Information Retrieval List Digest 446 (March 15, 1999) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/irld/irld-446.txt IRLIST Digest ISSN 1064-6965 March 15, 1999 Volume XVI, Number 10 Issue 446 ****************************************************************** II. JOBS 1. Northern Virginia: Implementation Specialist 2. Indiana U.: SLIS: 3 Faculty Positions III. NOTICES A. Publications 1. [WASHINGTON-UPDATE] FCC Special Edition B. Meetings 1. Natural Language Interfaces: Dialogue and Partner Modelling 2. KDAD'99: 2nd CFP 3. NSF/DOE Workshop on Large Scale Visualization 4. Mira Conference on Evaluation in IR 5. METICS99: CFP 6. Second School on Information Extraction: CFP 7. UK Academy for Information Systems Annual Conference 8. ICCS-99 Third Announcement IV. PROJECTS C. Awards, Fellowships, Grants, & Scholarships 1. AALL Scholarships ****************************************************************** II. JOBS II.1. Fr: 915602@candseek.com Re: Northern Virginia: Implementation Specialist I represent an industry leading provider of solutions for international trade logistics with installations throughout North America, South America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. Currently, they are looking for an Implementation Specialist to work as part of a team to implement software at client sites. Specific responsibilities will include working with clients to define system requirements, translating requirements into design, overseeing verification and validation, training client staff to use administrative tools, and supporting acceptance testing. The ideal candidate will have at least 2 years of experience with a Relational Database Management System as a developer or an administrator. The individual must also have prior experience with project and task management, external client interaction, software verification and validation, requirements definition, system/software design and development, and application development. This position will involve at least 80% domestic and international travel. For the right person, the salary can go as high as $62,000 in a base with generous bonuses, based on both individual and company performance, and a great benefits package. Geographic Location of Position: Northern VA If you know anyone that might be interested, please forward this to them or contact: Megan McCullough Diedre Moire Corporation Voice: 609-584-9000 ext. 275 Fax: 609-584-9575 Email: 915602@candseek.com Please feel free to contact the candidateseeker.com feedback line at 609-584-5499. Do not use this number for job related questions. All job-related questions should be directed to the employer by replying to contact addresses or phone numbers indicated at the end of the job description message. ********** II.2. Fr: Debora Shaw Re: Indiana U.: SLIS: 3 Faculty Positions School of Library and Information Science Indiana University Bloomington Three Faculty Positions Indiana University's (IU) School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) at Bloomington invites applications for faculty positions in social informatics, human-computer interaction and information retrieval/digital libraries. SLIS is committed to exploring the cognitive, contextual and social processes that characterize information behavior at individual, organizational and societal levels. The school maintains good working relations with colleagues in other academic units such as Computer Science, Cognitive Science, Journalism, Education and Law through joint and adjunct faculty appointments as well as through interaction with Fellows in the Center for Social Informatics. The successful candidates will also beinvolved with IU's new, multi-disciplinary School of Informatics (http:// informatics.indiana.edu/). Information about SLIS's faculty, degree programs and research activities, including the Center for Social Informatics and the Usability Laboratory, can be found at http://www.slis.indiana.edu/ 1. Social Informatics (Associate/Full Professor) -- Search Extended Areas of specialization for this position are not prescribed. However applicants must be able to articulate how they would enhance SLIS's strengths in social informatics -- studies of information technologies and social change in organizational, institutional and cultural contexts (see: www.slis.indiana.edu/SI and www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI). Individuals who can crystallize nationally significant debates and synthesize social informatics research and/or policy issues will be given special consideration. Essential qualifications are: evidence of sustained scholarship; influential research; dynamic teaching; national/international reputation; record of external funding; ability to mentor doctoral studentsand junior faculty. Search committee: Dr. Debora Shaw, Chair (shawd@indiana.edu), Dr. Andrew Dillon (adillon@ indiana.edu), Dr. Rob Kling (kling@indiana.edu), Dr. Howard Rosenbaum (hrosenba@indiana. edu). 