--------------------------------------- SIGIR '95 18th International Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval --------------------------------------- PRELIMINARY PROGRAM Seattle, WA, USA July 9 - July 13, 1995 Sponsored by ACM SIGIR in cooperation with DD (Denmark) CEPIS-EIRSG (Europe) GI (Germany) AICA-GLIR (Italy) IPSJ (Japan) BCS-IRSG (UK) Sponsorship by Microsoft Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University Libraries, and Computing and Communication, University of Washington is gratefully acknowledged. --------------------------------------- SIGIR '95 --------------------------------------- SIGIR'95 is an international research conference on information retrieval theory, systems, practice and applications. The annual ACM SIGIR conference, which alternates between locations in North America and elsewhere, is the principal international meeting for the presentation of research and development in information retrieval (IR). It is traditionally a venue for the best work in IR and papers are carefully selected and of high quality. IR groups within the computing societies of Denmark, Europe, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom are cooperating sponsors. The conference will be valuable to those interested in the theory of information retrieval as well as those responsible for system design, testing and evaluation. Topics include distributed IR and the Internet, efficiency techniques, text summarization, natural language processing, fusion strategies, user studies, search interfaces, and education in IR. Attendees will learn about the underlying foundations for the emerging Global Information Infrastructure, which depends upon searching, browsing, publishing, indexing and other processing of text and multimedia information collections. This year, the 18th in this series, the conference will be held in Seattle, WA, located in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. The city center conference site provides access to parks, the waterfront, restaurants and shopping, cultural amenities and sporting events. Pre-conference tutorials will cover both beginning and advanced topics. The main program consists of 40 contributed papers as well as two panel discussions, poster sessions, and demonstrations. The conference will be followed by five post-conference research workshops on topics of great current and general interest: visual information retrieval interfaces; Z39.50; IR and databases; curriculum development for IR; and automatic construction of hypermedia. CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: Saturday A tour to Mount Rainier Sunday Tutorials Welcome reception celebrating the 50th anniversary of Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" Monday Newcomers breakfast Keynote address: Terry Winograd on the interaction between the digital and library cultures Six sessions of contributed papers Poster session and demonstrations An evening reception Tuesday Keynote address: Tefko Saracevic on evaluation in IR Panel session: Funding priorities for IR Five sessions of contributed papers Banquet at Microsoft campus Wednesday Panel session: Education in IR Five sessions of contributed papers A tour and dinner at Tillicum Village Thursday Post-conference research workshops about Visual IR Interfaces, Z39.50, IR and databases, curriculum development, and automatic construction of hypermedia A tour to the University of Washington Friday A tour to Victoria, British Columbia -------------------------------------- CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION --------------------------------------- Conference Chair: Raya Fidel Graduate School of Library and Information Science, FM-30, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. Treasurer: Sam Gyun Oh Graduate School of Library and Information Science, FM-30, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. Program Chairs: (N and S America, Asia): Edward A. Fox Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0106, USA. (Europe, Africa, Australia): Peter Ingwersen Royal School of Librarianship, Birketinget 6, DK 2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark. Tutorials and Panels Chair: Joan Morrissey School of Computer Science, University of Windsor, Ontario N9B 3P4, Canada. Posters Chair: Elizabeth D. Liddy School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA. Demonstrations Chair: Efthimis N. Efthimiadis Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 20024, USA. Workshops Chair: Katie Hover Search Schema Manager, Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052, USA. Local Arrangements Chair: Michael Crandall Boeing Technical Libraries, P.O. Box 3707, MS 8K-38, Seattle, WA 98124, USA. Publicity Chairs: Edie Rasmussen and Sherry Koshman School of Library and Information Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. Sponsorship Chair: Jill McKinstry Library Systems, FM-25, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. Conference Secretariat: SIGIR'95 Conference Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195, USA tel: (206) 543-1888 fax: (206) 616-3152 email: sigir95@u.washington.edu PROGRAM COMMITTEE IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg, Phillips, Netherlands Maristella Agosti, U. Padua, Italy Richard K. Belew, UC San Diego, USA Nicholas Belkin, Rutgers U., USA Abraham Bookstein, U. Chicago, USA Christine Borgman, UCLA, USA Giorgio Brajnik, U. Udine, Italy Peter D. Bruza, QUT, Australia Forbes Burkowski, Waterloo U., Canada Yves Chiaramella, LGI-IMAG, France W. Bruce Croft, U. Massachusetts, USA Efthimis N. Efthimiadis, UCLA, USA Hans-Peter Frei, UBILAB, Switzerland Norbert Fuhr, U. Dortmund, Germany Richard Furuta, Texas A&M U., USA Micheline Hancock-Beaulieu, City University, UK Donna Harman, NIST, USA David Harper, Robert Gordon U., UK Nancy Ide, Vassar College, USA Tetsuya Ishikawa, ULIS, Japan Kalervo Jarvelin, U. Tampere, Finland Haruo Kimoto, NTT, Japan Shmuel T. Klein, Bar-Ilan U., Israel Robert Korfhage, U. Pittsburgh, USA Ray Larson, UC Berkeley, USA David Lewis, AT&T, USA Elizabeth D. Liddy, Syracuse U., USA Paul Lindner, U. Minnesota, USA Clifford Lynch, U. California, USA Gary Marchionini, U. Maryland, USA Yasushi Ogawa, RICOH, Japan Annelise Mark Pejtersen, Risoe, Denmark Keith van Rijsbergen, Glasgow U., UK Gerard Salton, Cornell U., USA Peter Schauble, ETH, Switzerland Fabrizio Sebastiani, U. Glasgow, UK Alan Smeaton, Dublin City U., Ireland Phil Smith, Ohio State U., USA Craig Stanfill, Ab Initio Software, USA Ulrich Thiel, GMD, Germany Richard Tong, Verity, USA Howard Turtle, West Publishing, USA Ellen Voorhees, Siemens, USA Ross Wilkinson, RMIT, Australia Peter Willett, U. Sheffield, UK E.J. Yannakoudakis, Athens U., Greece ---------------------------------------- SIGIR'95 PROGRAM ---------------------------------------- REGISTRATION TIMES Registration will take place at the following times: Saturday, July 8: 4:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. Sunday, July 9: 8:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Monday, July 10: 8:00 a.m. - Noon Tuesday, July 11: 8:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. Wednesday, July 12: 8:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m. 