Autumn 2019 – Informer

Editorial

At the AGM (held during the TALMIRI conference in September) I set out an editorial policy for Informer. “My overall aim to balance academic and practitioner interests, and to present developments and achievements in as broad a range as possible of search applications. In doing so I hope that Informer will increase the membership and… Continue reading Editorial

Search Solutions conference and workshops London 25/26 November

At the time of writing the confirmed speakers are Ryan Mcdonald (Google), Matteo Venanzi (Microsoft), Allan Hanbury (contextflow and TU Wien), Nicolas Fiorini (Doctrine), Andreas Kaltenbrunner (NTENT) and Benjamin Braasch (Raytion). This year the event will be held in the new location of the BCS in Moorgate. There will also be a day of tutorials… Continue reading Search Solutions conference and workshops London 25/26 November

Diagnosing Enterprise Search

As a digital workplace consultant, I often find myself in workshops with employees to gather requirements. Invariably within a few minutes someone will say “we can never find stuff, the search is awful”, and the whole group will nod agreement. My company, ClearBox Consulting, has been working in the intranet and digital workplace space since… Continue reading Diagnosing Enterprise Search

The Open University at 50: a research profile

(A note from the Editor. From 2006-2008 I worked with an outstanding team (Ian Roddis, Nicky Waters and Jed Cawthorne) on the development of a new intranet and the selection of a new search application. In the course of the user interviews I realized my view of The Open University as just a distance-learning provider… Continue reading The Open University at 50: a research profile

Book Review: Information Retrieval: The Early Years

It’s time to make space on your book shelf again, as this year, quite a few interesting IR books have been published. This is a brief review on one of them: “Information Retrieval: The Early Years“, written by Donna Harman. Harman can rightly be described as one of the pioneers of IR who has influenced… Continue reading Book Review: Information Retrieval: The Early Years

Karen Spärk Jones Lecture and Award – a clarification

I have to admit that I was very confused about the relationship between the Lecture and the Award before realizing that there was no relationship other than the name of the honouree. This year the 2019 Karen Spärk Jones Lecture will be given by Professor Mirella Lapata, University of Edinburgh on Wednesday 23 October 2019… Continue reading Karen Spärk Jones Lecture and Award – a clarification

TALMIRI Conference 18 September 2019 – conference report

The 2019 TALMIRI Conference took place at the Putterbury campus of the University of Bedfordshire. The acronym stands for Talent Meets the Information Retrieval Industry. The conference was conceived and organized by Ingo Frommholz and Haiming Liu with support from the University of Bedfordshire that enabled the conference to be free to attendees in a… Continue reading TALMIRI Conference 18 September 2019 – conference report

Strix Memorial Lecture London 29 November 2019

The Strix Award is presented by the UK electronic information Group (UKeiG), in partnership with the International Society for Knowledge Organization 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). The Award is given in recognition of… Continue reading Strix Memorial Lecture London 29 November 2019