2. Human-Computer Interaction (Assistant Professor) Theoretical and empirical strengths in the broad area of user-centered systems design are sought to complement existing strengths in the design and evaluation of hypermedia technologies, the development of valid and reliable evaluation methods, and the modeling of user response to information systems. Candidates should display strong research methods skills (experimental design, statistical analysis, etc.), an ability to contribute theoretically to the school's socio cognitive analysis of interaction, an emerging and sustainable record of research output, and experience teaching and mentoring students at the graduate level. Search committee: Dr. Andrew Dillon, Chair (adillon@indiana.edu), Dr. Elin Jacob (ejacob@ indiana.edu), Dr. Javed Mostafa (jm@indiana.edu). 3. Information Retrieval and Digital Libraries (Assistant Professor) Candidates will have strong teaching and research interests in the areas of digital library design and information retrieval, including multimedia applications, with a balanced emphasis on data representation and user-interaction issues. Expertise in classification, filtering, learning algorithms, user modeling and data visualization is desirable. Experience/knowledge of digital library construction issues (interoperability, metadata, social learning, etc.) is expected, as well as computer programming. Search committee: Dr. Javed Mostafa, Chair (jm@indiana.edu), Dr. Uta Priss (upriss@indiana. edu), Dr. Debora Shaw (shawd@indiana.edu). SLIS has a full-time interdisciplinary faculty of twenty whose backgrounds include information science, computer science, library science, psychology, sociology, and communications. SLIS is one of the top-ranked programs of its kind in the nation and offers both a master's degree (MIS) and PhD in Information Science, along with a master's in Library Science (MLS) and a post-master's specialization in Library and Information Science. Indiana University is a major public research university with 1,500 faculty and 35,000 students located on the beautiful Bloomington campus. The campus hosts 110 research centers and institutes, as well as a wide array of distinguished academic departments and schools. Indiana University has been rated as one of the best- networked universities in the U.S. and its library collections are among the largest in the nation. Indiana University is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, offering a full range of benefits, including TIAA/CREF. Salaries are negotiable, commensurate with qualifications (PhD required) and experience. To apply, submit a letter of application that explains some of the ways that you can help to strengthen SLIS's programs, five references and curriculum vitae. Informal enquiries can be made to members of the search committees listed above. Applications, nominations and curricula vitae should be sent to the chair of the appropriate search committee, School of Library and Information Science, Main Library 012, 1320 East 10th Street, Bloomington, IN 47405-3907; phone: (812) 855-2018; fax: (812) 855-6166. Applications will be reviewed as received. Starting dates open. ****************************************************************** III. NOTICES III.A.1. Fr: EDUCAUSE Re: [WASHINGTON-UPDATE] FCC Special Edition EDUCAUSE: Transforming Education Through Information Technologies http://www.educause.edu March 12, 1999 EDUCAUSE WASHINGTON UPDATE: FCC SPECIAL EDITION IN THIS ISSUE: RECIPROCAL COMPENSATION FOLLOW-UP SECTION 706: ADVANCED TELECOMMUNICATIONS DEPLOYMENT >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Written from EDUCAUSE'S Washington office, "The EDUCAUSE Washington Update" is a free service of EDUCAUSE, an international nonprofit association dedicated to transforming higher education through information technologies. Anyone may subscribe to the Update by sending e-mail to listserv@listserv.educause.edu with "subscribe update firstname lastname" in the body of the message. To unsubscribe, send a "signoff update" command to the same address. ********** III.B.1. Fr: Bernhard Schroeder Re: Natural Language Interfaces: Dialogue and Partner Modelling NATURAL LANGUAGE INTERFACES DIALOGUE AND PARTNER MODELING Workshop at the Fachtagung fuer Kuenstliche Intelligenz, Bonn, Germany 13.9.-14.9.1999 Theme of the Workshop Natural language interfaces allow users to interact verbally with dialogue systems. Users can ask a question via keyboard or microphone and receive an answer in spoken or in written form. Such interfaces have been around for a while; the challenge right now is to make them as robust and efficient as possible without limiting syntax and vocabulary more than necessary. How can new approaches to dialogue and partner modeling help to reach this goal? To what extent can results from under-specification theory, dynamic semantics, rhetorical structure theory or centering theory be useful? We are especially interested in approaches which have already been integrated into existing system and whose implementation has been evaluated. The workshop is intended as an opportunity for a lively dialogue between linguists and computer scientists, between theory and practice. For this reason, -- presentations are limited to 15 minutes, followed by 15 minutes' discussion -- a final discussion of about one and a half hours is planned. Abstract Submission Participants who would like to give a talk are asked to submit an extended abstract of max. 2 pages per e-mail to the organizers, Bernhard Schroeder (b.schroeder@uni-bonn.de) und Maria Wolters (wolters@ikp.uni-bonn.de) in .ps