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Thursday, July 13: 8:00 a.m. - Noon ---------------------------------------- Saturday, July 8 8:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. Tour to Mount Rainier (from the Sheraton's lobby) ---------------------------------------- Sunday, July 9 8:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. TUTORIALS INTRODUCTION TO INFORMATION RETRIEVAL Peter Willett, University of Sheffield and Peter Ingwersen, Royal School of Librarianship, Copenhagen QUERY-DOCUMENT SYMMETRY AND DUALITY Stephen Robertson, City University, London WHAT DIFFERENCES ARE SIGNIFICANT? STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF IR TESTS Jean Tague-Sutcliffe, James Blustein, University of Western Ontario, and Paul Kantor, Rutgers University 1:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. TUTORIALS EVALUATION OF IR SYSTEMS William Hersh, Oregon Health Sciences University and Micheline Hancock-Beaulieu, City University, London DESIGNING INFORMATION FOR THE COMPUTER SCREEN Paul Kahn, Dynamic Diagrams DATA FUSION IN IR Paul Kantor, Rutgers University 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. RECEPTION Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" --------------------------------------- Monday, July 10 7:30 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. Newcomers breakfast 8:45 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. SESSION 1 Chair: Raya Fidel Opening remarks: Edward Fox Keynote Address: DIGITAL VS. LIBRARIES: BRIDGING THE TWO CULTURES Terry Winograd, Stanford University New projects under the label Digital Libraries illustrate the issues involved in the interaction between the computing research community and the library community. Prof. Winograd will discuss these issues and suggest some potential directions for building standards and systems that can bridge the gap between the two cultures. 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. SESSION 2 DISTRIBUTED IR AND THE INTERNET (Chair: Paul Lindner) Netserf: Using Semantic Knowledge to Find Internet Information Archives Anil S. Chakravarthy, Kenneth B. Haase, MIT Media Laboratory, USA Dissemination of Collection Wide Information in a Distributed Information Retrieval System Charles L. Viles, James C. French, U. of Virginia, USA Searching Distributed Collections with Inference Networks James P. Callan, Zhihong Lu, W. Bruce Croft, U. Mass. Amherst, USA 1:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. SESSION 3 EFFICIENCY TECHNIQUES (Chair: Peter Willett) Fast Evaluation of Structured Queries for Information Retrieval Eric W. Brown, U. Mass. Amherst, USA Efficient Recompression Techniques for Dynamic Full-Text Retrieval Systems Shmuel T. Klein, Bar-Ilan U., Israel 2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. SESSION 4 ADVANCED SYSTEMS (Chair: IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg) Design of a Reusable IR Framework Gabriele Sonnenberger, Hans-Peter Frei, Union Bank of Switzerland Parallel Text Retrieval on a High Performance Super Computer Using the Vector Space Model Pavlos Efraimidis, Christos Glymidakis, Basilis Mamalis, Paul Spirakis, Basil Tampakas, University of Patras, Greece 2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. SESSION 5 TEXT SUMMARIZATION (Chair: Karen Sparck-Jones) A Trainable Document Summarizer Julian Kupiec, Jan Pedersen, Francine Chen, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, USA Generating Summaries of Multiple News Articles Kathleen McKeown, Dragomir R. Radev, Columbia U., USA 4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. SESSION 6 INTEGRATING STRUCTURED AND UNSTRUCTURED INFORMATION (Chair: E. J. Yannakoudakis) Integrating IR and RDBMS Using Cooperative Indexing Samuel DeFazio, Amjad Daoud, Lisa Ann Smith, Jagannathan Srinivasan, Oracle Corporation, and W. Bruce Croft, Jamie Callan, U. Mass. Amherst, USA A Language for Queries on Structure and Contents of Textual Databases Gonzalo Navarro, Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Universidad de Chile An NF2 Relational Interface For Document Retrieval, Restructuring and Aggregation Kalervo Jarvelin, Timo Niemi, U. of Tampere, Finland 4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. SESSION 7 NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING (Chair: Haruo Kimoto) Fast and Quasi-Natural Language Search for Gigabits of Chinese Texts Lee-Feng Chien, Academia Sinica, Taiwan A New Character-based Indexing Organization using Frequency Data for Japanese Documents Yasushi Ogawa, Ricoh Co., Ltd., Japan Little Words Can Make a Big Difference for Text Classification Ellen Riloff, U. of Utah, USA 5:30 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. DEMONSTRATIONS 5:30 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. POSTER SESSION 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. RECEPTION --------------------------------------- Tuesday, July 11 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. SESSION 8 Chair: Peter Ingwersen Keynote Address EVALUATION OF EVALUATION IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL Tefko Saracevic, Rutgers University A historical overview of evaluation of IR systems and processes and its accomplishments and shortcomings in comparison to evaluation of related information systems such as libraries and expert systems. Prof. Saracevic will show how IR evaluation has developed into two distinct streams of theoretical and experimental work: algorithm-oriented and user-oriented approaches. 