Information Retrieval List Digest 408 (June 1, 1998) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/irld/irld-408.txt IRLIST Digest ISSN 1064-6965 June 1, 1998 Volume XV, Number 22 Issue 408 ****************************************************************** I. QUERIES 1. Life is a But a Stream: Streaming Audio for Auditory Browsing Beautiful Streamer: Streaming Video for Visual Browsing II. JOBS 1. U. Washington: Visiting Faculty Positions: GSLIS 2. U.SW Louisiana/Southern U.-Baton Rouge: Assistant/Associate Professor: Computer Science III. NOTICES A. Publications 1. Journal of ASIS 50th Anniversary 2. D-Lib Magazine (May 1998) B. Meetings 1. UW Talk: Indexing/Data Mining in Multimedia DBs C. Miscellaneous 1. NSF Integrative Graduate Education & Research Training Program IV. PROJECTS C. Awards, Fellowships, Grants, & Scholarships 1. (US) National Medal of Science -- Nominations D. Research 1. The New Cedars Project: CURL Exemplars in Digital Archives ****************************************************************** I.QUERIES I.1. Fr: Gerry Mckiernan Re: Life is a But a Stream: Streaming Audio for Auditory Browsing Beautiful Streamer: Streaming Video for Visual Browsing Recently, I announced the establishment of a new clearinghouse of projects, research, products, or services devoted to Auditory Browsing in Web and bon-Web Databases called _The Next WAVe(sm)_. _The Next WAVe(sm)_ is available at: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/Wave.htm I am greatly interested in learning about additional efforts in the field of Auditory Browsing that employ _Streaming Audio_ (e.g RealAudio) to display or present data or information in Web databases as potential candidates for inclusion in a future update of _The Next WAVe(sm)_. Over the past several weeks, I have discovered through mention in various listservs, increasing use of Streaming Video for a variety applications. In considering the growing adoption of this technology for extended conventional applications, it has occured to me that Streaming Videos also holds great potential for Information Visualization applications for enhanced Visual Browsing in Web and non-Web databases. I am also interested in learning of any and all current or planned applications of Video Streaming for Information Visualization in projects similar (or different) than those profiled in my clearinghouse devoted to Information Visualization called _The Big Picture_. The address for _The Big Picture_ is also: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/Wave.htm My hope is to update _The Big Picture_ with these and other InfoViz profile by the end of this summer. As always, Any and All contributions, citations, contacts, questions, critiques, comments, or queries are Most Welcome! ****************************************************************** II. JOBS II.1. Fr: A. Carlyle Re: U. Washington: Visiting Faculty Positions: GSLIS University of Washington Seattle, Washington VISITING FACULTY POSITIONS People and Knowledge: Building Information Connections! The Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Washington is searching for two visiting faculty members who subscribe to this vision to start from Fall 1998. These positions are one year appointments withopportunities to apply for future tenure track position openings. The positions require competency in an area of library and information science. Candidates would ideally teach in one or more of these areas: * conceptual database design * management * information resources and retrieval * design and provision of information services, including children's and young adult services * information policy * organization of information. Applicants should have the following qualifications: * an earned Ph.D., or near completion, in library and information science or cognate area * appreciation of the interdisciplinary nature of library and information science and an ability to integrate research areas and disciplinary perspectives * research and publications commensurate with experience. The University of Washington is a research university in an active information environment. The Graduate School of Library and Information Science offers an ALA accredited masters program. Seattle is a multicultural, modern city with numerous cultural, outdoor and athletic activities. Review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the positions are filled. We are building a multicultural work force and strongly encourage women, ethnic minorities and persons with disabilities to apply. Special interest will be given to applicants who can serve well in an increasingly diverse university community. The University of Washington is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. Interested individuals should mail or fax their applications, consisting of (1) letter of interest, (2) a curriculum vitae, and (3) three letters of recommendation to: Raya Fidel Graduate School of Library and Information Science Box 352930 University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195-2930 USA voice (206) 543-1888 fax: (206) 616-3152 Detailed information about the school, the faculty, the curriculum, and other aspects of the program can be obtained from the School's website: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~gslis/ ********** II.2. Fr: Dr. Raghavan Re: U.SW Louisiana/Southern U.