As the volume and diversity of available on-line information continues
to grow, so too will the number of users of this information. Whereas until
quite recently most information sources were designed to serve a relatively
small number of specialized users, they are steadily becoming essential
to a wide range of academic, professional, commercial, and even hobbyist
and lay consumers. These trends have led to the emergence of an increasingly
important discipline: digital libraries.
A digital library is an electronic information access system which offers
users a coherent view of a selected, organized, and managed body of information.
As interest increases in heterogeneous, information rich repositories --
arguably, proto-digital libraries -- such as the Internet and intranets,
a number of technical challenges will need to be met to satisfy individual
users' demands. Key among these are information discovery and retrieval,
user interface design, classification and indexing, content delivery and
presentation, and storage management and administration. Faced with such
challenges, a number of international agencies (most noticeably NASA, DARPA,
and NSF in the United States and MITI in Japan) have recently made available
substantial funding for digital library research. AI researchers are among
those participating in major digital library projects.
The purpose of this workshop is to identify ways in which AI techniques
can contribute to solving some of the challenges of building real world
digital libraries. The workshop is intended to build upon the successes
of earlier IJCAI and AAAI workshops on information access and navigation.
Following on from the many useful AI techniques and approaches presented
at these venues, the present workshop will focus on how such techniques
can be applied in the context of digital libraries. Particular questions
that need addressing include: How easily do AI techniques for general
information
repositories -- such as the WWW -- migrate to the more structured domains
of digital libraries? What other AI techniques (eg. knowledge representation)
can assist in improving access to and management of digital information?
What new challenges and opportunities do real world digital libraries bring
to bear on AI research?
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Information discovery and retrieval:
- information filtering
user modelling and adaptive profiling
use of user feedback
software agents for resource discovery
knowledge-based models of information retrieval- User interface design:
- information access, browsing and navigation
visualization of large repositories
summarization and multiple perspective presentation of content
natural language processing
- Classification and indexing:
- information modelling
knowledge and metadata representation
automatic keyword extraction, classification and clustering
statistical, probabilistic, linguistic and other approaches to indexing
indexing of non-textual media such as image, sound, and video
distributed indexing
- Architectural designs and issues:
- interoperability
scaling and extensibility
cooperative information systems
information economies
The workshop will consist of invited talks, presentations, discussion sessions,
and hands-on demonstrations. Well written short papers (5-8 pages)
are sought describing novel AI algorithms and techniques applied to one
or more of the areas of research listed above. In addition, short papers
describing real world digital libraries which employ embedded AI technology,
or well supported and imaginative visionary papers discussing future challenges
and directions are requested. Also of interest are review papers (5-8
pages), particularly those which address linkages between AI and other
pertinent fields of study such as the information and library sciences.
Hands-on demonstrations of prototypical or fielded work are strongly encouraged.
Those wishing to demonstrate should also include a one-page description
of their hardware and connectivity requirements. All papers must include:
author's name(s), affiliation, complete mailing address, phone number,
fax number, URL, and email address.
The workshop is open to all members of the AI community. Please note, however,
that all workshop participants must register for the IJCAI-97 conference
and that the number of workshop participants is strictly limited. Participants
will be selected on the basis of their submitted short papers, which will
be reviewed by members of the organizing committee. Selected participants
will be asked to give brief presentations of their work; presenters should
aim to address the ideas and guiding principles behind their work, rather
than simply repeating the contents of their paper submissions. Moderated
discussion sessions will consume most of the allotted time and will revolve
around a core set of discussion topics. These topics will reflect the research,
work in progress, opinions, visions, and applications presented at the
workshop, as well as material exchanged via email discussions (facilitated
by the chair) in advance of the one-day workshop. Participants will also
be invited to raise any new topics on the day.
Via email, send either a URL pointing to an electronic version of the paper
or the electronic copy itself to innes@dlib.com.
Acceptable electronic formats include: Postscript, HTML, PDF, LaTeX, RTF,
and SGML (this last one should be accompanied by an appropriate DTD or
style file). Alternatively, send 4 hard copies of the paper to:
Innes A. Ferguson
Digital Library Group
Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V.
17th Floor, Centre Point
103 New Oxford St.
London, WC1A 1EB, UK.
Submission deadline is February 14, 1997.
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February 14, 1997 Submission deadline for papers March 17, 1997 Author notification April 11, 1997 Final camera ready copies due April 30, 1997 Provisional list of participants due August 23, 24 or 25, 1997 Day of Workshop (Nagoya Congress Center)
The workshop activities will commence via an email discussion two months
before IJCAI-97. From this phase a number of provisional discussion topics
will be identified and submitted back to the confirmed participants. After
the workshop, authors of the best papers will be invited to submit longer
versions of their submissions for publication in a suitable journal or
book. In addition, an article summarizing the notes and results of the
workshop will be submitted to an appropriate and widely read publication.
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