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. SESSION 9 USER STUDIES (Chair: Phil Smith) Searchers and Searchers: Differences between the Most and Least Consistent Searchers Mirja Iivonen, U. of Tampere, Finland Information Processing in the Context of Medical Care Valerie Florance, U. of Rochester Medical Center, and Gary Marchionini, U. of Maryland, USA Towards New Measures of Information Retrieval Evaluation William R. Hersh, Diane L. Elliot, David H. Hickam, Stephanie L. Wolf, Oregon Health Sciences U., USA and Anna Molnar, Christine Leichtenstien, U. of Ulm, Germany 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. SESSION 10 FUSION STRATEGIES (Chair: Richard Tong) Learning Collection Fusion Strategies Ellen M. Voorhees, Narendra K.Gupta, Ben Johnson-Laird, Siemens Corporate Research, Inc., USA Combining Multiple Evidence from Different Properties of Weighting Schemes Joon Ho Lee, Cornell University, USA Efficient Processing of Vague Queries using a Data Stream Approach Ulrich Pfeifer, Robert Fuhr, U. of Dortmund, Germany 1:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. SESSION 11 SEARCH INTERFACES (Chair: Maristella Agosti) Document Analysis for Visualization David Dubin, U. of Pittsburgh, USA Improving the Information Search Interface: the case for two search models Sylvia Willie, Peter Bruza, Queensland U. of Tech., Australia 2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. SESSION 12 PANEL ON FUNDING FOR IR RESEARCH (Chair: Efthimis Efthimiadis) Panelists: Maria Zemankova, National Science Foundation, USA Milton Corn, National Library of Medicine, USA 2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. SESSION 13 COGNITION AND ASSOCIATION (Chair: Rik Belew) The Newspaper Image Database: Empirical Supported Analysis of Users' Typology and Word Association Clusters Susanne Ornager, Royal School of Librarianship, Denmark Human Memory Models and Term Association Gerda Ruge, Sietec, Germany 4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. SESSION 14 AUTOMATIC CLASSIFICATION (Chair: Ray Larson) A Comparison of Classifiers and Document Representations for the Routing Problem Hinrich Schutze, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, USA, David A. Hull, Rank Xerox Research Center, France, Jan Pedersen, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, USA A Case-Based Approach To Intelligent Information Retrieval Jody J. Daniels, Edwina L. Rissland, U. Mass. Amherst, USA Evaluating and Optimizing Autonomous Text Classification Systems David D. Lewis, AT&T Bell Laboratories, USA 7:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. BANQUET HOSTED BY MICROSOFT --------------------------------------- Wednesday, July 12 8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. SESSION 15 TEXT CATEGORIZATION (Chair: Elizabeth D. Liddy) Noise Reduction in a Statistical Approach to Text Categorization Yiming Yang, Mayo Clinic, USA Partial Orders for Document Representation: A New Methodology for Combining Document Features Steven Finch, U. of Edinburgh, Scotland Cluster-Based Text Categorization: A Comparison of Category Search Strategies Makato Iwayama, Hitachi Ltd., Takenobu Tokunaga, Tokyo Inst. of Tech., Japan 8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. SESSION 16 RETRIEVAL LOGIC (Chair: Fabrizio Sebastiani) Probabilistic Datalog - A Logic For Powerful Retrieval Methods Norbert Fuhr, U. of Dortmund, Germany Probability Kinematics in Information Retrieval F. Crestani, U. Padova, Italy, C.J. Van Rijsbergen, U. of Glasgow, Scotland An Image Retrieval Model Based on Classical Logic Carlo Meghini, Istituto di Elaborazione Dell'Informazione, Italy 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. SESSION 17 PANEL ON EDUCATION FOR IR (Chair: Kazem Taghva) Panelists: Edward Fox, Virginia Tech, USA Stephen Robertson, City University, London, England Nicholas Belkin, Rutgers University, USA 12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. ACM SIGIR ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING (lunch provided) 2:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. SESSION 18 TERM STATISTICS (Chair: Donna Harman) One Term Or Two? Kenneth W. Church, AT&T Bell Laboratories, USA Detecting Content-Bearing Words by Serial Clustering A. Bookstein, U. of Chicago, USA, S.T. Klein, Bar-Ilan U., Israel, T. Raita, U. of Turku, Finland Applying Probabilistic Term Weighting to OCR Text in the Case of a Large Alphabetic Library Catalogue Elke Mittendorf, Peter Schauble, Paraic Sheridan, Swiss Federal Inst. of Tech. (ETH), Switzerland 4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. SESSION 19 FEEDBACK METHODS (Chair: Howard Turtle) Relevance Feedback With Too Much Data James Allan, U. Mass. Amherst, USA On the Reuse of Past Optimal Queries Vijay V. Raghavan, Hayri Sever, U. of Southwestern Louisiana, USA Optimization of Relevance Feedback Weights Chris Buckley, Gerard Salton, Cornell U., USA 5:30 p.m. CONFERENCE CLOSE 6:00 p.m. - 10:45 p.m. TILLICUM VILLAGE TOUR AND DINNER --------------------------------------- Thursday, July 13 8:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. POST-CONFERENCE RESEARCH WORKSHOPS: VIRI: VISUAL INFORMATION RETRIEVAL INTERFACES Z39.50 AND THE IR RESEARCH COMMUNITY INFORMATION RETRIEVAL AND DATABASES CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT IN COMPUTER INFORMATION SCIENCE IR AND AUTOMATIC CONSTRUCTION OF HYPERMEDIA 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. A TOUR TO UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON --------------------------------------- Friday, July 14 7:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m. A TOUR TO VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA --------------------------------------- PRE-CONFERENCE TUTORIALS --------------------------------------- Sunday, July 9, 1995 SIGIR tutorials provide an opportunity to learn the basics of information retrieval or to learn a new or specialized area from experts in the field. This year six half-day tutorials are available prior to the main program, held in parallel sessions during the morning and afternoon. Separate payment is required for tutorials. Morning Tutorials: 8:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. INTRODUCTION TO INFORMATION RETRIEVAL PETER WILLETT and PETER INGWERSEN University of Sheffield and Royal School of Librarianship, Copenhagen This tutorial will provide an overview of the two principal current approaches to the searching of text databases. After a brief introduction to the characteristics of information retrieval that differentiate it from other types of database searching, the first part of the tutorial will describe the algorithms and data structures that are needed to maximize the effectiveness and the efficiency of ranked-output approaches to information retrieval. The second part will summarize work on cognitive approaches that focus on the role of the user and of the knowledge resources involved in information retrieval. Peter Willett holds a Personal Chair in Information Science at the University of Sheffield, where he heads a large research group studying novel techniques for searching biological, chemical and textual databases. He is a Member of the British Computer Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Information Scientists and was the recipient of the 1993 Skolnik Award of the American Chemical Society for his contributions to chemical information science. Peter Ingwersen is Head of Department of IR Theory at the Royal