-Baton Rouge: Assistant/Associate Professor: Computer Science Joint Faculty Appointment in Computer Science at The University of Southwestern Louisiana and Southern University-Baton Rouge The Center for Advanced Computer Studies (CACS) at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (USL) and the Department of Computer Science at Southern University-Baton Rouge (SUBR) have received funding from the Louisiana Board of Regents' NSF-EPSCoR Joint Faculty Appointments Program (JFAP) to develop a nationally competitive research team with a research focus of strategic importance to the state. This computer science project is entitled "Harnessing distributed, heterogeneous information sources." Through the JFAP support, USL and SUBR recently hired a tenure-track faculty member at the rank of Associate Professor, and is now seeking another member at the rank of Assistant/Associate Professor in computer science, to begin Fall 1998. The successful applicant should be committed to research and supervising students at M.S. and Ph.D. levels at both institutions. The annual teaching load is one regular course at each campus. We are recruiting a candidate who possesses or who will receive a Ph.D. degree in computer science or in a closely related area, prior to the date of appoinment. The preferred area of specialization is in developing multimedia retrieval and digital library systems, especially those for handling geo-referenced data or full text. Preference will be given to candidates who have experience in some aspects of complex, distributed software systems research and development (such as in object-oriented programming, Internet protocols, multimedia indexing, softbot development, networked database interoperability, or communication security). Louisiana's JFAP program has received strong support from the National Science Foundation, and has been hailed as having the potential to become a model program for the nation. The administrative plan ensures that both faculty members will enjoy full association with both partnering institutions. The startup package will include support for summer salary, research assistantships, travel costs to professional meetings, and laboratory equipment. USL and SUBR are linked to each other, as well as to other research universities in the state, by the new Louisiana Audio-Visual Research Network, facilitating distance learning and remote research collaboration. Direct all inquiries to: Professor Vijay Raghavan Center for Advanced Computer Studies The University of Southwestern Louisiana P.O. Box 44330 Lafayette, LA 70504-4330 Phone: 318-482-6603 Fax: 318-482-5791 Email: raghavan@cacs.usl.edu OR Professor Erold Hinds Computer Science Department Southern University-Baton Rouge Baton Rouge, LA 70813-0400 Phone: 504-771-2060 Fax: 504-771-4223 Email: ewhinds@aol.com Interested individuals should send a complete vita, samples of publications, three names and addresses of references, and a brief description of research interests to Professor Raghavan. The consideration of candidates will begin June 15th, 1998 and continue until the position is filled. Please note that if you choose to send your application by email to jfap-search@cacs.usl.edu; only ASCII or PostScript files can be accepted. USL and SUBR are both EEO/AA employers. ****************************************************************** III. NOTICES III.A.1. Fr: Marcia J. Bates Re: Journal of ASIS 50th Anniversary CALL FOR PAPERS JASIS Special Topic Issue Taking Stock for the Future: JASIS' 50th Anniversary A very special Special Topic Issue of the Journal of the American Society for Information Science (JASIS) will be coming out in 1999 (vol. 50) in order to celebrate JASIS's Fiftieth Anniversary. The topic will be "Taking Stock for the Future: JASIS's 50th Anniversary. The guest editor for this issue is Professor Marcia J. Bates of the University of California, Los Angeles. In planning for our lives, we often review where we've been, where we are now, and where we want to go. This special 50th Anniversary Issue of the Journal of the American Society for Information Science will mark information science's half-century celebration and outlook for the future. Two kinds of articles are encouraged: 1. Articles in the usual length range on these topics: *the nature of information science *the broad sweep of history of the field (not articles on very specific historical events or people) *the direction of the field--as it is or as it should be *the role of JASIS--past, present, future in the field and in scientific communication generally. 