Poster and demonstration showcase and reception Saturday * Technical sessions * Workshops Sunday * Tour to Brandywine Valley STEERING COMMITTEE Edward Fox (Chair), Virginia Tech Robert B. Allen, Bellcore William Arms, CNRI Nicholas Belkin, Rutgers University Richard Furuta, Texas A&M University Gary Marchionini, University of Maryland Edie Rasmussen, University of Pittsburgh Conference information is available from the DL'97 website or via email: http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~diglib97/ or diglib97@sis.pitt.edu ********************************************************** IV. PROJECTS IV.C.1. Fr: Louise Fisch Re: New Connections to High Speed Network The National Science Foundation (NSF) is awarding $12.3 million in grants to 35 American research institutions to fund network connections to the high speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS), according to a White House press release. The grants bring the total number of research institutions connected to vBNS to 64. NSF's high-performance connections to the vBNS will play a central role in the Clinton Administration's "Next Generation Internet" initiative by linking approximately 100 leading universities and their research partners. The network will facilitate the joint development of software applications and communications technologies for the future Internet. The institutions awarded the latest round of NSF grants include: Dartmouth College Georgia State University Harvard University Indiana University at Bloomington Johns Hopkins University Massachusetts Institute of Technology MCNC (includes Duke University; North Carolina State University; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and the North Carolina Supercomputing Center) Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey Texas A&M University (also includes the Institute for Biosciences and Technology at Houston) The Regents of the University of California for the Consortium for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC). Includes University of California campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Riverside, San Francisco, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz; and the following private institutions: Stanford University, California Institute of Technology, University of Southern California (USC) and USC's Information Sciences Institute University of Arizona University of Kentucky University of Maryland, Baltimore County University of New Mexico University of Notre Dame University of Tennessee-Knoxville University of Texas at Austin University of Utah University of Wisconsin-Madison Vanderbilt University Yale University Further information can be found at . ********************************************************** IRLIST Digest is distributed from the University of California, Division of Library Automation, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland, CA. 94612-3550. 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