School of Librarianship, Denmark. His main research interest is the development of cognitive aspects and understanding of IR. He is Fellow of the Library Association and member of the Institute of Information Scientists from which he received the 1993 Jason Farradane Award. He was the recipient of the ASIS/NJ Distinguished Lectureship Award 1994 for his contributions to the field among which is his book "Information Retrieval Interaction". QUERY--DOCUMENT SYMMETRY AND DUALITY STEPHEN ROBERTSON, City University, London This tutorial will discuss certain formal aspects of modelling IR systems. The discussion may be of interest to students, and perhaps to some established researchers, involved in developing specific mathematical or logical models of IR as part of their re search (for example, those investigating or experimenting on probabilistic, other statistical, linguistic or AI approaches to IR). The central argument is that presented in a paper recently published in the Journal of Documentation (vol. 50, 1994, pp 233- 238), which will be given as a text for the tutorial, together with some additional notes. The format will involve presentation by the instructor with frequent invitations to the audience to contribute to the discussion. The discussion will cover: * examples of similar situations where symmetry is more clearly present(e.g., in matching people seeking work against vacant posts); * discussion of the interpretation of symmetry in the case of IR, and associated difficulties; * examples of dual models in IR (e.g., the traditional Boolean model versus a model in which queries are lists of terms and documents are Boolean expressions); * discussion of the difficulty of enriching a model by combining it with its dual. The basic argument is model-independent, and can be used in the context of very different models or approaches to IR. The tutorial should therefore be of interest to a variety of people. Stephen Robertson has a first degree in mathematics and a doctorate in information science, and has been publishing in information retrieval since 1969. His main areas of specialization are the evaluation of IR systems, and probabilistic models in IR. He is joint director of the Centre for Interactive Systems Research, which is the home of the Okapi experimental system. He is also head of the Department of Information Science at City University, London. WHAT DIFFERENCES ARE SIGNIFICANT? STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF IR TESTS JEAN TAGUE-SUTCLIFFE, JAMES BLUSTEIN and PAUL KANTOR University of Western Ontario and Rutgers University The TREC tests and conferences have stimulated interest in the statistical analysis of the results of information retrieval tests. Essentially, statistical analysis answers the question: what differences in retrieval results from different systems or strategies are significantly established in a test situation in the sense that they are unlikely to have appeared merely as the result of random variation over query sets? There are a number of statistical tests which can appropriately answer this quest ion, where the appropriateness of the test depends on the nature of the data, its scale, variability, and distributional features. In this tutorial we will present a number of these tests, using the TREC-3 data for purposes of examples, and provide an opportunity for attendees to gain familiarity with the tests through using a customized software package. Jean Tague-Sutcliffe is Dean and Professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Western Ontario. She is a well-known writer and speaker on the design and analysis of information retrieval tests. She is currently developing a suite of statistical tests for TREC-like results which will be made available to IR researchers worldwide by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. She teaches in the areas of information systems, research methods, and statistical techniques. Recently, Academic Press published her book "Measuring Information: an Information Services Perspective". Paul Kantor is Professor at the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (USA). He is an internationally recognized authority on the evaluation of the costs and benefits of library and information services, and the author of more than 80 refereed papers and technical reports. He has participated in the TREC-2, TREC-3 and TREC-4 conferences. He teaches Quantitative Research Methods and Statistics, as well as Information Retrieval Techniques at Rutgers SCILS. In 1994 he received the SCILS Research Award. James Blustein is a doctoral student in the department of Computer Science at the University of Western Ontario. His main research interest is the creation and evaluation of hypertext. Afternoon Tutorials: 1:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. EVALUATION OF IR SYSTEMS WILLIAM HERSH and MICHELINE HANCOCK-BEAULIEU Oregon Health Science University and City University, London The aim of this tutorial is to provide an overview and critical assessment of information retrieval system evaluation. Until now the Cranfield approach to IR with recall and precision measures has dominated retrieval testing. Developments in end-user information systems such as CD-ROM's, hypertext public access systems, and the Internet are presenting new evaluation challenges. The tutorial will start with basic research concepts and their application in IR evaluation. Approaches adopted in various classic retrieval experiments will be presented and their limitations will be discussed. More recent evaluative studies conducted at City University London, Oregon Health Sciences University, and TREC will be used to illustrate efforts towards more user-centered evaluation. The final discussion will sum up the issues and consider future directions in accommodating both system and user oriented evaluation in IR. William Hersh is Assistant Professor of Medicine and Medical Informatics at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon. His main research interests are in the areas of automated indexing, evaluation methodologies for end-user searching, and data extraction from the electronic medical record. While his evaluation work was initially focused in the medical domain, the problems encountered have led him to confront issues of evaluation more generally. Micheline Hancock-Beaulieu is Professor of Information Science and co-director of the Centre for Interactive Systems Research at City University in London. The Centre is concerned with the design and evaluation of advanced retrieval systems and has been responsible for the development of Okapi, a system based on a term weighting probabilistic model and one of the leading participants in TREC. Her research interests are in evaluation