or .pdf format. Each received abstract is acknowledged. The languages of the workshop are English and German. Authors are notified of acceptance on 31 May. From mid June on, all extended abstracts will be accessible from this web page. We will also create a mailing list for participants and other interested researchers. We plan to publish the proceedings of this workshop as a book. Schedule 15.5.1999: deadline for receipt of extended abstracts 31.5.1999: notification of acceptance 14.6.1999: deadline for revised extended abstracts 13./14.9.1999: Workshop in Bonn Organizing Committee Bernhard Schroeder, Maria Wolters Institut fuer Kommunikationsforschung und Phonetik Universitaet Bonn Poppelsdorfer Allee 47 D-53115 Bonn Tel.: +49 228 735621 (Schroeder); +49 228 733081 (Wolters) Fax: +49 228 735639 e-mail: b.schroeder@uni-bonn.de wolters@ikp.uni-bonn.de Programme Committee Elisabeth Andre, Saarbruecken Harry Bunt, Tilburg Paul Dekker, Amsterdam Roland Hausser, Erlangen Janet Hitzeman, Edinburgh Winfried Lenders, Bonn Paul McKevitt, Aalborg ********** III.B.2. Fr: Mohamed.Quafafou@irin.univ-nantes.fr (Mohamed Quafafou) Re: KDAD'99: 2nd CFP The PAKDD Workshop on Knowledge Discovery from Advanced Databases (KDAD'99) In conjunction with Third Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD'99) Beijing, China, April 26, 1999 http://www.sciences.univ-nantes.fr/kdad99 MOTIVATION The main goal of knowledge discovery is to convert the massive amount of the captured data to actionable knowledge. The last few years have seen a growing development of algorithms and approaches to automatic discovery of knowledge from for well-structured raw data stored in very large relational databases. However, different kind of data, i.e., image, text, video, etc. are know available in file systems, objects servers and web sites and accessed by a wide range of users, ranging from discipline experts to novice users. There is a growing need for new generation of data mining and KDD tools to automatically and intelligently analyzes complex data types as audio, image, video, spatial data, temporal data and textual information. The challenge for the next decade is to develop theoretical foundations, technological support and integrated tools to make easy the discovery of knowledge from advanced databases (KdAd) by converting its heterogeneous information to useful and actionable knowledge according to a users goals. The problem of efficiently discovering knowledge from advanced databases is an important problem in wide variety of application areas including astronomy, geology, biology, urbanism, environment, biomedical, spatial relationship marketing, etc. Knowledge discovery from advanced databases development faces challenges in several issues, including data storage and access, data preprocessing, data mining algorithms and architectures, visualization and interactive exploration, interfaces and languages for data mining, etc.: 1. Complex data that may be extremely varied in content, structure and format, can not be stored and manipulated in a traditional RDBMS. Alternative ways are extending object-relational databases to store and manage both data and methods encapsulated into objects, and objects databases which allow a persistent storage of objects and an the use object-oriented programming language. 2. Large preprocessing efforts are generally necessary to understand the data and data preprocessing includes different kind of operators as indexing schemes, retrieval methods, data integration, metadata creation, etc. 3. Efficient data mining algorithms are needed to analyse this heterogeneous data which may be strongly structured (i.e., multimedia object) or poorly structured (i.e., informal notes added to an image). The integration of KDD tools into software environment is primary of importance in real world applications, i.e., coupling KDD tools with a geographical information system. The KdAd99 workshop will be focused on algorithms, methodologies, technologies and standards related to knowledge discovery from advanced databases, i.e., OODB, text mining, spatial and temporal data exploration and analysis, image, audio, video and more generally multimedia objects mining. Real world applications are strongly encouraged. WORKSHOP OUTLINE The Workshop includes invited and contributed talks which give a description of open questions in KdAd, work in progress, solutions presented by specific approaches, lessons learned from realized real world projects. This workshop is a forum for discussion of new ideas and techniques and will leads to identify the main problems that should be addressed in the immediate future. We invite participants from academia, government and industry to share ideas and experiences. SUBMISSION OF PAPERS Currently, researchers in different communities (i.e., data mining, database, multimedia, digital libraries, metadata, data engineering and object) are looking at different aspects of this problem. The primary purpose of this workshop is threefold: 1. to bring together researchers and practitioners interested by KdAd problem in order to exchange ideas, 2. to gain a better understanding of the state of the art and the technological solutions, 3. to identify and explicit the search challenges to address in getting