"Metadata and MARIAN, or
		'How do you find three words in thirty
	     million when you've got two of them wrong?'"

  Robert France, Programmer/Analyst, Virginia Tech Computing Center
			  October 13, 1998

                  Computer Science Graduate Seminar
                          CS 5944 Index 9743
                        Tuesday 3:30 - 4:45 pm
                  Newman Library 6th Floor Boardroom

			    Sponsored by:
			    	Department of Computer Science
				Information Systems
				University Libraries
				Digital Library Research Laboratory
				Internet Technology Innovation Center

Abstract: 

Digital libraries, like traditional libraries, reply heavily on
"metadata" to access their contents.  Metadata -- data *about* the
works in the library -- can be extrememly complex but tends to be
relatively concise, limited to a few hundred characters per record.
Retrieval over very large sets of such small, highly structured
records presents interesting problems for the computer scientist.
Retrieving works that the user actually wants, given that users often
have a vague and/or skewed understanding of what they're looking for,
presents problems for all phases of digital library design.  I will be
discussing these interesting difficulties with particular reference to
the VT Library collection, and will contrast what might be called the
typical solution, as exemplified by VTLS, with some more flexible
approaches used in MARIAN.  Demonstrations and discussion wil be
included.


Biographical Sketch:

Robert France has been involved in information retrieval, library
automation, and digital library activities at Virginia Tech since
1984.  His M.S. degree from Virginia Tech focussed on the design of
CODER, a distributed expert-based information system.  Robert is the
lead designer and developer of the MARIAN system, which has been
running for several years as an alternative to VTLS for searching
Virginia Tech's library holdings.  From 1978-1983 Robert was
Microforms Collection Supervisor at the Academic Affairs Library,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.  He has a BA from
Oberlin College, and was a graduate student in philosophy and computer
science at UNC-CH before coming to Virginia Tech.

   france@vt.edu     phone: (540) 231-6256