SIMS 296a-3: Current Topics in Information Access Instructor: Marti Hearst 2-3 Units. CCN 42826 Offered Fall 1998 W 2:00-4:00, 202 South Hall

Overview Schedule & Lectures Readings & Assignments Pre-Requisites	Course Overview This is a research seminar focusing on current topics in information access. We will study four or five main themes throughout the course of the semester. Each class meeting will focus around the discussion of one or more research papers. Most meetings will begin with a discussion of background information (led by Prof. Hearst), followed by a discussion of the findings of the paper(s) (led by one or more students), following by general discussion relating these findings to what has already been discussed and to implications for new research. Students taking the course on a pass/not pass basis will be expected to attend all of the class meetings (unless arranged in advance to miss), to do the readings in advance of the meetings, and to lead one to four of the discussions. Students taking the course for a grade will be expected to do the above and additionally complete a final project of one of three types: Write a publishable survey paper synthesizing ideas surrounding an emerging area in information access. Write a publishable research paper describing a new idea, method, analysis, or vision statement for an emerging area of information access. Implement and/or evaluate code to further an information access research project. Themes under consideration are: Integration of users' personal information within various information access tasks. Incorporation of AI-style knowledge structure into information access systems. Use of hyperlinks and collective user information in improving web structure. The relationship between pre-defined categories and automatically generated structure (like clusters) in information access interfaces. Supporting the dynamic process of information access in the user interface. Text data mining. Visualization of large text collections. Students' suggestions. These options will be discussed during the first class meeting.
	Last Modified: September 3, 1998. MAH