41,124 research outputs found
Meeting of the MINDS: an information retrieval research agenda
Since its inception in the late 1950s, the field of Information Retrieval (IR) has developed tools that help people find, organize, and analyze information. The key early influences on the field are well-known. Among them are H. P. Luhn's pioneering work, the development of the vector space retrieval model by Salton and his students, Cleverdon's development of the Cranfield experimental methodology, Spärck Jones' development of idf, and a series of probabilistic retrieval models by Robertson and Croft. Until the development of the WorldWideWeb (Web), IR was of greatest interest to professional information analysts such as librarians, intelligence analysts, the legal community, and the pharmaceutical industry
Distributed resource discovery using a context sensitive infrastructure
Distributed Resource Discovery in a World Wide Web environment using full-text indices will never scale. The distinct properties of WWW information (volume, rate of change, topical diversity) limits the scaleability of traditional approaches to distributed Resource Discovery. An approach combining metadata clustering and query routing can, on the other hand, be proven to scale much better. This paper presents the Content-Sensitive Infrastructure, which is a design building on these results. We also present an analytical framework for comparing scaleability of different distribution strategies
Simplifying Deep-Learning-Based Model for Code Search
To accelerate software development, developers frequently search and reuse
existing code snippets from a large-scale codebase, e.g., GitHub. Over the
years, researchers proposed many information retrieval (IR) based models for
code search, which match keywords in query with code text. But they fail to
connect the semantic gap between query and code. To conquer this challenge, Gu
et al. proposed a deep-learning-based model named DeepCS. It jointly embeds
method code and natural language description into a shared vector space, where
methods related to a natural language query are retrieved according to their
vector similarities. However, DeepCS' working process is complicated and
time-consuming. To overcome this issue, we proposed a simplified model
CodeMatcher that leverages the IR technique but maintains many features in
DeepCS. Generally, CodeMatcher combines query keywords with the original order,
performs a fuzzy search on name and body strings of methods, and returned the
best-matched methods with the longer sequence of used keywords. We verified its
effectiveness on a large-scale codebase with about 41k repositories.
Experimental results showed the simplified model CodeMatcher outperforms DeepCS
by 97% in terms of MRR (a widely used accuracy measure for code search), and it
is over 66 times faster than DeepCS. Besides, comparing with the
state-of-the-art IR-based model CodeHow, CodeMatcher also improves the MRR by
73%. We also observed that: fusing the advantages of IR-based and
deep-learning-based models is promising because they compensate with each other
by nature; improving the quality of method naming helps code search, since
method name plays an important role in connecting query and code
The End of Institutional Repositories and the Beginning of Social Academic Research Service: An Enhanced Role for Libraries
As more and more universities establish Institutional Repositories (IR), awareness is developing about the limitations of IRs in enhancing the academic research service. The concept of an IR needs to be expanded to include the integration of the processes that transform intellectual endeavor into a broadening array of academic and research support services which are fundamentally social. These include, but are not limited to –
(1) sharing institutionally developed intellectual product (traditional IR)
(2) informing others of the availability of this product with defined purpose
(3) collecting additional academically relevant materials in digital formats using IRs
(4) disseminating timely information about what has been collected to researchers
(5) creating an environment that encourages awareness and exchange of information
(6) and more….
In brief, information gathering, dissemination, and discussion in the form of library service must become a crucial part of researchers’ networks. An IR cannot and should not be viewed as a stand alone endeavor. It needs to be viewed and used as a research and communication tool in an environment that synergizes all elements of the research process. If an IR does not create discussions between librarians (information specialists) and researchers, its potential is lost both to the academy and the library. The library and its librarians must be interactive with researchers and the institution served.
With the advent of digital acquisition that IRs started, a new vision of the role of librarians can be fulfilled. The foundational concepts behind this vision are found in my article: The Library as an Agent of Change: Pushing the Client Institution Forward Information Outlook (Journal of the Special Libraries Association), Vol. 3, No. 8, August 1999, pages 37-40.