methodology, information seeking behaviour and human-computer interaction in IR. DESIGNING INFORMATION FOR THE COMPUTER SCREEN PAUL KAHN, Dynamic Diagrams The tutorial will focus on the issues of visual orientation in hypermedia and information retrieval software environments. The presentation method will be a combination of slide lecture and interactive demonstration of materials developed by the instructor and others. The overall goal is to help participants see and articulate the elements of good screen design. The purpose of the workshop is as much consciousness raising about the value and vocabulary of design as it is a collection of practical tips. This tutorial is intended for computer professionals responsible for or working with information to be read on the computer screen. No formal background (or talent) in design is required. Paul Kahn has training in literature and typography and has worked with a variety of electronic publishing systems since 1977. From 1985 through 1994 he worked on the development of hypermedia materials at Brown University's Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship, where he served as project coordinator and director. Kahn is president of Dynamic Diagrams, an information design studio which specializes in information graphics and electronic publications. Dynamic Diagrams provides design services for a broad range of computer applications, from electronic textbooks and reference materials to specialized graphics and telecommunications applications. DATA FUSION IN IR PAUL KANTOR, Rutgers University Data fusion (DF) comprises methods for improving retrieval (or indexing) performance by combining the outputs of several distinct methods for performing the task at hand. In contrast to combination-of-evidence methods, data fusion is not limited to combining inputs compatible with a specific conceptual framework. Thus data fusion can deal with "black box" components such as proprietary systems. In addition, data fusion develops its own assessments of the power of the component systems, using this to develop optimal fusion rules. The systems need not be presumed to produce stochastically independent results. This tutorial will be self-contained, will develop the basic ideas of data fusion in IR, and will survey the growing array of results from diverse applications of DF in IR. Paul Kantor is Professor at the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (USA). He received the 1994 SCILS Research Award. He is an internationally recognized authority on the evaluation of the costs and benefits of library and information services, and the author of more than 80 refereed papers and technical reports. He has participated in the TREC-2, TREC-3 and TREC-4 conferences, was an invited participant in the 1992 National Engineering Foundation/CLR conference on a National Engineering Information System and the 1993 NSF workshop on the Digital Libraries initiative. Prior to 1991 he worked extensively on the application of data fusion concepts to distributed detection and decision in connection with the Strategic Defense Initiative and related programs. He teaches Information Retrieval Techniques at Rutgers SCILS, and has recently developed, with H. Hirsh, a graduate Computer Science course on Information Retrieval in the Networked Environment. His degrees are in Mathematics and Physics, from Columbia University and Princeton University. --------------------------------------- POST-CONFERENCE RESEARCH WORKSHOPS --------------------------------------- Thursday, July 13, 1995 8:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. The conference will be followed by five parallel one-day workshops. Separate payment is required for a workshop. Registration includes a coffee break and lunch. VIRI: VISUAL INFORMATION RETRIEVAL INTERFACES ______________________________________________ A Research Workshop A visual information retrieval interface (VIRI) is defined as one that uses graphic elements in addition to text to aid the solution of a problem related to information storage and retrieval. More than twenty such interfaces already exist, with different retrieval models, graphical metaphors, and user interactions. Furthermore, the interfaces have different strengths, for example, retrieval, browsing, and document classification. The focus of the workshop is to exchange information, and to begin development of a method for comparing these interfaces. Researchers and practitioners who are actively working on VIRI projects are particularly invited to participate. Some effort will be put into developing a classification scheme for VIRIs and identifying major research issues related to visual interfaces. Following this the discussion will center on identifying test collections and developing experimental tasks and measures that will provide a sound basis for comparing and evaluating the interfaces. Program Committee: Robert R. Korfhage, University of Pittsburgh Xia Lin, University of Kentucky David S. Dubin, University of Pittsburgh Workshop attendees should submit a statement about their interests or views related to VIRI, and describe briefly their interfaces during the workshop. Requests for further information and submission of interest statements should be addressed to: Z39.50 AND THE IR RESEARCH COMMUNITY _________________________________________ A Research Workshop The Z39.50 Computer-to-computer retrieval protocol is an increasingly mature US national standard (version 3 is currently in the ballot process as of early 1995); it is widely implemented both in the US and, increasingly, also seeing use internationally, particularly in Europe. Z39.50 is potentially of great importance to the IR research community for several reasons: * Because Z39.50 provides a means of separating a user interface from a retrieval system, it allows research in clients and user interfaces to proceed independently from research in back-end retrieval engines, and, of particular importance, allows new user interfaces to be tested against very large production databases. It also allows new experimental retrieval systems to be offered to large user communities through familiar interfaces. * Z39.50 can form the linkage between a number of large-scale research projects that involve the IR community, such as the various Digital Library efforts. * Z39.50 raises and provides a concrete framework to explore a number of important research issues in its own right about the design of interoperable clients and servers for information retrieval, the representation and exchange of metadata about information servers, and related matters. The workshop has several goals: * To introduce the broad IR community to Z39.50, including its history, its current status, its function, and