specific tools and/or integrated solutions supporting the emergence of knowledge from Advanced databases. Among others, papers of the following kind are welcome : - Heterogeneous Database systems - Semi-structured Data mining - Temporal and Spatial Database systems - Multimedia and Digital Libraries - Image, Video and Audio Data exploration and analysis - OODB mining - Text Mining - Metadata and complex object mining - Agent-based architectures - Analysis and methodology issues - Applications in Sciences, Engineering, GIS-based mining, Internet and web mining, etc. This workshop addresses practitioners as well as researchers from those communities that contribute to the KdAd topic. Potential attendees submit a full technical paper (not exceeding 5000 words), or a summary of an ongoing research effort (not exceeding 1500 words). Electronic submission (postscript, pdf, or MS Word format) is highly encouraged. Submission should be sent to quafafou@irin.univ-nantes.fr. Hard-copy submission are also accepted, please sent three (3) copies of the paper to Mohamed Quafafou (see address below) IMPORTANT DATES Submission deadline March 15, 1999 Notification of acceptance April 5, 1999 Workshop date April 26, 1999 REVIEW & PUBLICATION All submissions will be reviewed on the basis of relevance, originality, significance and clarity. Two referees will review each submission and their results will be sent to the first author via email, unless requested otherwise. Authors of selected papers will be invited to extend their papers for inclusion in a special issue of An International Journal. KDAD'99 ORGANISATION Mohamed Quafafou (co-chair) University of Nantes, 2, rue de la Houssiniere, BP. 92208 44322 Nantes Cedex 3 France. e-mail : quafafou@irin.univ-nantes.fr Philip Yu (co-chair) IBM T.J. Watson Research Center 30 Saw Mill River Road Hawthorne, NY 10532, USA e-mail: psyu@watson.ibm.com PROGRAM COMMITTE Chung Sheng Li IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA Hannu Toivonen University of Helsinki, Finland, Raymond Ng Univ. of British Columbia, Canada Kyusoek Shim Bell Labs, USA Jiawei Han Simon Fraser University, Canada Rakesh Agrawal IBM Almaden Research Center, USA Hongjun Lu National University of Sangapore, Singapore Vijay V. Raghavan University of Southwestern Louisiana, USA Ahmed K. Elmagarmid Perdue University, USA Ning Zhong Yamagushi university, Japan Xindong Wu Colorado School of Mines, USA -- Mohamed Quafafou IRIN, 2 rue la Houssiniere, BP 92208 - 44322, Nantes cedex 03, France. * tel: +33 (0) 251 125 853 * fax: +33 (0) 251 125 812 * quafafou@irin.univ-nantes.fr * ********** III.B.3. Fr: Kwan-Liu Ma Re: NSF/DOE Workshop on Large Scale Visualization Hi: Chris Johnson, John Reynders, and I (Kwan-Liu Ma), with the assistance of a small organizing committee, are moving forward with our plans to hold a workshop on large-scale data visualization and data management at the DoubleTree Hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah on May 20-22, 1999. This workshop is sponsored by both NSF and DOE. The format of the workshop will be talks by invited speakers, with some additional opportunities for shorter talks, and discussion sessions. Attendance will be partially by invitation and partially by open registration on a first-come basis. Registration begins now and is conducted entirely online. Please visit http://www.icase.edu/LDV99 for more information. Here is the list of invited speakers: Chandrajit Bajaj, UT Austin Michael Cox, MRJ at NASA Ames Research Center Steve Eick, Lucent Technologies Steve Hammond, NCAR Bernd Hamann, UC Davis Kai Li, Princeton University Bill Lorensen, GE Research Steve Louis, LLNL Dinesh Manocha, UNC, Chapel Hill Jamie Painter, LANL Will Schroeder, Kitware Rick Stevens, ANL Philip Heermann, SNL Contributed speakers will be selected from the attendees by a committee using the one-page statements submitted with the online registration. We will update the workshop's web page periodically as planning for the workshop proceeds. Key updates will also be posted to the vis-large emailing list (vis-large@icase.edu), and other mailing lists. Please join us in this important activity. Sincerely, Workshop Co-Chairs Chris Johnson, University of Utah Kwan-Liu Ma, ICASE John Reynders, LANL ********** III.B.4. Fr: Mark Dunlop Re: Mira Conference on Evaluation in IR Final Mira Conference on Evaluation in IR Call for participation Glasgow - 14-16 April 1999 http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/mira99/ Mira is a European Union funded working group looking at how information retrieval should accommodate interactivity and multimedia, and what the implications of these are for the evaluation of IR systems. The conference will be designed to explore and exchange the best current thinking and opinion on the Mira theme. With this in mind the programme plans an approximately equal mix of participatory demonstrations and exercises, discussion panels or debates on key questions, and selected invited papers and keynote presentations. The conference starts at 1600 on Wednesday 14 April with Registration and a panel session on different types of relevance and will finish with dinner on Friday evening (with the formal sessions finishing at 1730 with a keynote presentation from Steve