Welcome to a new edition of Informer! It’s Spring 2017 and you are reading the official newsletter of the BCS Information Retrieval Specialist Group. What an honour to have YOU as our readership. Let’s jump straight in: we did introduce an important change this time. We reactivated comments after having installed the right filters to get rid of the hundreds of spam comments we had received years ago (or did you REALLY not like what we offered you?) Anyway, that means that you can send us your feedback straightaway and we are more than happy to hear from you! So let’s see what you can comment on …
We have an extensive review of ECIR 2017 in Aberdeen. Luca Soldaini did an excellent job and if you like his summary, then why not get back and tell him (we are easily pleased, a simple “Ok” or “Not that bad” would do and that will keep us going until next time).
And what would ECIR be without an Industry Day? Now in its 11th year we came across a lot of examples from the oil and gas industry — despite our speakers covering the whole spectrum of academia and industry — but NOT oil&gas. Our special reporter Steven Zimmerman wrote down his account within a few hours of leaving Aberdeen (on a teetotal train … and that applies to the luggage as well).
Tony takes a break from writing feature articles and this time provides a book review: “Deep Text”. Deep Text? What’s that all about? Like shallow text with a twist? Well, go and read (and tell Tony what you think …)
Frank, our restless book editor has been stocking up on books. In fact, he risks having to move house because so few of you are willing to take up the offer of writing a review and getting a book in return. As a result Frank now has a house full of books and can hardly walk there. Please help him out of his misery and do provide a bit of sunshine to our readership who are eager to learn what has been published recently without having to red the full book (for a start).
To conclude we have Andy’s excellently compiled list of IR-related events. Thanks, Andy!
Enjoy the sun!