2. Brief commentary articles of a maximum 500-600 words on any of several types of topics: *brief opinion piece on any information-science-related issue *biographical sketch of some pioneer in the field *comments on future directions for the field *under-recognized research areas that should be getting more attention *forecasting JASIS' appearance and contents for the year 2049 *other imaginative topics relevant to the Journal's anniversary. People at all levels, senior and junior, in the field are urged to submit papers for this issue. We'd like to hear from recipients of the ASIS awards, faculty, researchers, and practitioners, as well as students at various educational levels. If there are sufficient suitable brief articles, some will be run in other issues during the Volume 50 (1999) year. Inquiries can be made to the guest editor by telephone or electronic mail. Authors must submit a paragraph "Statement of Intent" by June 30, 1998, in which you describe the general topic you intend to write about (for both short and long articles). All statements of intent may be submitted via electronic mail. Authors must submit four copies of the finished article (short or long) by August 31, 1998 to: Dr. Marcia J. Bates Department of Library and Information Science 230 GSEIS Building University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA 90095-1520 (310) 206-9353 (Voice) (310) 206-4460 (Fax) mjbates@ucla.edu All manuscripts will be reviewed by a select panel of referees, and those accepted will be published in this 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 will be available on the World Wide Web, as is further information about JASIS, at http://www.asis.org/ ********** III.A.2. Fr: Richard Hill Re: D-Lib Magazine (May 1998) The May 1998 issue of D-Lib Magazine is now available at . The UK Office for Library and Information Networking maintains a mirror site for D-Lib Magazine at: , and The Australian National University Sunsite also maintains a mirror at . In this issue, we feature research stories about the Physical Review Online Archives and scholarly communication; the Resource Description Framework (RDF); the National HPCC Software Exchange; and terms and conditions languages. In addition, we are pleased to run tables of contents for JASIS, which ASIS has graciously contributed to D-Lib Magazine. In the Technology Spotlight, we are featuring a webVIBE, a visual language project by students at the University of Pittsburgh. CONTENTS Archives in a New Paradigm of Scientific Publishing: Physical Review Online Archives (PROLA). Timothy Thomas, Los Alamos National Laboratory An Introduction to the Resource Description Framework. Eric Miller, Online Computer Library Center, Inc. National HPCC Software Exchange (NHSE): Uniting the High Performance Computing and Communications Community. Shirley Browne, Jack Dongarra, Jeff Horner, Paul McMahan, Scott Wells, University of Tennessee Safeguarding Digital Library Contents and Users: Storing, Sending, Showing, and Honoring Usage Terms and Conditions. Henry M. Gladney and Jeff B. Lotspiech, IBM Almaden Research Center D-Lib Magazine is produced by the Corporation for National Research Initiatives and is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on behalf of the NSF/DARPA/NASA Digital Libraries Initiative. William Y. Arms, Vice President Amy Friedlander, Editor, D-Lib Magazine ********** III.B.1. Fr: Efthimis Efthimiadis Re: UW Talk: Indexing/Data Mining in Multimedia DBs The Graduate School of Library & Information Science University of Washington and the UW Student Chapter of the American Society for Information Science invite you to a presentation: Indexing and Data Mining in Traditional and Multimedia Databases. by Dr Christos Faloutsos Carnegie Mellon University. DATE: Monday, June 8, 1998 TIME: 3-5 pm VENUE: Room 127, Suzallo Library Bldg, UW PARKING: UW parking available at $6 ABSTRACT: The talk presents fast indexing methods for multimedia databases, as well as recent tools for datamining. Specifically, it examines (a) Spatial Access Methods, like R-trees, for multimedia indexing and (b) scaleable methods for lossy compression and rule discovery. For the first part, we do feature extraction, mapping each multimedia object into a low-dimensionality point; then, we store these points in Spatial Access Methods, and thus we can quickly find objects that are similar to a desirable object (e.g., 'find stocks similar to Microsoft'). We describe the conditions under which the method gives no false dismissals, and we also describe FastMap, a method that does automatic feature extraction. For the second part on data mining, we describe a method that compresses a large data matrix, such as, eg., a matrix with customers as rows, days-of-the-year as columns, and the amount spent in each cell. For such a large, multi-GigaByte matrix, we want to compress it so that (1) it fits on the disk and (2) we can reconstruct arbitrary cells of the matrix quickly. The proposed method exploits patterns in the data matrix, achieves 50:1 compression with less than 10% reconstruction error, and moreover allows visualization. