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Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 16:15:35 -0700 (PDT)
From: Kevin Heard <kevin@sims.berkeley.edu>
Message-Id: <199708192315.QAA17776@axolotl.sims.berkeley.edu>
To: announce@sims.berkeley.edu
Subject: SIMS Receives Two New Grants
Sender: owner-announce@sims.berkeley.edu
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*** DARPA Research Contract Awarded to SIMS ***
August 14, 1997
Berkeley--The University of California, Berkeley School of
Information Management and Systems has been awarded a $954,180
research contract to make searching for documents and data
easier and more cost-effective. The project is called "Search
Support for Unfamiliar Metadata Vocabularies."
Searching is likely to be effective and efficient only when the
searcher is familiar with the classification, categorizing, and
indexing schemes ("metadata vocabularies") being searched. The
rapid rise in the number of databases that can be accessed over
the Internet means that searches will increasingly require the
use of indexes and classification schemes that are unfamiliar
to the person searching. To provide a cost-effective remedy,
researchers will develop entry vocabulary modules that accept
topical statements in the searcher's terms and respond with a
ranked list of terms in the system's vocabulary.
The Principal Investigator for the three year project is Professor
Michael Buckland, with Professor Ray Larson, Associate Professor
in the School, and Dr. Fred Gey, Assistant Director of the UC Data
Archive & Technical Assistance and a recent Ph.D. graduate of the
School.
This project builds directly on several years of research in the
School on improved searching techniques. The classification clustering
technique developed by Professor Ray Larson for the Cheshire project
will be used with algorithms developed by Dr. Gey with support from
a National Science Foundation grant.
The contract was awarded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA Contract N66001-97-C-8541; AO# F477) and will run from
July 1997 through June 2000.
See the project website (http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/metadata)
for more information. Send inquiries to Michael Buckland:
510-642-3159, buckland@sims.berkeley.edu.
*** SIMS Receives Hardware Grant from Intel ***
August 18, 1997
Berkeley--The Intel Corporation has donated 25 Pentium Pro computers
worth approximately $100,000 for research and education at the
University of California, Berkeley School of Information Management
and Systems. The computers are part of the $6 million Millennium
Project at UC Berkeley.
The computers will be installed in the SIMS computer lab for use by
students and researchers. They will be used for intensive database
and information retrieval work, including calculation of very large
document/document similarity matrices, on-the-fly calculation of
probabilistic ranking values, and sorting of databases ranging from
several hundred thousand to millions of items.
The computers will also be used for the development of cross-vocabulary
mapping for dynamic generation of controlled vocabulary queries from
natural language. This involves computationally intensive generation
of probabilistic data on term usage in large databases to develop
mapping models from natural language terms to controlled vocabulary
entries.
***
Press releases regarding the University of California, Berkeley
School of Information Management and Systems appear on the SIMS
What's New page:
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/events/new.html