Robertson). On the Monday and Tuesday following Mira, the 21st Annual IRSG Colloquium will be held by Strathclyde University in the Teacher's Building. Keynotes will be presented by: * Giorgio Brajnik, Universita degli Studi di Udine: Title to be confirmed. * Annelise Mark Pejtersen, Risoe, and Raya Fidel, University of Washington: Workplace studies of engineering design. * Stephen Robertson, Microsoft Cambridge: Title to be confirmed. Demonstrations or exercises are currently planned on the following topics: * Degrees of and assumptions behind consensus in relevance judgments; * Collaborative filtering; * Applying a multi-level evaluation framework to IR. Panels are currently planned on the following topics: * The worth of the TREC programme; * Different senses and types of relevance. The following papers have been submitted for the conference and will be distributed at the conference. * The application of work tasks in connection with the evaluation of interactive information retrieval systems: empirical results: P Borlund and P Ingwersen+ * Negotiating a multidimensional framework for relevance space: S Gabrielli and S Mizzaro * Time to Dump P and R? M H Heine * The word association methodology - a gateway to work task-based retrieval: M Nielsen and P Ingwersen * Measuring Agreement Among Relevance Judges: S Mizzaro * The perceived similarity of photos - seeking a solid basis for the evaluation of content-based retrieval algorithms: E Sormunen, M Markkula and K Jarvelin+ * Toward a Theoretical Framework for Information Retrieval (IR) Evaluation in an Information Seeking Context: A Spink and T Wilson+ * Can rule-based indexing support concept-based multimedia retrieval in digital libraries? Some experimental results: U Thiel, A Everts B Lutes and A Stein These authors have also been invited to revise their content for the proceedings that are expected to be published in the Electronic Workshops in Computing series. Due to timetabling pressures only those papers marked + will be given presentation time at the conference, these were chosen to balance the content of the conference given the panel and demonstration content. The conference will be based in The IEE Teacher's Building in Glasgow City Centre with accommodation reserved in Glasgow University's research hotel in the west-end of the city. The conference will open in The Hunterian Art Gallery on Glasgow University's main campus in Hillhead in the west-end of Glasgow. This conference is organised and underwritten by the Mira working group on evaluation in information retrieval. Unlike previous meetings of Mira this conference is open to attendees without invitation, but a small registration fee of 100 GBP will be charged. Registration can be carried out on-line at the conference home page. Programme Chair: Prof Keith van Rijsbergen Programme Committee: Dr Stephen Draper, Dr Mark Dunlop Local Organiser: Anne Sinclair, Ian Ruthven, Fiona Nixon This information extracted from http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/mira99/ Dr Mark D Dunlop Phone: +44 (0)141 330 6035 Computing Science Fax: +44 (0)141 330 4913 University of Glasgow mailto:mark@dcs.gla.ac.uk Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~mark/ ********** III.B.5. Fr: Paolo Nesi Re: METICS99: CFP The Sixth International Symposium on Software Metrics November 5-6, 1999. Boca Raton, Florida, USA "Taking the Measure of New Technology" http://www.iese.fhg.de/METRICS99/Metrics99.htm Co-located with IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability=20 Engineering (ISSRE'99): http://www.rstcorp.com/conferences/issre99 Preliminary Call for Papers Sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Council on Software Engineering (Pending approval) in cooperation with Fraunhofer IESE and the Software Productivity Consortium. About the METRICS symposium: Effective technology depends upon measurement, and effective measurement depends upon a three-pronged approach of science to develop metrics, engineering to evaluate and test metrics, and applications that use metrics in industry. Papers are=20 desired which address any one of these crucial areas: Science - Topics include new models for the measurement of requirements, design, and code structures; Evaluation of functional, object- oriented=20 and program complexity; Process models on the effectiveness of resource, testing, or quality attributes; Cycle-time models Engineering- Tailoring of formal models to apply to industry; Evaluation and experimental results showing applicability of models and measures to real problems; Tool support for the collection,=20 analysis and display of measures Applications - Case studies showing novel uses of measures in industry; Examples of metric use; Effective suites of multiple measures for project management Symposium Theme: Many new approaches to software development have become commercially important in the past few years. Existing measurement concepts and techniques must be updated to address these technologies. The theme of the conference will focus on the application of measurement (through empirical studies) to understanding and managing new software technologies (including their related tools and processes), such as: - COTS-Based Development - Software Architectures - Object-Oriented Development - Web-based Applications Quality papers on other general measurement topics will also be considered. Submission Process: April 1, 1999 Send abstract of paper as a short ASCII email message to program chair(briand@iese.fhg.de). Include email address, telephone number, and full=20 postal address. May 1, 1999 Send full paper electronically to program chair.