Syllabus for CS5604, Fall 1995 - No. VA

General Information

Catalog Description for CS5604

Analyzing, indexing, representing, storing, searching, retrieving, and presenting desired information. Models, document processing, thesauri, evaluation of system effectiveness, special hardware. Boolean logic and inverted file systems. Fully automatic systems. Role of probability, artificial intelligence and computational linguistics.

Additional Course Description for CS5604

Explanation/demonstration of: online bibliographic services; library systems like VTLS, MARIAN; retrieval systems like WAIS, CODER; hypertext systems like WWW, Hyper-G, KMS; digital multimedia with JPEG, MPEG; applications of artificial intelligence in knowledge bases and information systems; text processing, electronic publishing, automatic indexing. Course theme: "digital libraries."

Objectives for CS5604

Prepare students to:

Grading for CS5604

Attention to reading, labs, demonstrations and class discussions is imperative. Students must demonstrate mastery of a body of knowledge and its application.

The course has 11 units, worth a total of 135 points. Units CL, DL, IN, IR, SD, SS each are worth 10 points; units HT, IF, KB, MM, RR each are worth 15 points. You must demonstrate mastery (e.g., quiz grade of 90%) of each unit you wish credit for, and will be allowed two retries (against different questions) or an oral exam on each unit. Mastering a unit gives you full credit as long as you have also completed (possibly in a group) all assignments for that unit. The open book, open notes final is worth 100 points and will have at least 50 points worth of questions taken from unit tests.

Extra credit is given for high quality work on writing assignments. For each of the debate topics, the discussion statement judged by the class to be best earn all involved group members one bonus point. Similarly, the three best daily summaries from each class earn their writers a bonus point; students can gain a maximum of 5 points during the semester this way. Finally, the instructor may elect to give a bonus point for an exceptionally well done exercise reply, suggestion, annotation, or similar contribution. A grade of

The instructor reserves the right to adjust grades for unusual performance on the final. There may be extra credit assignments.

No. VA students get a 10 point bonus if they master working with the VTEL system. This can be accomplished in groups by helping turn on the system, fixing things if there are problems, and/or re-assigning the camera/monitor arrangement as requested.

The Virginia Tech Honor Code

The Honor Code will be strictly enforced in this course. All assignments submitted shall be considered graded work, unless otherwise noted. All aspects of your coursework are covered by the Honor System. Any suspected violations of the Honor Code will be promptly reported to the Honor System. Honesty in your academic work will develop into professional integrity. The faculty and students of Virginia tech will not tolerate any form of academic dishonesty.

Instructor Information

Textbooks for CS5604

Readings and References for CS5604

Some of the best hypertext readings are available through KMS in the ACM Hypertext Compendium which starts at frame ACMHTCtop1 on video.cs.vt.edu or are pointed to by the excellent bibliography available from Texas A&M University which starts at frame tamuhrl92001.1 on video.

Aside from the textbook, all other materials mentioned have been placed on reserve. These are all valuable items for the study of Information Storage and Retrieval.

Articles for CS5604

The following articles are required or recommended reading to go along with the various units of the course, much like the various selected chapters of the textbook.

They can be found on reserve in the Library, or can be read online using xtiff or xprcedit when referring to the proper files on video.cs.vt.edu in /u4/pages/acm/cacm with pathname suffixes given below. Note that /u4/pages has a large number of articles from ACM and IEEE-CS that have been scanned in and can be referred to.

Units of CS5604

There are 11 units in this course, each with a 2-letter ID that symbolizes the main topical area considered. Each unit will be covered in 1-2 weeks of class time, has a set of associated readings, and has some lab or homework exercises that must be completed. Either 10 or 15 points, depending on the time and difficulty of the unit, will be given when mastery is demonstrated by a quiz grade of at least 90%.