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES: Christos Faloutsos received the B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering (1981) from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, Canada. Dr Faloutsos is currently a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to joining CMU he was on the faculty of the department of Computer Science at University of Maryland, College Park. He has spent sabbaticals at IBM-Almaden and AT&T Bell Labs. Dr Faloutsos has received the Presidential Young Investigator Award by the National Science Foundation (1989), two ``best paper'' awards (SIGMOD 94, VLDB 97), and three teaching awards. He has published over 70 refereed articles, one monograph, and has filed for three patents. His research interests include physical data base design, searching methods for text, geographic information systems indexing methods for multimedia databases and data mining. CONTACT: Christos Faloutsos Computer Science Department phone#: 412-268.14.57 Carnegie Mellon University FAX#: 412-268.55.76 Wean Hall, room 4111 christos@cs.cmu.edu 5000 Forbes Avenue http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~christos Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3891 ********** III.C.1. Fr: Maria Zemankova Re: NSF Integrative Graduate Education & Research Training Program Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) Program (NSF 98-96) http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf9896 Receipt Deadline for Preproposals: July 1, 1998 Receipt Deadline for Full Proposals: November 23, 1998 The following document (nsf98116) is now available from the NSF Online Document System Title: Frequently Asked Questions about the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traning (IGERT) Program Type: Program Announcements & Information Subtype: Computer/Information Sciences, Crosscutting Programs Replaces igertfaq It may be found at: http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf98116 NSF Custom News Service http://www.nsf.gov/home/cns/start.htm Please send questions and comments to webmaster@nsf.gov This program is *ideal* for preparing Ph.D.s with multidisciplinary backgrounds and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed in information-intensive research. I highly recommend this as a vehicle for fostering multidisciplinary research between the Information and Data Management Program researcher community with the domain researchers and engineers. Maria Zemankova, Ph.D. Program Director, Information and Data Management (IDM) Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS) National Science Foundation 4201 Wilson Blvd., Room 1115 Arlington, VA 22230 email: mzemanko@nsf.gov Phone: 703-306-1926 Fax: 703-306-0599 URL: http://www.cise.nsf.gov/iis/idm_home.html ****************************************************************** IV. PROJECTS IV.C.1. Fr: Maria Zemankova Re: (US) National Medal of Science -- Nominations I would like to encourage you to nominate information and computation scientists or engineers for the National Medal of Science (see below) in order to give the public recognition to our colleagues for their outstanding contributions. In addtion, the medal winners will bring POSITIVE attention to computer and information science and engineering that will be beneficial to everybody. Maria Zemankova The following document (nsf9881a) is now available from the NSF Online Document System Title: President's Committee on the National Medal of Science Type: General Information, Program Announcements & Information Subtype: National Science Board It may be found at: http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf9881a NSF Custom News Service http://www.nsf.gov/home/cns/start.htm Please send questions and comments to webmaster@nsf.gov ********** IV.D.1. Fr: The Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL) Re: The New Cedars Project: CURL Exemplars in Digital Archives Press Release INTRODUCTION: In recent years university libraries have included a growing number of digital information resources in their collections. At present there is no legal obligation nor are there formal mechanisms for ensuring that such digital information is preserved for posterity. As libraries' reliance upon such resources increases, they become stakeholders in ensuring that those resources are maintained over the longer term. They are responsible for ensuring that these resources may be as accessible to users in 10, 20 or 200 years time as they are now. Just as academic libraries have an ongoing responsibility for the preservation and access of paper-based resources, they now have a new and more complex responsibility for digital resources. For digital materials, unlike paper, a library continues to have responsibility for ensuring long-term access to them irrespective of whether the burden for physically preserving that resource falls directly to the library or to a third party agency. For example in the case of an electronic journal, a publisher might have the ultimate role of preserving the physical digital object but the research library is responsible for providing long term access to this material for its researchers. The need to devise strategies for digital preservation is both pressing and immediate and these strategies will need to encompass all forms of digital information resources. DESCRIPTION: With these issues in mind the Cedars project aims to address strategic, methodological and practical issues and will provide guidance for libraries in best practice for digital preservation. In the UK, CURL (The Consortium of University Research Libraries) is uniquely placed to lead this project. Digital preservation is a key issue for all its members. Under the overall direction of the CURL Management Board, Cedars