=20 Paper may either be a postscript file or a MicroSoft Word-File. Papers are limited to 12 pages. Electronic submission only! If no email connection, you may send the Program Chair a PC diskette with the paper on it. June 14, 1999 Notification to authors of acceptance decisions. Aug 1, 1999 Final copies of accepted papers due for proceedings. (camera-ready copy) Contacts: For further information, contact either of the following: Program Chair: Lionel Briand Fraunhofer IESE Sauerwiesen 6 Kaiserslautern, D-67661 Germany 49 (0) 6301 707250 (voice) 49 (0) 6301 702202 (fax) General Chair: David Card Software Productivity Consortium 115 Windward Way Indian Harbour, FL 32937 USA 1 703 742 7199 (voice) 1 703 742 7200 (fax) Please note my new email addresses, please use all of them. Paolo Nesi, Ph.D. tel: +39-055-4796523, cel:+39-335-5917797 Associate Professor fax: +39-055-4796363 Dept. of Systems and Informatics email: nesi@ingfi1.ing.unifi.it University of Florence nesi@hpcn.ing.unifi.it Via S. Marta 3 p.nesi@computer.org 50139 Firenze Italy http://www.dsi.unifi.it/~nesi ********** III.B.6. Fr: SCIE99 Re: Second School on Information Extraction: CFP Call for Participation Second School on Information Extraction SCIE99 Frascati(Rome), June 28, July 3, 1999 http://scie99.info.uniroma2.it The Artificial Intelligence group of the Department of Computer Science, Systems and Production of the University of Roma Tor Vergata (Italy), in cooperation with the Italian Association of Artifical Intelligence (AI*IA), is pleased to announce the second Second School on Information Extraction (SCIE99), to be held in Frascati (Roma), Italy, from June 28 to July 3, 1999. OBJECTIVES Information Extraction (IE) is a rapidly expanding interdisciplinary area drawing upon concepts and techniques from artificial intelligence, information retrieval, databases, machine learning, statistics. As a matter of fact natural language processing and computational linguistics are playing an important role in supporting systems for information extraction from documents. Information extraction aims to derive structures and various levels of linguistic generalization from the large volumes of textual data that users and machines can now access and manipulate through networks. If at the first edition of the school the international scenario was including mainly academic/research-oriented systems for IE, the current situation shows an increasing maturity. This can be considered as a side effect of a deeper technological insight as well as a stronger industrial awareness. This also emerges from the successful results of different European community language engineering projects (FACILE, SPARKLE, ECRAN among others). The school provides a forum for researchers and practitioners with different background and expertise, to discuss ideas and describe experiences in defining and implementing IE systems. To maximize interaction among SCIE-99 participants, the attendance will be limited to 80 persons. CONTENTS The school is organized as a set of lectures held by internationally renowned experts from the different disciplines concerning IE themes. These lectures are explicitly meant to address interdisciplinary issues and will introduce common goals, needs and problems of the different approaches. Demo sessions on current IE technologies and systems will be also held at the school. Specific workshops are planned to favor the cooperative discussion among specialists and fellows. A preliminary list of invited speakers and covered topics follows: Jean Pierre CHANOD (XEROX Research Centre Europe, FR) "Finite-state linguistic components: the case of digital libreries" Veronica DAHL (Simon Fraser Univ. CA) "From Assumptions to Speech" Maria Teresa PAZIENZA (Univ. Rome Tor Vergata, IT) "Software architectures for engineering IE systems" Harold SOMERS (UMIST, UK) "Statistical methods for knowledge extraction from corpora" John SOWA (Westchester Polytechnic Univ. USA) "Conceptual modeling and linguistic knowledge" Marc VILAIN (The MITRE Corporation, MA, USA) "Multilingual IE systems" Ellen VOORHEES (NIST, MD, USA) "Contribution of NLP to improve retrieval in very large documents collection" Yorick WILKS (Univ. of Sheffield, UK) "Hybrid statistical-semantic models of IE" The speakers contributions will be published by Springer-Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence series. GRANTS Thanks to the support of the AI*IA (Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence) and some of the sponsors, grants will be available for advanced students and young researchers. Details are in the SCIE99 web site. All information for SCIE-99 participation (registration fees, accommodation, lectures, time schedule, social events, ...) may be found in the school web page http://scie99.info.uniroma2.it SCIE-99 Program Committee: * Luigia Carlucci Aiello (Univ. of Roma La Sapienza) * Elisa Bertino (Univ. of