implementation progress; * To highlight several IR research projects that are exploiting Z39.50 today; * To sketch some of the research issues that are raised by Z39.50. After an introduction delineating the history of Z39.50 and the current status of implementations, a short tutorial will explain the operation of the protocol. The second part of the workshop will include two panels: one about the use of Z39.50 to support IR research, and another about research issue in information retrieval protocols. Attendees will be invited to contribute to the discussion. Program Committee: Clifford Lynch, University of California Ray Larson, University of California at Berkeley INFORMATION RETRIEVAL AND DATABASES ___________________________________ A Research Workshop The integration of database management systems and information retrieval systems is of great practical interests. There are, however, hard research problems that remain to be solved. The workshop aim is to assist the information retrieval community in understanding the integration problems and to set up a research agenda. The workshop will include short presentations on the following topics: Architecture: loosely coupled, tightly coupled, total integration; does the DBMS control the IRS or vice versa; support for distributed computing. Retrieval Model and Query Language: reconciling classical DB retrieval and classical (weighted) IR retrieval; retrieval models taking advantage of DB schema; treating DB attributes in an IR way, e.g. in a probabilistic way; integration query languages for IR/DB systems; query processing/optimization. Concurrence Control and Transaction Management: concurrence control on the IR index; is ACID enough or is ACID too much for IR; new transaction models (nested transactions); long lived transactions (for indexing). Performance: new access structures; new buffering schemes (caches); retrieval performance on dynamic data; insertion, deletion, modification performance; scalability (parallel architectures); identify bottlenecks. After the presentations, attendees will participate in round table discussions about each topic. To allow this to proceed in a workshop atmosphere, the workshop is restricted to 30 participants. Program Committee: David Harper, Robert Gordon University Peter Schauble, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Workshop attendees should submit a short position statement on one of the topics listed above, or a statement of interest. Requests for further information and submission of interest statement should be addressed to: or CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT IN COMPUTER INFORMATION SCIENCE: A FRAMEWORK FOR DEVELOPING A NEW CURRICULUM IN IR ____________________________________________________________ In this one-day workshop, Doris Lidtke and Michael Mulder will report on their extensive experience in the development of new curricula in computer information science, emphasizing preparation of students to deal with large scale information systems AND new paradigms of learning/teaching. Topics to be covered by the workshop leaders include: (1) involvement of the stakeholders---employers, faculty, and instructional/ curriculum designers; (2) determining content---both depth and breadth; ( 3) validation by the stakeholders; (4) packaging--- knowledge units vs. courses; (5) special delivery mechanisms, and (6) essential/desired infrastructure to support the new/revised curriculum. These topics will provide a framework for discussion of curriculum development in information retrieval. Individuals and groups representing various points of view (library and information science, computing science, MIS, information systems, business, government and academia) will be invited to prepare submissions and act as group leaders. An opportunity will be provided for attendees to participate in working groups developing an IR curriculum in their area of interest. The Workshop Leaders: Doris Lidtke and Michael Mulder have been involved in several national curriculum development groups including ACM/IEEE-CS Curriculum '91. They currently have a 3-year DUE/NSF grant to develop a Curriculum in Computer Information using new paradigms of learning/teaching. Who Should Attend: Participation from individuals and groups involved in or planning curriculum development in CIS and IR is particularly invited. The workshop is limited to 30 attendees. If the workshop is oversubscribed, attendees will be selected to ensure participants come from a variety of environments. Program committee: Edward A. Fox, Virginia Tech Doris K. Lidtke, Towson State University, Maryland Michael C. Mulder, University of Southwestern Louisiana Edie M. Rasmussen, University of Pittsburgh Kazem Taghva, University of Nevada Las Vegas IR AND AUTOMATIC CONSTRUCTION OF HYPERMEDIA ________________________________________________ A Research Workshop The workshop will address IR methods and tools that can be used in the automatic construction of a hypermedia base to produce an informative hypertext collection of documents that can be searched and browsed by content. Passage retrieval is one of the methods that can be used in the segmentation of documents in a collection of flat documents for hypermedia information retrieval design. This method, as well as other methods for automatic authoring of hypermedia bases will be presented and discussed in the workshop. Both techniques that construct a hypertext from an unlinked set of data and those that can be applied to an existing hypertext/media permitting augmention of its set of links are relevant to the workshop. Typing of links in the resulting hypertext needs to be addressed as well as having both static and dynamic links in the resulting hypertext. The workshop also will address evaluation of the quality of hypertext collections and their construction. After the presentations of a few position papers, the participants will discuss specific methods or other topics of interest. The workshop will conclude with the approval of a short working paper presenting all the methods that the participants deem useful for automatic construction of hypermedia. Program Committee: Maristella Agosti, Padua University James Allan, University of Massachusetts at Amherst Workshop attendees should submit a two-page statement on the specific method or topic they propose for discussion at the workshop. Requests for further information and submission of interest statements should be addressed to: -------------------------------------- SOCIAL PROGRAM AND TOURS --------------------------------------- BANQUET AT MICROSOFT Enjoy an open-air, Pacific Northwest dinner at the heart of Microsoft's Redmond campus on Tuesday evening, July 11th from 7:00 to 10:00. Microsoft Library and Museum, as