Agent-Based Systems for Information Retrieval

(http://www.aaai.org/Workshops/2002/ws-02.html)

   Our  current climate is one of ever increasing amounts of information,
   and  queries  that  require  the intelligent integration of varied and
   potentially vast information sources. It is essential now more so than
   ever  that  we  extend our abilities to search and exploit information
   both  more  accurately  and  more  efficiently,  and  make connections
   readily between varied information sources. This goal is best achieved
   by leveraging the efforts of both the IR and agents communities.

   This  workshop  will  focus  on  the  application  of  agent-based and
   multi-agent system technology to the problems of storing and searching
   large  collections of documents. This includes traditional information
   retrieval   questions  such  as  retrieval  effectiveness  and  system
   performance. We also address agent-based approaches to distributed IR,
   where the agents (and documents) are scattered, for example, among the
   nodes  of  a  network. Agent-based systems are also appropriate to the
   task  of  searching  or  even  integrating  heterogeneous  sources  of
   information, and the fusion of results.

    Topics

   We encourage submissions in the following areas:
     * Query formulation
     * Processing of standing/ad hoc queries
     * Use of ontologies in corpus selection
     * Metadata
     * Specialized protocols for distributed IR
     * Performance modeling and evaluation

   Participation will be limited to fifty individuals, by invitation.

    Submissions

   Those  interested in participating should submit (to cost@acm.org )
   either:  (1)  Brief  statement of interest (one page), or (2) Complete
   paper  (no  more  than  eight  pages)  including keywords and authors'
   complete addresses.  The deadline for submissions (set by AAAI) is
   March 15, 2002.

   Papers  and  statements  of  interest should be in PostScript, PDF, or
   HTML  format.  Direct  all  inquiries  by email to the chair, R. Scott
   Cost.

    Committee

   R. Scott Cost (chair), University of Maryland Baltimore County
                     (cost@acm.org); 
   Charles Nicholas, University of Maryland Baltimore County 
                     (nicholas@umbc.edu); 
   Ian Soboroff, National Institute of Standards and Technology 
                     (ian.soboroff@nist.gov)

   Website: http://www.csee.umbc.edu/conferences/aaai02ws/ Refer
   questions or problems with this web site to Charles Nicholas.