Milano) * Maria Teresa Pazienza (Univ. of Roma, Tor Vergata) (chair) * Domenico Sacca' (Univ. of Calabria) * Lorenza Saitta (Univ. of Torino) SCIE-99 Organizing Committee: - R. Basili (Univ. Roma Tor Vergata) (chair) - C. Cardani (Univ. Roma Tor Vergata) - M. Di Nanni (Univ. Roma Tor Vergata) - M. Vindigni (Univ. Roma Tor Vergata) - F. Zanzotto (Univ. Roma Tor Vergata) School e-mail: scie99@info.uniroma2.it For more information contact: Prof. Maria Teresa Pazienza Dept. of Computer Science, Systems and Production University of Roma, Tor Vergata Via di Tor Vergata 00133 ROMA (ITALY) tel: +39 06 72597378 (office); fax +39 06 72597460; e_mail: pazienza@info.uniroma2.it ********** III.B.7. Fr: Chris Kimble Re: UK Academy for Information Systems Annual Conference Reply to: ukais99@cs.york.ac.uk http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/~lsb/ukais99 UK Academy for Information Systems Annual Conference 7-9 April 1999 Registration Places Still Available Keynote Speakers: * Professor Peter Checkland Topic - "Information Systems: Finding the Fundamentals" Peter Checkland is the Professor of Systems at Lancaster University. * Professor Mike Jackson Topic - "Critical Systems Thinking and IS Research" Mike Jackson is currently a Dean of School and Vice-President of the International Federation for Systems Research. * Professor Andrew Kakabadse Topic - "Promoting Value Added: The Leadership Requirements for IS/IT Professionals in the Future" Andrew Kakabadse is Professor of International Management Development & Deputy-Director of Cranfield School of Management. * Philip Swann Topic - to be confirmed. Philip Swann is Corporate Technical Architect with Marks and Spencer Conference Topics * Conceptual Issues: General Conceptual Theory, Critical Theory, Methodological Pluralism, Post-Modern Approaches * Social Issues: Research Methodology, IT Impact on Organisation, Social Impact on IT in Organisation, Social Impact on IT Development Methods * Information and Knowledge: Information and Representations, Information and Uncertainty, Knowledge Management (Technical), Knowledge Management (People) * Business and IS Alignment: IS Strategy, Business Process Modelling, E-Commerce, Virtual Environments * Information Systems Design: ISD Methods, Evaluation, Interpretivist Research Methods for IS, New IS Public/Health Sector, Distributed IS * Teaching and Learning - experiences of teaching in the information systems field, especially the use of IT in IS education. Conference Structure The UKAIS'99 site http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/~lsb/ukais99/ contains a detailed programme, booking form and list of authors/papers. It is updated regularly to show any changes. The conference will consist of keynote speakers, parallel paper presentations, panel sessions/workshops, and exhibitions. Overview This call for participation is for the fourth annual conference of the UK Academy for Information Systems (UKAIS). The host for conference is the Department of Computer Science at the University of York; the theme is 'Information Systems: The Next Generation. The conference is the PREMIERE event in the Information Systems calendar in the UK and attracts leading academics and researchers from UK and overseas universities, as well as representatives from industry. The conference will be a timely consideration of emerging opportunities for those involved with information systems in the next millennium. It will be an opportunity to consider some of the issues which are currently preoccupying academics and practitioners in the IS community and to assess their impact beyond the year 2000. It will be an arena where the future of the next generation of information systems, as well as the future of IS professionals and academics, will be debated. It will bring together researchers and practitioners of information systems and be a forum for the exchange of ideas and experiences. Exhibitions and sponsorship Exhibition space will be provided for tabletop displays of hardware and software products related to the general themes of the conference. Professional societies and publishers are also encouraged to participate in the exhibitions. A number of sponsorship packages are also available. Please contact the organisers for details of exhibitions and sponsorship packages. Contact Address UKAIS '99 Conference Secretary Department of Computer Science University of York York YO10 5DD UK Tel: 44 10904 433242 Fax: 44 10904 432767 Email: ukais99@cs.york.ac.uk Web site http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/~lsb/ukais99 (Please Note a copy of the registration form is available on the web site) ********** III.B.8. Fr: ICCS_99 Re: ICCS-99 Third Announcement SIXTH INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM ON COGNITIVE SCIENCE Donostia - San Sebastian, May 12-15, 1999 THIRD ANNOUNCEMENT ICCS-99 ILCLI. Villa Asuncin. Apdo. 220. 20080 Donostia - San Sebastin. Spain. Tf.: 34- 943 32 09 40 Fax: 34- 943 29 36 77 E-mail: iccs-99@sf.ehu.es www: http://www.sc.ehu.es/scrwwwil/iccs-99.html MAIN TOPICS: (1) Cognition: Epistemology and Metaphysics. (2) Cognition and Emotion. (3) Cognitive Approaches to Learning. (4) Foundations and Models of Discourse Pragmatics. FURTHER INFORMATION: Dr. J. M. Larrazabal or Dr. L.A. Perez Miranda. ICCS99 ILCLI, Univ. of the Basque Country Apdo. 220. 