well as its "Home of the Future," will open before and after dinner for the banquet guests. Additional tickets are available for $50.00, with a limited number of student tickets available for $25.00. MOUNT RAINIER TOUR Mount Rainier stands 14,411 feet above sea level, and is one of Washington State's greatest attractions. The drive up the mountain includes a stop at Narada Falls before arriving at Paradise in Mt. Rainier National Park. In this area, lush with wild flowers, are the Visitors Center with its panoramic view and Paradise Lodge built in 1916 of Alaskan cedar. The return trip through Stevens Canyon with a stop at Box Canyon to view the Cowlitz River cutting deep into the earth, completes the trip around this magnificent mountain. Be sure to bring your camera. (Please note: Mt. Rainier is a 2.5 hours ride from Seattle.) The bus will leave the Sheraton at 8:00 a.m. and return about 6:00 p.m. Cost of the tour is $48.00 and includes a box lunch en route. TILLICUM VILLAGE TOUR AND DINNER Tillicum Village is located at the Blake Island Marine State Park, and is the birthplace of Chief Sealth, whose name, slightly changed, was chosen to mark Seattle in the 1800's. It is styled after the native "Longhouse" and remains one of the Northwest's most natural settings to achieve the true Native American experience. The tour departs from Seattle's Pier 56 to a scenic and informative cruise of the inner harbor of Elliot Bay. Upon arrival, visitors will go to a display of Indian ceremonial longhouses, potlatches, war canoes, and Indian art. A traditional Northwest feast will follow with steamed clams and nectar, a buffet which features alder-smoked salmon and Indian bread, and a cultural event in which a narrator tells stories of the Indian land, customs, and their creation, while Northwest Native American performers portray their ancient folklore through a series of costumed dances. After the show, visitors can browse through the gift shop or walk along the nature trails on Blake Island. The bus will leave the Sheraton at 6:00 p.m. and return at approximately 10:45 p.m. Cost of the tour and dinner is $52.00. UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON TOUR Attendees of the conference are invited to visit several sites of interest on the campus of the University of Washington. One of the highlights of the tour is the Human Interface Technology Laboratory. Information about additional sites will be available at the conference's final program. The Human Interface Technology Laboratory (HITL) was founded five years ago. It is a center of excellence for the research and development of advanced interface technology. Its mission is to empower humans by creating better ways of interacting with advanced machines. To this end, it has created a balanced team of accomplished professionals, and equipped a substantial lab space with the latest research facilities. Located on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle, HITL forms a bridge be tween academia and industry. It maintains its industrial focus via the Virtual Worlds Consortium, and it maintains contacts with academia by training students and teaching courses. The lab's position within the University system gives it access to a pool of exceptional faculty and students throughout the State of Washington. The combination of personnel, focus, and research facilities makes HITL a unique environment for conducting research. A presentation describing some of the lab infrastructure, and providing a brief overview of some of the lab' s activities and accomplishments, will precede the tour of the facility. Registration will take place at the conference. VICTORIA, BC TOUR The lives of Indians, British, Scots, Americans and Chinese are intertwined in the history of Vancouver Island, but it is the British influence that has prevailed in Victoria. This once bustling international port has become instead a languid and charming city of flowers and afternoon tea. Transportation to and from Victoria will be by first class service Victoria Clipper jet catamaran. This 300-passenger cruiser will take you on a 2.5 hour voyage through the Pacific Northwest's scenic coastline and the San Juan Islands to Victoria, B.C. The Clipper offers snacks and bar service along with duty-free shopping, enclosed viewing decks, with comfortable seating and concierge service. Once in Victoria, visitors are free to plan their own tours; they may want to just walk in the streets and enjoy the architecture and atmosphere, visit the Provincial Museum with its excellent collection of Native Canadian Art, take the bus to the famous Butchart Gardens, take any of the many city tours on a double-decker bus, or enjoy high tea at the Empress Hotel. A certified guide will be available to assist visitors in their plans. The bus will leave the Sheraton at 7:00 a.m. and return at 10:00 p.m. Cost of the tour is $98.00. Proof of citizenship will be required. Non-U.S. citizens need an American visa that allows them to re-enter the U.S. Tours may be cancelled if minimums are not met. Additional information on local attractions, events and restaurants will be included in your conference registration packet. --------------------------------------- SIGIR'95 IN SEATTLE --------------------------------------- Seattle is located in western Washington State, with snow-capped mountain ranges on both sides. This beautiful city is built on seven hills along the shores of Puget Sound, an inland body of water connected to the Pacific Ocean. The lush greenery and over 4,000 acres of city parks, allow visitors year round to enjoy outdoor activities. With bountiful natural beauty, Seattle offers plenty of cultural opportunities as well. Several of its numerous art galleries and museums emphasize Native American and Asian art. Artistic performances are given by the Seattle Opera, its Symphony, the Pacific Northwest Ballet Company and by many theaters. Locals and visitors enjoy the Pike Place Farmer's Market, and the excellent bookstores and restaurants. The month of July promises temperatures in the mid-70's (lower 20's C), and a variety of food, wine, and music festivals. CONFERENCE HOTEL All sessions will be held at the Seattle Sheraton Hotel & Towers, 1400 Sixth Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101. The hotel offered a special conference rate: Single occupancy $119.00 Double occupancy $139.00 Additional person $ 25.00 Room tax is 15.2% Reservations can be made by calling 1-800-204-6100 (or 1-206-621-9000) within the U.S., or by faxing a request for reservation to 1-206-621-8441. Reservation should be made for the ACM/SIGIR'95 group rate. The deadline for reservations is June 17th. Reservations made after the deadline are subject to availability and may be billed