will be based across three lead sites (Oxford, Leeds and Cambridge). Wider involvement from the community will come through focus groups, workshops and discussion lists. CEDARS is a three year project funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) through the Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib). PROJECT OBJECTIVES: The project aims to investigate strategies which will ensure that the digital information resources typically included in library collections may, with other non-digital objects, be preserved over the longer term. It order to achieve this aim the project plans to * promote awareness about the importance of digital preservation, both amongst university libraries and their users, and amongst the data creating and data supplying communities upon which they depend. * identify, document and disseminate strategic frameworks within which individual libraries can develop collection management policies which are appropriate to their needs and which can guide the necessary decision-making to safeguard the long-term viability of any digital resources which are included in their collections. *investigate, document and promote methods appropriate to the long-term preservation of different classes of digital resources typically included in library collections, and to develop costed and scaleable models, There is an enormous range of digital resources (e.g. text, sound, pictures, moving images). In focusing on the following categories ,the project intends to identify techniques which can be generalised and extended to the full range of + digital materials: + digitised primary resources + electronic journals + large online databases + electronic ephemera + digital resources in which the intellectual content in bound to structure, form, and behaviour In meeting its objectives, the project intends, wherever possible, to make use of work that has already been done and to build upon existing expertise in digital preservation and digital collection management. Key deliverables of the project include: *guidelines for developing collection management policies which will ensure the long-term viability of any digital resources included in the collection; *demonstrator projects to test and promote the technical and organisational feasibility of a chosen strategy for digital preservation; *methodological guidelines developed by the demonstrator projects providing guidance about how to preserve different classes of digital resources; *clearly articulated preferences about data formats, content models and compression techniques which are most readily and cost-effectively preserved; *publications of benefit to the whole higher education community, available on the WWW WEB SITE: As project work evolves, all Cedars working papers and documentation will be available at: http://www.curl.ac.uk General information about the JISC Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib) can be found at: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib Information about JISC is available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk CONTACT DETAILS Kelly Russell Cedars Project Manager Edward Boyle Library University of Leeds Leeds LS2 9JT phone: (+44) (0)113 233 6386 fax: (+44) (0)113 233 5539 email: k.l.russell@leeds.ac.uk Clare Jenkins Cedars Project Director BLPES London School of Economics 10 Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD phone: (+44) (0)171 955 6314 fax: (+44) (0)171 955 7454 email: c.jenkins@lse.ac.uk BACKGROUND Many of the recommendations of the Follett Report1 related to ways in which the use of information technology in the electronic library can help to alleviate some of the problems of university libraries today. The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) established the Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib) as a direct response to the Follett Report. The programme has a budget of about =A315 million over 3 years, and its objectives include the use of IT to improve delivery of information through increased use of electronic library services, to allow academic libraries to cope better with growth, to explore different models of intellectual property management and to encourage new methods of scholarly publishing. Now in its third phase, eLib is funding integration projects to build exemplar hybrid libraries (those which provide access to both digital and non-digital materials) including several Z39.50 pilot projects to link library catalogues. Phase 3 will also directly address issues of concern for the long-term preservation of and access to digital resources. Kelly Russell CEDARS Project Manager Edward Boyle Library The University of Leeds Leeds LS2 9JT phone: (+44) (0)113 233 6386 fax: (+44) (0)113 233 5539 email: k.l.russell@leeds.ac.uk ****************************************************************** 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: nancy.gusack@ucop.edu Editorial Staff: Nancy Gusack nancy.gusack@ucop.edu Cliff Lynch (emeritus) cliff@cni.org The IRLIST Archives is set up for anonymous FTP. Using anonymous FTP via the host ftp.cdl.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. 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