20080 Donostia - San Sebastian. Spain E.mail: iccs-99@sf.ehu.es ****************************************************************** IV. RESEARCH IV.C.1. Fr: Kumar Percy Re: AALL Scholarships Applications due April 1] AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF LAW LIBRARIES The following seven types of scholarships are available from the American Association of Law Libraries to assist law librarians and future law librarians with educational expenses. Please note that there are scholarships for degree programs as well as for continuing education. Applications are available on request from AALL and on AALL's web site at http://www.aallnet.org/services/scholarships.asp AND Fax-on-Demand at 908/544-5901 To order an application or for further information contact: American Association of Law Libraries 53 W. Jackson, Suite 940 Chicago, IL 60604 (312) 939-4770 EXT. 24 Please send all e-mail inquiries directly to: scholarships@aall.org AALL SCHOLARSHIP INFORMATION The American Association of Law Libraries is committed to providing opportunities for professional growth. Each year, the Association awards scholarships in significant amounts in the categories listed below. Minorities are particularly encouraged to apply. Type I Library Degree for Law School Graduates Awarded to a law school graduate working towards a degree in an accredited library school. Preference is given to AALL members, but scholarships are not restricted to members. Preference in selection is given to persons with meaningful law library experience. Evidence of financial need must be submitted. Type II Library School Graduates Attending Law School Awarded to a library school graduate working toward a degree in an accredited law school, who has meaningful law library experience and has no more than 36 semester (54 quarter) credit hours remaining before qualifying for the law degree. Preference given to members of AALL, but scholarships are not restricted to members. Evidence of financial need must be submitted. Type III Library Degree for Non-Law School Graduates Awarded to a college graduate with meaningful law library experience who is a degree candidate in an accredited library school. Preference is given to members of AALL, but scholarships are not restricted to members. Preference is given to applicants working for degrees with emphasis on courses in law librarianship. Evidence of financial need must be submitted. Type IV Library School Graduates Seeking A Non-Law Degree Awarded to library school graduates who are degree candidates in an area, other than law, which will be beneficial to the development of a professional career in law librarianship. Scholarship restricted to members of AALL. Evidence of financial need must be submitted. Type V Law Librarians in Continuing Education Courses Awarded to law librarians with a degree from an accredited library or law school who are registrants in continuing education courses related to law librarianship. The following named scholarships are available by the American Association of Law Libraries: The George A. Strait Minority Stipend $3500 awarded to college graduates with law library experience who are members of a minority group as defined by current U.S. government guidelines and are degree candidates in accredited library or law schools. Preference will be given to individuals with previous service to, or interest in, law librarianship. Applicants must show evidence of financial need. The James F. Connolly Congressional Information Service Scholarship Up to $3,000 will be awarded to a law librarian who is interested in pursuing a law degree and preference will be given to a librarian who has demonstrated an interest in government publications. Mr. Connolly was a CIS executive who maintained close ties to law librarians. The John Johnson LEXIS-NEXIS Memorial Scholarship fund is allocated at the discretion of the Scholarship Committee. Mr. Johnson was Director of the Legal Librarian segment of Library and Information Services at Mead Data Central and a long-time law library supporter. Applications must be received by April 1 and awards are made shortly thereafter. Forms are available from AALL via: 1) the AALL Web site at http://www.aallnet.org/services/scholarships.html, 2) Fax-on-Demand at 908/544-5901, 3) email at scholarships@aall.org, 4) phone at 312/939-4770 ex. 24, 5) AALL headquarters by sending a request indicating the type of scholarship application needed with a self-addressed envelope to: American Association of Law Libraries 53 West Jackson Blvd. Suite 940 Chicago, IL 60604 Note: Students also may want to review the scholarships offered by the American Library Association at http://www.aallnet.org/services/scholarships.asp ****************************************************************** IRLIST Digest is distributed from the University of California, California Digital Library, 1111 Franklin Street, Oakland, CA. 94607-5200. 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. THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN IRLIST DO NOT REPRESENT THOSE OF THE EDITORS OR THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. AUTHORS ASSUME FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR MATERIAL.