Informer: Summer 2022 Issue Out Now

Informer: Summer 2022 Issue Out Now

http://irsg.bcs.org/informer/


In the Summer issue
By Martin White on 4th August 2022

Can I start by highlighting the forthcoming vacancy for an Editor for Informer, to take over at the end of 2022. I might also mention that there will be a number of vacancies on the IRSG Committee for 2023, including the position of Chair as Udo Kruschwitz has served his two year term...

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/08/in-the-summer-issue/


Vacancy for an Informer Editor from January 2023
By Martin White on 4th August 2022

I took over the role as the Editor of Informer in 2019 and have enjoyed the challenge of publishing a quarterly newsletter that in each issue has something of interest to the very varied IRSG. Earlier this year I decided that it was time to hand over the Editorial Desktop as I wanted to gently ease out of my consultancy work on enterprise search and in general anything that had a deadline attached to it...

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/08/vacancy-for-an-informer-editor-from-january-2023/


BCS/IRSG Search Industry Awards 2022
By Tony Russell-Rose on 3rd August 2022

The BCS Search Industry Awards recognise people, projects, and organisations that have excelled in the design of search and information retrieval products and services. If you know of any people, projects, or products that deserve recognition, let us know by submitting a nomination. Alternatively, if you’re involved with something special yourself, you can submit an application today...

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/08/bcs-irsg-search-industry-awards-2022/


The Microsoft BCS/BCS IRSG Karen Spärck Jones Award 2022 – Call for Nominations deadline is 9 September
By Martin White on 1st August 2022

A pioneer of information retrieval, the computer science sub-discipline that also underpins the technology of modern Web search engines, Karen Spärck Jones was a British professor of Computers and Information at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge. Her contributions to the fields of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Information Retrieval (IR), especially with regard to experimentation, have been outstanding...

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/08/the-microsoft-bcs-bcs-irsg-karen-sparck-jones-award-2022-call-for-nominations-deadline-is-9-september/


JASIST special issue on information retrieval research
By Martin White on 1st August 2022

I was personally delighted to see the announcement from ASIS&T about a Special Issue in September 2023 on the topic of research into information retrieval. To quote from the announcement...

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/08/jasist-special-issue-on-information-retrieval-research/


Relevance management – tips, tricks, techniques and tools
By Martin White on 1st August 2022

When OpenSource Connections started the Haystack conference in 2018, our intention was to bring the search and relevance community together to share tips, tricks, techniques and tools. Although the talks that year weren’t recorded we swiftly realised that we could share them much more widely on video and we made sure to record all the subsequent Haystack events...

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/08/relevance-management-tips-tricks-techniques-and-tools/


Taxonomies – Practical Approaches to Developing and Managing Vocabularies for Digital Information – Book review
By Martin White on 1st August 2022

There is probably no more difficult task in information management in being the Editor of a multi-author on any topic, and the level of difficulty goes up by an order of magnitude when the topic is taxonomy management. Taxonomies (and the strap line Practical Approaches to Developing and Managing Vocabularies for Digital Information) has been edited by Helen Lippell,...

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/08/taxonomies-practical-approaches-to-developing-and-managing-vocabularies-for-digital-information-book-review/


The Limits of Batch Assessment of Retrieval Systems – Justin Zobell
By Martin White on 1st August 2022

I had the very good fortune to get to know Cyril Cleverdon towards the end of his distinguished career as Librarian at the Cranfield Institute of Technology and his invaluable work in creating and promoting the Cranfield Projects on information retrieval performance. These Projects formed the basis for the TREC events in the USA. At the time we first met in the early 1970s computers were still somewhat on the distant horizon...

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/08/the-limits-of-batch-assessment-of-retrieval-systems-justin-zobell/


The Science of Reading – Book review
By Martin White on 1st August 2022

You may be somewhat surprised to see a review of a book on the science of reading in Informer. It seems to be implicit in information retrieval research that ‘users’ have such a competence in reading that a consideration of reading ability can be discounted from the research analysis. If only that was the case! The reality is that perhaps one in ten employees is on the dyslexia spectrum and in global businesses many employees are writing text and submitting search queries in a second language...

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/08/the-science-of-reading-book-review/


Call for nominations for the UKeiG Tony Kent Strix Award 2022 – Deadline 9 September
By Martin White on 1st August 2022

The Tony Kent Strix Award was inaugurated in 1998 by the Institute of Information Scientists. It is now presented by UKeiG in partnership with the International Society for Knowledge Organisation UK (ISKO UK), the Royal Society of Chemistry Chemical Information and Computer Applications Group (RSC CICAG) and the British Computer Society Information Retrieval Specialist Group (BCS IRSG)...

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/08/call-for-nominations-for-the-ukeig-tony-kent-strix-award-2022-deadline-9-september/


Making knowledge management clickable – Book review
By Martin White on 1st August 2022

There are many books about knowledge management but very few about what I might refer to as IKM (Information and Knowledge Management) technologies. What is distinctive about this book is that it spans the crevasse between KM and IT and does so with considerable flair. The authors, Zach Wahl and  Joseph Hilger established Enterprise Knowledge (based in Arlington VA) close to decade ago...

