The Spring issue of Informer contained a number of articles on the very successful ECIR 2021 event, so I decided to carry over some reflections on the Industry Day to this issue. My first visit to ECIR was the 2011 Dublin event where I presented my SearchCheck methodology, which in the event was eventually launched… Continue reading ECIR 2021 Industry Day highlights
Author: Martin White
The Information Retrieval Anthology 2021: inaugural status report and challenges ahead
To quote from a paper published in the June 2021 issue of SIGIR Forum, “The Information Retrieval Anthology, IR Anthology for short, is an endeavor to create a comprehensive collection of metadata and full texts of IR-related publications. We report on its first release, the use cases it can serve, as well as the challenges… Continue reading The Information Retrieval Anthology 2021: inaugural status report and challenges ahead
Strix Award 2021 – call for nominations
The UK e-information Group (UKeiG) is delighted to announce the call for nominations for the prestigious Tony Kent Strix Award 2021. Nominations should be received by 6 pm GMT on Thursday 30th September 2021. The Tony Kent Strix Award was inaugurated in 1998 by the Institute of Information Scientists. It is now presented by UKeiG… Continue reading Strix Award 2021 – call for nominations
Report on the SIGIR 2021 Workshop “IR for Children 2000-2020: Where Are We Now?”
Authors (Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers, Emiliana Murgia, and Sole Pera) This year, researchers and practitioners gathered during a workshop co-located with the 44th edition of the renowned ACM SIGIR conference to discuss the current status of information retrieval (IR) research targeting children. The idea of hosting a workshop at ACM SIGIR first emerged from discussions… Continue reading Report on the SIGIR 2021 Workshop “IR for Children 2000-2020: Where Are We Now?”
Journals publishing information retrieval research – are there any missing?
The IRSG web site (see above) has carried a list of journals that cover information retrieval research for many years. However there are a number of broken links and some rather strange omissions, such as the Journal of Information Science. The table below is a draft of the revised version, which I have expanded a… Continue reading Journals publishing information retrieval research – are there any missing?
David Maxwell wins the 2020 BCS/CPHC Distinguished Dissertation award
The BCS in collaboration with the Council of Professors and Heads of Computing (CPHC) gives an annual award for the best thesis in computer science. David (at that time at the University of Glasgow) was recognised for his thesis: ‘Modelling search and stopping in interactive information retrieval.’ David is now undertaking post-graduate research at the… Continue reading David Maxwell wins the 2020 BCS/CPHC Distinguished Dissertation award
Book Review – Seeing with Fresh Eyes: Meaning Space Data Truth by Edward Tufte
I am concerned at the lack of interest in the IR search community in the design of search results pages and the design of the individual results snippets. You could argue that these are topics are out-of-scope and yet recent work on perceptual speed suggests that we should be taking more care about information design… Continue reading Book Review – Seeing with Fresh Eyes: Meaning Space Data Truth by Edward Tufte
Is there now a business in paid-for web search?
I would commend a blog post by Stephen Arnold on the future of paid-for web search, prompted by the release of Neeva which comes free for three months and then you pay $4.95 a month. (That fee is in very very small print on the home page!) Over the years several companies have tried to… Continue reading Is there now a business in paid-for web search?
On the dangers of stochastic parrots: Can language models be too big?
There are few better ways of spending an hour than doing so listening to Professor Emily Bender, University of Waashington, taking about language models in a virtual presentation hosted by the Alan Turing Institute on 8 July 2021. The main topics in this excellent lecture (content, presentation and discussion) were Are ever larger language models… Continue reading On the dangers of stochastic parrots: Can language models be too big?
IRSG web site upgrade
Work is now in progress with the migration of the IRSG web site into the new BCS Specialist Group web site style. For rather too long we have been somewhat out of step with the other Specialist Groups. We are anticipating that the new site will be launched towards the end of August. We have… Continue reading IRSG web site upgrade