at a higher rate. Cancellations made less than 48 hours prior to arrival will incur a charge for one night's lodging. Reservations need to be guaranteed by sending a first night's deposit or by a credit card. AIR TRAVEL TO SEATTLE Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is served by most major international airlines. Bus transportation and taxi service from the airport to the Seattle Sheraton are readily available. SIGIR'95 has secured a special discount agreement with United Airlines unavailable to the general public. An additional 5% discount off the lowest applicable fare for domestic flights will be offered when you or your travel agent call 1-800-521-4041 and refer to the Meeting ID Number 590TR. A 10% discount off the unrestricted mid-week coach fares is available when purchased 7 days in advance. The same discounts apply on "Shuttle by United." Reservations clerks are on duty 7 days a week, 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. EST. These convention discounts are valid between July 6 and July 16, 1995. GROUND TRANSPORTATION FROM SEATTLE-TACOMA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT Readily available taxi service to the Seattle Sheraton costs approximately $30.00. Gray Line Airport shuttle costs $7.00 one way and $12.00 round-trip. The shuttle departs from the north and south end of the Baggage Claim level, approximately every 15 minutes, from 5:00 a.m. to 12:00 midnight daily. --------------------------------------- SIGIR'95 REGISTRATION INFORMATION --------------------------------------- REGISTRATION FEES Conference Before May 29 After May 29 ACM or SIGIR Members $275.00 $325.00 Non Members (*) $330.00 $380.00 Full Time Student $110.00 $150.00 One Day Registration $125.00 $150.00 ___________________________________________________________ Tutorials ACM Members One tutorial $150.00 $225.00 Two tutorials $250.00 $440.00 Non Members One tutorial $200.00 $275.00 Two Tutorials $350.00 $500.00 Full Time Student One tutorial $100.00 $150.00 Two tutorials $150.00 $250.00 ____________________________________________________________ Workshops $ 45.00 $ 55.00 ____________________________________________________________ Additional Banquet Ticket $ 50.00 $ 50.00 ____________________________________________________________ Student Banquet Ticket $ 25.00 $ 25.00 ____________________________________________________________ Mount Rainier Tour $ 48.00 $ 48.00 ____________________________________________________________ Tillicum Village Tour and Dinner $ 52.00 $ 52.00 ____________________________________________________________ Victoria, BC Tour $ 98.00 $ 98.00 ____________________________________________________________ (*) You may join ACM and/or SIGIR now and receive the member registration rate. This will reduce your registration fee and make you a member for a year. Just add in the appropriate membership dues on the SIGIR'95 Registration Form _____________________________________________________________ Membership Dues ACM members: To add SIGIR to membership $ 20.00 Non members: To join ACM only (as an associate member) $ 82.00 To join SIGIR only $ 65.00 To join both ACM and SIGIR $102.00 Students: To join ACM only $ 25.00 To join both ACM and SIGIR $ 35.00 REGISTRATION INFORMATION -- Full Conference Registration (ACM Members, SIGIR members or Non Members) includes attendance at all technical sessions, proceedings, conference banquet, lunch at the SIGIR Annual General Meeting, and two receptions. Student registration does not include the conference banquet. Additional banquet tickets are available for $50.00. A limited number of banquet tickets are available to full-time student attendees for $25.00. Additional copies of the proceedings and the tutorial notes will be on sale at the conference. -- Conference registration does not include tours. -- Conference registration does not include participation in tutorials or workshops. -- The ACM member rate is available to members of ACM, SIGIR, and the European and Japanese co-operating societies. The student rate is available to full-time students only. -- All payments must be made in U.S. funds or charged to Visa, MasterCard or American Express. -- No refunds for cancellations after June 9. A $25.00 handling fee will be charged for cancellations received before June 9. -- Hotel reservations should be made directly with the Seattle Sheraton Hotel & Towers. Details are provided above. Cut here: _____________________________________________________________ --------------------------------------- SIGIR'95 REGISTRATION FORM --------------------------------------- 18TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL Seattle, July 9 - July 13 Please use block letters or type, and tick where appropriate __ Mr. __ Ms. __ Dr. __ Prof. Other: ______ LAST NAME:________________ FIRST NAME:_______________________ BADGE NAME (if different): __________________________________ COMPANY/ORGANIZATION:________________________________________ ADDRESS:_____________________________________________________ CITY:__________________ STATE:______ ZIP CODE: __________ COUNTRY:_______________ PHONE: ( ___ )____________________ FAX: ( ___ ) _______________ EMAIL: ________________________ __ Check if this will be your first SIGIR conference CONFERENCE REGISTRATION: FEES: __ ACM Member __ Nonmember __ Student __ One Day Registration: M T W (please circle one) REGISTRATION: $ ________________ Membership: __ ACM __ SIGIR MEMBERSHIP: $_________________ Tutorials: AM: __ Intro __ Query __ Statistics PM: __ Eval __ Design __ Fusion TUTORIALS: $ ________________ Workshops: __ VIRI __ Z39.50 __ IR & DB __ Curriculum __ Hypermedia WORKSHOPS: $ ________________ Special Events: Additional banquet tickets (how many): ___ For (Names): ________________________ BANQUET: $ _______________ Mount Rainier Tour (how many):___ Tillicum Village Tour (how many): ___ Victoria, BC Tour (how many): ___ TOURS: $_________________ TOTAL $ ________________ DO YOU HAVE ANY SPECIAL NEEDS? Please explain: ___________________________________________________________ METHOD OF PAYMENT (US Currency only): __ Check payable to ACM/SIGIR95 __ Credit card (Visa, MC, AMEX) ____________________________________ Credit card number, expiration date ______________________________________ Signature, date (I authorize to charge my account fees indicated above) Return Registration Form by May 29 to qualify for early registration. Use fax or email (credit card payment) or mail (check or credit card) to: SIGIR95 c/o Convention Services Northwest 1809 Seventh Avenue, Suite 1414 Seattle, WA 98101 USA Fax: +1 206-292-0559 Email: SIGIR95@aol.com (Registration queries to: +1 206-292-9198 (Ask for Sarah Amendola) ______________________________________________________________