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/08/making-knowledge-management-clickable-book-review/


SIGIR 2022 Annual Conference – a report from Dennis Aumiller
By Martin White on 1st August 2022

Another month, another conference back in person! The ACM SIGIR 2022 conference – the special interest group’s premier event – was back in person for the first time since 2019, and for the first time ever made its stop in beautiful and sunny Spain. Hosted by general chairs Enrique Amigó, Pablo Castells and Julio Gonzalo, the weather certainly left nothing to be desired in sunny Madrid in the period from 11-15 July....

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/08/sigir-2022-annual-conference-a-report-from-dennis-aumiller/


Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2020) – a report from Dennis Aumiller
By Martin White on 1st August 2022

With a delay of over two years, attendees of the bi-annual Language Resources and Evaluation Conference 2022 (LREC) finally arrived in sunny Marseille. After originally scheduled for May 2020, but then being canceled due to travel restrictions and nation-wide lockdowns, the organizers decided to revive the original conference location and agreed on the currently predominant setting of a hybrid conference with both physical and virtual attendance...

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/08/language-resources-and-evaluation-conference-lrec-2020-a-report-from-dennis-aumiller/


Reflections on ECIR 2022 by Krisztian Balog, Kjetil Nørvag and Vinay Setty
By Martin White on 1st August 2022

Krisztian Balog, Kjetil Nørvag and Vinay Setty have authored a detailed review of the very successful ECIR 2022 event held in Stavanger, Norway, in April. The review, which is published in the June 2022 issue of SIGIR Forum, runs to 12 pages....

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/08/reflections-on-ecir-2022-by-krisztian-balog-kjetil-norvag-and-vinay-setty/


ACM Transactions on Information Systems – call for papers on neural information retrieval
By Martin White on 1st August 2022

The ACM TOIS journal is planning a special issue in 2023 on efficiency on neural information retrieval. The deadline for submissions is 31 December 2022. To quote from the ACM announcement...

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/08/acm-transactions-on-information-systems-call-for-papers-on-neural-information-retrieval/


Funnelback and Me: Celebrating 30 Years of Funnelback Technology 1991-2021 – Book review
By Martin White on 26th July 2022

I expect that most readers of Informer will have read the 2011 edition of Modern Information Retrieval edited by Ricardo Baeza-Yates and Berthier Riberio-Neto. It runs to almost 900 pages. Chapter 15 is a brilliant essay by David Hawking which sums up everything you should know about enterprise search in 40 pages....

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/07/funnelback-and-me-celebrating-30-years-of-funnelback-technology-1991-2021-book-review/


Search Solutions 2022 London 23/24 November
By Martin White on 26th July 2022

Search Solutions 2022 returns to being on on-site conference this year at the BCS HQ in London (25 Copthall Avenue London, EC2R 7BP) though there could be some remote contributions from speakers facing challenges of predictable flight schedules and sensible fares. The Conference will be held on Thursday 24 November, with a day of Tutorials on Wednesday 23 November. Details of both events will be posted on the IRSG web site in due course...

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/07/search-solutions-2022-london-23-24-november/


Events Summer 2022
By Andy Macfarlane on 4th July 2022

Note from compiler Andy Macfarlane –  Due to the COVID-19 pandemic some events have been cancelled, postponed or will be run virtually. We have provided information on each of the events with the current status at the time of writing. Please check the URL of the event for further details....

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/07/events-summer-2022/


And finally….from the Editor
By Martin White on 3rd July 2022

The quarterly Informer newsletter has been published by IRSG for almost 30 years, initially as a PDF and since 2012 as a web journal using a WordPress platform. Throughout its history it has been a channel of record for conferences and other events and a means of alerting members to forthcoming events, constantly trying to keep a balance between content for the academic and research community of IRSG and the practitioner/search manager community...

https://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2022/07/and-finally-from-the-editor-6/

_____________________________________________________________________

Opportunities for Authors
If you are an expert in information retrieval or any aspect of search who has strong writing skills, we invite you to contribute to Informer. Please send an article proposal to us at: irsg-odSCf/[email protected]
For more information about the BCS IRSG, please go to: http://irsg.bcs.org/about.php

About Informer
Informer is the quarterly newsletter of the BCS Information Retrieval Specialist Group (IRSG). Its aim is to provide insights and inspiration to researchers and professionals working in all aspects of search and information retrieval. Our articles provide accessible and timely coverage of important topics, ranging from focused, practical advice, to concise overviews of broader topics, and to deeper, research-oriented articles and opinion pieces.

The IRSG is a Specialist Group of BCS. Its mission is to provide a focus for the European IR community, facilitate communication between researchers and practitioners and promote the adoption of IR research within industry. We host a major European conference (ECIR) and provide an associated programme of workshops, seminars and events. The IRSG is free to join via the BCS website, which provides access to further IR articles, events and resources.

BCS is the industry body for IT professionals. With members in over 100 countries around the world, BCS is the leading professional and learned society in the field of computers and information systems.

_____________________________________________________________________


Visit Informer at http://irsg.bcs.org/informer/

If you have comments, questions, or suggestions for Informer, please contact us at irsg-odSCf/[email protected]

########################################################################

To unsubscribe from the IR list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/WA-JISC.exe?SUBED1=IR&A=1

This message was issued to members of www.jiscmail.ac.uk/IR, a mailing list hosted by www.jiscmail.ac.uk, terms & conditions are available at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/