---
title: "Evaluating Importance: A Step Towards Text Summarization"
authors:
  - "Danilo Fum"
  - "Giovanni Guida"
  - "Carlo Tasso"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1985/165"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1985/0165.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Ninth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1985
pages: "840-843"
track: "Natural Language"
keywords:
---

# Evaluating Importance: A Step Towards Text Summarization

Danilo Fum, Giovanni Guida, Carlo Tasso

*Proceedings of the Ninth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 840-843.

## Abstract

The paper deals with the problern of evaluating importance of descriptive texts and proposes a procedural, rule-based approach which is implemented in a prototype experimental system operating in the specific domain of text summarization. Importance evaluation is performed through a set of rules which are used to assign importance values to the different parts of a text and to resolve or explain conflicting evaluations. The system utilizes world knowledge on the subject domain contained in an encyclopedia and takes into account a goal assigned by the user for specifying the pragmatic aspects of the understanding activity. In the paper some examples of the system operation are presented by following the evaluation of a small sample text.