----------------------------Original message---------------------------- In connection with the IEEE Advances in Digital Libraries conference in Santa Barbara, April 21-24 (http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/conferences/ADL98/) there are two tutorials on the afternoon of Tuesday April 21st. Either of these may be attended with or without registration at the full conference. The tutorials are: (1) Building Geospatial Collections: Metadata Creation /Ingest Procedures; and (2) Software Agents for Information Retrieval. The tutorial registration fee is $135 for IEEE members and $165 for non-members. Contact Melissa Mullen at [log in to unmask] to get your name on the list for one of the tutorials. You may register and pay on-site. Registration opens at noon on April 21st; the workshops are 1:30-5:30. Here are descriptions of the two tutorials: - - - ------------------------------------------------------------ TITLE: Building Geospatial Collections: Metadata Creation / Ingest Procedures INSTRUCTORS: Linda L. Hill and Mary L. Larsgaard Alexandria Digital Library, UCSB DESCRIPTION: This tutorial will build on the basic principals of collection building (selection, acquisition, metadata creation, object processing, and quality control) to address in detail the characteristics of georeferenced information objects. Collection building will be viewed in terms of the purpose of the collection - who will use it and what objects will be in it. The process of metadata design and creation will be linked to the purposes of the activity - for retrieval, initial evaluation for suitability, and access. Cataloging practices, concept representation systems, and processing steps that are particularly suited to spatial information representation will be reviewed. The presenters will incorporate into the workshop the lessons learned from building the collections for the Alexandria Digital Library. Tutorial workbook will be provided. WHO SHOULD ATTEND: Librarians, data center operators, and others who are creating collections that contain georeferenced information objects such as maps, aerial photos, remote sensing images, and georeferenced texts, reports, articles, pictures, etc., both digital and hardcopy. CONTACT INFORMATION: Linda L. Hill Computer Science / Alexandria Digital Library Project 1205 Girvetz University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 [log in to unmask] http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/~lhill Voice: 805-893-8587 Fax: 805-893-3045 Mary L. Larsgaard Map and Imagery Laboratory Davidson Library University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 [log in to unmask] Voice: 805-893-4049 Fax: 805-893-8799 ABOUT THE INSTRUCTORS: Dr. Linda L. Hill has a Ph.D. in library science from the University of Pittsburgh. She has conducted research into the retrieval effectiveness of spatial representations of geographic "aboutness" of earth science research articles to the use of geographic names from established thesauri. She has worked with georeferenced information as head of a petroleum exploration and production research library, assistant director of Petroleum Abstracts which indexes petroleum exploration and production literature, consultant with the federal government's Global Change Data and Information System, and as a research specialist with the Alexandria Digital Library. She is also an active participant in metadata-related standard activities. Mary L. Larsgaard has an M.A. in library science from the University of Minnesota, a M.A. in Geography from the University of Oregon, and a B.A. in Geology from Macalester College. She is the author of "Map Librarianship: An Introduction", now in its second edition. She is the assistant director of the Map and Imagery Laboratory of the Davidson Library at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the person most directly responsible for the building of the Alexandria Digital Library collection. She is also an active participant in the Dublin Core and professional map librarian activities. - - - ----------------------- TITLE: Software Agents for Information Retrieval INSTRUCTORS: Tim Finin and Charles Nicholas University of Maryland Baltimore County James Mayfield Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory DESCRIPTION: This tutorial will provide an introduction to software agents concepts and technologies and their applications in information retrieval systems and digital libraries. The tutorial will be divided into three sections of roughly one hour each followed by a short conclusion. The first will present concepts which underlie the software agents paradigm and illustrate them with a range of example applications. The second part will cover agent software architectures, agent communication languages, and cooperation protocols. The third segment will present a number of examples of agent-based information retrieval systems and discuss the techniques used in them. Course material will include hardcopy of presentation slides and additional material which is available via the web at http://www.cs.umbc.edu/abir. WHO SHOULD ATTEND: This tutorial is aimed at an general audience of practicing computer scientists and managers of information technology R&D projects. We will not assume any detailed knowledge of information retrieval or artificial intelligence. CONTACT INFORMATION: Tim Finin Computer Science and Electrical Engineering University of Maryland Baltimore County 1000 Hilltop Circle Baltimore MD 21250 [log in to unmask] http://umbc.edu/~finin/ Voice: 410-455-3522, Fax: 410-455-3969 James Mayfield Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory Johns Hopkins Road Laurel MD 20732 [log in to unmask] http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~mayfield/ Voice: 301-953-6944 Charles Nicholas Computer Science and Electrical Engineering University of Maryland Baltimore County 1000 Hilltop Circle Baltimore MD 21250 [log in to unmask] http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~nicholas/ Voice: 410-455-2594, Fax: 410-455-3969 ABOUT THE INSTRUCTORS: Dr. Timothy W. Finin is a Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He has had over 25 years of experience in the applications of Artificial Intelligence to problems in database and knowledge base systems, intelligent information systems, natural language processing, intelligent interfaces and robotics. He is currently working on the development of technology to support intelligent information agents. Prior to joining the UMBC, he was a Technical Director at the Unisys Center for Advanced Information Technology, a member of the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, and on research staff of the MIT AI Lab. He holds an SB degree in EE from MIT and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois. Finin is the author of over one hundred publications and has received research grants and contracts from a variety of sources. He has been the past program chair and general chair of the IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Applications, the general chair of the first two ACM Conferences on Information and Knowledge Management and the program co-chair of the Second ACM Autonomous Agents conference. He is currently on the editorial board of three journals. Finin is a former AAAI councilor and AAAI's representative on the CRA board of directors. Dr. Charles Nicholas is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He received the B.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Michigan in 1979, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from The Ohio State University in 1982 and 1988, respectively. He has been at UMBC since August 1988. Nicholas served as the general chair of the fourth and fifth ACM Conferences on Information and Knowledge Management and Co-Chair of the 1996 Principles of Document Processing Workshop. His areas of interest include information retrieval, electronic document processing, and software engineering. Dr. James Mayfield is an Associate Professor in the UMBC CSEE Department currently on leave at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He received the A.B. degree from Harvard College in 1979. His Ph.D. degree in Computer Science was awarded by the University of California at Berkeley in 1989. Mayfield's dissertation, which was part of the Unix Consultant project, explored how a consultant system can recognize the plans and goals of its users based on their English queries, so as to more effectively address their needs. Mayfield has organized four seminal workshops in the area of "Natural Language text Retrieval", "Intelligent Hypertext Systems" and "Intelligent Information Agents". Mary Lynette Larsgaard Map and Imagery Lab, Library University of California, Santa Barbara