Syllabus for CS5604, Fall 1996 - Blacksburg

General Information

• Course Name: Information Storage and Retrieval
• Course Number: CS5604
• Index Number: 5299
• Location (Tue): McBryde Hall Room 216
• Location (Thu): Derring Hall Room 2069
• Prerequisites: CS2604 or permission of instructor
• Time: Tue/Thu 12:30 - 1:45pm

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:

• Commence Masters and/or PhD-level research in the broad area of information storage and retrieval (IS&R).
• Read and understand research contributions in this area.
• Critique, contrast, compare, and evaluate the efficiency, effectiveness, and utility of commercially available and research prototype systems for IS&R.
• Select, implement, or design and develop algorithms and data structures for IS&R systems, including digital libraries.
• Effectively use indexing, analysis, search, hypertext and multimedia access systems --- for common tasks.
• Communicate effectively using writing and hypertext techniques to demonstrate mastery of course subject matter.

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., a sufficiently high quiz grade) of each unit you wish credit for, and will be allowed two retries (against different questions), similar alternatives using our automated quiz system, 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. The term project will count 90 points. The instructor may elect to give a bonus point for an exceptionally well done exercise reply, suggestion, annotation, or similar contribution.

A grade of

• B will be given for an accumulation of at least 280 points,
• B+ for 290,
• A- for 300, and
• A for 310.

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

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

• Home: 203 Craig Dr., Blacksburg, VA 24060; +1-540-552-8667
• Email: fox@vt.edu
• WWW: http://fox.cs.vt.edu/
• Title: Professor
• Room: 608 McBryde Hall
• Office Hours: Mon 10-12, Tu/Th 2-3
• Phone: +1-540-231-5113
• FAX: +1-540-231-6075
• Address: 660 McBryde Hall, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0106

Textbooks for CS5604

• Required:
  Frakes, William B. and Ricardo Baeza-Yates, editors.
  Information Retrieval: Data Structures & Algorithms.
  Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1992, viii, 504. ISBN 0-13-463837-9.
  Call Number QA76.9.D35 I543 1992
  [Skip ch's 4,6,9,13,17-18.]
• Recommended:
  Salton, Gerard.
  Automatic text processing: the transformation, analysis, and retrieval of information by computer.
  Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1989, xiii, 530.
  Call Number QA76.9.T48 S25 1989
  

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. These same pages are accessible over the WWW at http://researchsmp2.cc.vt.edu:8090/ through our ACM Digital Library Collection at Virginia Tech.

• COOM87: v30/n11/COOM87
  Coombs, Renear, and DeRose. Markup Systems and the Future of Scholarly Text Processing. CACM 30(11):933-947, Nov. 1987.
• DONG87: v30/n05/DONG87
  Dongarra and Grosse. Distribution of Mathematical Software via Electronic Mail. CACM 30(5):403-407, May 1987.
• FOXE88d: v31/n08/FOXE88d
  Fox. ACM Press Database and Electronic Products -- New Services for the Information Age. CACM 31(8): 948-951, Aug. 1988.
• FOXE91b: v34/n04/FOXE91b
  Fox. Standards and the Emergence of Digital Multimedia Systems. CACM 34(4): 25-29, April 1991.
• FURN87: v30/n11/FURN87
  Furnas, Landauer, Gomez and Dumais. The Vocabulary Problem in Human-System Communication. CACM 30(11): 964-971, Nov. 1987.
• GREE92: v35/n01/GREE92
  Green. The Evolution of DVI System Software. CACM 35(1): 52-67, Jan. 1992.
• HAAN92: v35/n01/HAAN92
  Haan, Kahn, Riley, Coombs, and Meyrowitz. IRIS Hypermedia Services. CACM 35(1): 36-51, Jan. 1992.
• LEBO88: v31/n12/LEBO88
  Lebowitz. The Use of Memory in Text Processing. CACM 31(12): 1483-1502, Dec. 1988.
• MALO87a: v30/n05/MALO87a
  Malone, Grant, Turbak, Brobst and Cohen. Intelligent Information-Sharing Systems. cACM 30(5):390-402, May 1987.
• MAMR87: v30/n05/MAMR87
  Mamrak, Kaelbling, Nicholas and Share. A Software Architecture for Supporting the Exchange of Electronic Manuscripts. CACM 30(5):408-414, May 1987.
• NIEL90a: v33/n03/NIEL90a
  Nielsen. The Art of Navigating Hypertext. CACM 33(3): 296-310, Mar. 1990.
• PHIL91a: v34/n07/PHIL91a
  Phillips. MediaView: A General Multimedia Digital Production System. CACM 34(7): 75-83, July 1991.
• SALT75b: v18/n11/SALT75b
  Salton, Wong and Yang. A Vector Space Model for Automatic Indexing. CACM 18(11): 613-620, Nov. 1975.
• SALT83d: v26/n11/SALT83d
  Salton, Fox and Wu. Extended Boolean Information Retrieval. CACM 26(11):1022-1036, Nov. 1983.
• SALT86a: v29/n07/SALT86a
  Salton. Another Look at Automatic Text-Retrieval Systems. CACM 29(7):648-656, July 1986.
• SAMU91a: v34/n10/SAMU91a
  Samuelson. Digital Media and the Law. CACM 34(10):23-28, Oct. 1991.
• WALL91: v34/n04/WALL91
  Wallace. The JPEG Still Picture Compression Standard. CACM 34(4): 30-44, April 1991.

Calendar for CS5604

• 1. DL: Introduction, Digital Libraries
  FOXE88d, SAMU91a, DONG87
  8/27, 8/29
• 2. IR: Information Storage & Retrieval
  Ch1, SALT86a, Ch2
  9/3, 9/5
• 3. IF: Inverted Files / Boolean Systems
  Ch3, Ch12, Ch15, SALT83d
  9/10, 9/12
• 4. IF + SS: IF + String Searching
  Ch5
  9/17, 9/19
• 5. SS + RR: SS + Ranking
  Ch10 + Ch14
  9/24, 9/26
• 6. RR: Ranking / Relevance Feedback
  SALT75b, Ch11
  10/1, 10/3 [at Library]
• 7. CL: Clustering
  Ch16
  10/8, 10/10
• 8. IN: Indexing / Document Analysis
  Ch7, Ch8
  10/15, 10/17
• 9. SD: SGML / Document Translation
  COOM87, MAMR87
  10/22, 10/24
• 10. HT: Hypertext
  NIEL90a, HAAN92
  10/29 [guest lecture by Dr. Jurgen Koenemann], 10/31
• 11. HT + MM: HT + Multimedia
  FOXE91b, WALL91
  11/5, 11/7
• 12. MM: Multimedia
  PHIL91a, GREE92
  11/12, 11/14
• 13. KB: Knowledge-Based Information Retrieval
  FURN87, LEBO88, MALO87a
  11/19, 11/21
• 14. Break
• 15. Review
  12/10
• 16. Final Exam
  12/13 at 10:05am-12:05pm

Explanation

UNITS: 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% (or an equivalent sequence of successes through our new automated quiz system).

LINKS: The hypertext link for each unit above points to the related lecture notes.

WEEKS: There are 15 weeks in this course, with the 14th a break, and the last devoted to review, plus a final exam. The Calendar above gives details for each week. Its structure is according to the following template:

• WEEK. ID: Unit Title(s)
  Readings for this week
  Dates for this week [and special events]