The CHORUS gap analysis on user-centered methodology for design and evaluation of multi-media information access systems

CHORUS is a Coordination Action, a specific type of project funded by the European commission under its research programmes, intended to bring together research projects with common goals, in the field of search technologies for digital audio-visual content, one of the strategic objectives of the current research frame program. CHORUS coordinates a number of research projects in the general area of audio-visual and multi-media information access and management. The most important single contribution of the CHORUS work plan will be to provide a survey of the field and a roadmap with a gap analysis for the realisation of viable audio-visual search engines by European partners. This is done by several means. CHORUS organises Think-Tanks with industrial participation, focussed workshops to treat specific questions, and more general conferences for academic discussions. CHORUS is now in its final phase, and is currently preparing its final report together with a final conference to mark its publication

CHORUS Deliverable 4.4: Report of the 2nd CHORUS Conference

The Second CHORUS Conference and third Yahoo! Research Workshop on the Future of Web Search was held during April 4-5, 2008, in Granvalira, Andorra to discuss future directions in multi-medial information access and other specialised topics in the near future of retrieval. Attendance was at capacity, with 97 participants from 11 countries and 3 continents

Sublanguages and Registers -- A Note On Terminology

The term sublanguage from mathematical linguistics confuses interaction researchers and leads them to believe that implementing natural language interfaces is easier than it is. The term register from sociolinguistics is proposed instead

Assessed Relevance and Stylistic Variation

Texts exhibit considerable stylistic variation. This paper reports an experiment where a large corpus of documents is analyzed using various simple stylistic metrics. A subset of the corpus has been previously assessed to be relevant for answering given information retrieval queries. The experiment shows that this subset differs significantly from the rest of the corpus in terms of the stylistic metrics studied

CHORUS Deliverable 4.3c: Affect, appeal, and sentiment as factors influencing interaction with multi media information

The 7th CHORUS workshop on “Affect, Appeal, and Sentiment as Factors Influencing Interaction with Multimedia Information” was held on May 28, 2009, Brussels, immediately following the Third CHORUS Conference, hosted by the European Commission at their Avenue Beaulieu premises. Participation was limited to invited speakers, and comprised sixteen researchers from fourteen research institutes in eight countries

Affect, appeal, and sentiment as factors influencing interaction with multimedia information

Mostly a slight reformulation of the report from a CHORUS workshop.CHORU

Textual Stylistic Variation: Choices, Genres and Individuals

This chapter argues for more informed target metrics for the statistical processing of stylistic variation in text collections. Much as operationalized relevance proved a useful goal to strive for in information retrieval, research in textual stylistics, whether application oriented or philologically inclined, needs goals formulated in terms of pertinence, relevance, and utility — notions that agree with reader ex- perience of text. Differences readers are aware of are mostly based on utility — not on textual characteristics per se. Mostly, readers report stylistic differences in terms of genres. Genres, while vague and undefined, are well-established and talked about: very early on, readers learn to distinguish genres. This chapter discusses variation given by genre, and contrasts it to variation occasioned by individual choice

Stylistic Variation in an Information Retrieval Experiment

Texts exhibit considerable stylistic variation. This paper reports an experiment where a corpus of documents (N= 75 000) is analyzed using various simple stylistic metrics. A subset (n = 1000) of the corpus has been previously assessed to be relevant for answering given information retrieval queries. The experiment shows that this subset differs significantly from the rest of the corpus in terms of the stylistic metrics studied.Comment: Proceedings of NEMLAP-

From boxes and arrows to conversation and negotiation: or how research should be amusing, awful, and artificial

The story of how a graduate student went from formalism to data, a brief tale of how engineering without tradition can lead thought in the right direction, and a mild caution of how intellectual skepticism is worth little without a corresponding dose of intellectual enthusiasm