NOTICE: The BCS IRSG is seeking new committee members. If you are interested to find out more please see details on the nomination and election process. November 3rd 2022 is the deadline for nominations. Can I start by highlighting the forthcoming vacancy for an Editor for Informer, to take over at the end of 2022.… Continue reading In the Summer issue
Month: August 2022
Vacancy for an Informer Editor from January 2023
I took over the role as the Editor of Informer in 2019 and have enjoyed the challenge of publishing a quarterly newsletter that in each issue has something of interest to the very varied IRSG. Earlier this year I decided that it was time to hand over the Editorial Desktop as I wanted to gently… Continue reading Vacancy for an Informer Editor from January 2023
BCS/IRSG Search Industry Awards 2022
The BCS Search Industry Awards recognise people, projects, and organisations that have excelled in the design of search and information retrieval products and services. If you know of any people, projects, or products that deserve recognition, let us know by submitting a nomination. Alternatively, if you’re involved with something special yourself, you can submit an… Continue reading BCS/IRSG Search Industry Awards 2022
The Microsoft BCS/BCS IRSG Karen Spärck Jones Award 2022 – Call for Nominations deadline is 9 September
A pioneer of information retrieval, the computer science sub-discipline that also underpins the technology of modern Web search engines, Karen Spärck Jones was a British professor of Computers and Information at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge. Her contributions to the fields of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Information Retrieval (IR), especially with regard to… Continue reading The Microsoft BCS/BCS IRSG Karen Spärck Jones Award 2022 – Call for Nominations deadline is 9 September
JASIST special issue on information retrieval research
I was personally delighted to see the announcement from ASIS&T about a Special Issue in September 2023 on the topic of research into information retrieval. To quote from the announcement “We are looking for contributions that broaden the respective disciplinary, methodological, or empirical perspectives to identify and explore commercial search engines and their use and… Continue reading JASIST special issue on information retrieval research
Relevance management – tips, tricks, techniques and tools
When OpenSource Connections started the Haystack conference in 2018, our intention was to bring the search and relevance community together to share tips, tricks, techniques and tools. Although the talks that year weren’t recorded we swiftly realised that we could share them much more widely on video and we made sure to record all the… Continue reading Relevance management – tips, tricks, techniques and tools
Taxonomies – Practical Approaches to Developing and Managing Vocabularies for Digital Information – Book review
There is probably no more difficult task in information management in being the Editor of a multi-author on any topic, and the level of difficulty goes up by an order of magnitude when the topic is taxonomy management. Taxonomies (and the strap line Practical Approaches to Developing and Managing Vocabularies for Digital Information) has been… Continue reading Taxonomies – Practical Approaches to Developing and Managing Vocabularies for Digital Information – Book review
The Limits of Batch Assessment of Retrieval Systems – Justin Zobell
I had the very good fortune to get to know Cyril Cleverdon towards the end of his distinguished career as Librarian at the Cranfield Institute of Technology and his invaluable work in creating and promoting the Cranfield Projects on information retrieval performance. These Projects formed the basis for the TREC events in the USA. At… Continue reading The Limits of Batch Assessment of Retrieval Systems – Justin Zobell
The Science of Reading – Book review
You may be somewhat surprised to see a review of a book on the science of reading in Informer. It seems to be implicit in information retrieval research that ‘users’ have such a competence in reading that a consideration of reading ability can be discounted from the research analysis. If only that was the case!… Continue reading The Science of Reading – Book review
Call for nominations for the UKeiG Tony Kent Strix Award 2022 – Deadline 9 September
The Tony Kent Strix Award was inaugurated in 1998 by the Institute of Information Scientists. It is now presented by UKeiG in partnership with the International Society for Knowledge Organisation 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… Continue reading Call for nominations for the UKeiG Tony Kent Strix Award 2022 – Deadline 9 September