The Distinguished Lecturer Series:
Browsing around a Digital Library

- Ian WItten, Professor of Computer Science, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

In Calgary
Faculty of Science Distinguished Lecturer Series
September 18, 2001
4:00 pm
Tom Oliver Theatre, ES 162

In Edmonton
Department of Computing Science Distinguished Lecture Series
24 September 2001
3:30 pm CSC B-02

http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/events/dls/01-02/Witten.shtml

What will it be like to work in the digital library of the future? We begin by browsing around an experimental digital library of the present, glancing at some collections and seeing how they are organized. Then we look to the future. Although present digital libraries are quite like conventional libraries, we argue that future ones will feel qualitatively different. Readers Pand writers P will work in the library using a kind of context- directed browsing. This will be supported by structures derived from automatic analysis of the contents of the library Pnot just the catalog, or abstracts, but the full text of the books and journals P using new techniques of data mining.

Ian H. Witten is professor of computer science at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. He directs the New Zealand Digital Library research project. His research interests include information retrieval, machine learning, text compression, and programming by demonstration. He has published widely in these areas, including six books, the most recent being Managing gigabytes: Compressing and indexing documents and images (second edition, Morgan Kaufmann, 1999) and Data mining: practical machine learning tools and techniques with Java implementations (Morgan Kaufmann, 2000). He received an MA in mathematics from Cambridge University, England; an MSc in computer science from the University of Calgary, Canada; and a PhD in electrical engineering from Essex University, England. He is a fellow of the ACM and of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

About iCORE:
The Alberta Informatics Circle of Research Excellence (iCORE) fosters excellent university-based research and develops a critical mass of exceptional researchers in information and communications technology in the province.

For more information, please contact
Mary Anne Moser, Director of Member Relations, Netera Alliance
Director of Communications, iCORE
E-mail: moser@netera.ca
Phone: (403) 949-3306
Fax (403) 949-3320


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