The above is not theoretical. It is being practiced every day at the Martin P. Catherwood Library of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) at Cornell University where I work. By combining the uses of an IR, known as the DigitalCommons@ILR – see http://www.digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu, with a discipline-based Internet news service, see -- http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/iws/news-bureau/index.html, supported with outstanding web content, technical support for both print and digital collecting, reference, referral, and teaching, a goal has been realized. The library is seamlessly integrated into the outreach, research and teaching of the institution it serves. The library is part of the social fabric and network of the school
Identifying Student Difficulties with Entropy, Heat Engines, and the Carnot Cycle
We report on several specific student difficulties regarding the Second Law
of Thermodynamics in the context of heat engines within upper-division
undergraduates thermal physics courses. Data come from ungraded written
surveys, graded homework assignments, and videotaped classroom observations of
tutorial activities. Written data show that students in these courses do not
clearly articulate the connection between the Carnot cycle and the Second Law
after lecture instruction. This result is consistent both within and across
student populations. Observation data provide evidence for myriad difficulties
related to entropy and heat engines, including students' struggles in reasoning
about situations that are physically impossible and failures to differentiate
between differential and net changes of state properties of a system. Results
herein may be seen as the application of previously documented difficulties in
the context of heat engines, but others are novel and emphasize the subtle and
complex nature of cyclic processes and heat engines, which are central to the
teaching and learning of thermodynamics and its applications. Moreover, the
sophistication of these difficulties is indicative of the more advanced
thinking required of students at the upper division, whose developing knowledge
and understanding give rise to questions and struggles that are inaccessible to
novices
Academic Libraries in Transition: Current Trends, Future Prospects
Academic libraries are in transition because of changes in the context of higher education. Changes in the world of information are even more radical: the displacement of paper, the primacy of the search engine, the emergence of the digital lifestyle, and innovative patterns of scholarly communication. Decreasing reliance on local collections is transforming the library as a physical destination.Traditional measures of library success have begun to be replaced. Given the superiority of other information professionals’ data management skills, the role of academic librarians will shift toward the enablement of learning.This environment of upheaval will pose both opportunities and challenges for academic librarians
Report on the Information Retrieval Festival (IRFest2017)
The Information Retrieval Festival took place in April 2017 in Glasgow. The focus of the workshop was to bring together IR researchers from the various Scottish universities and beyond in order to facilitate more awareness, increased interaction and reflection on the status of the field and its future. The program included an industry session, research talks, demos and posters as well as two keynotes. The first keynote was delivered by Prof. Jaana Kekalenien, who provided a historical, critical reflection of realism in Interactive Information Retrieval Experimentation, while the second keynote was delivered by Prof. Maarten de Rijke, who argued for more Artificial Intelligence usage in IR solutions and deployments. The workshop was followed by a "Tour de Scotland" where delegates were taken from Glasgow to Aberdeen for the European Conference in Information Retrieval (ECIR 2017
DYNIQX: A novel meta-search engine for the web
The effect of metadata in collection fusion has not been sufficiently studied. In response to this, we present a novel meta-search engine called Dyniqx for metadata based search. Dyniqx integrates search results from search services of documents, images, and videos for generating a unified list of ranked search results. Dyniqx exploits the availability of metadata in search services such as PubMed, Google Scholar, Google Image Search, and Google Video Search etc for fusing search results from heterogeneous search engines. In addition, metadata from these search engines are used for generating dynamic query controls such as sliders and tick boxes etc which are used by users to filter search results. Our preliminary user evaluation shows that Dyniqx can help users complete information search tasks more efficiently and successfully than three well known search engines respectively. We also carried out one controlled user evaluation of the integration of six document/image/video based search engines (Google Scholar, PubMed, Intute, Google Image, Yahoo Image, and Google Video) in Dyniqx. We designed a questionnaire for evaluating different aspect of Dyniqx in assisting users complete search tasks. Each user used Dyniqx to perform a number of search tasks before completing the questionnaire. Our evaluation results confirm the effectiveness of the meta-search of Dyniqx in assisting user search tasks, and provide insights into better designs of the Dyniqx' interface
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