Curriculum Vitae
| 21.02.1944 |
Born in Liebenthal (Silesia) |
| 1965 - 1971 |
Study of Germanistics, History, Social Sciences, Computational Linguistics and General Linguistics at the Universities of Würzburg and Regensburg |
| 1971 - 1981 |
Academic employee for Non-numerical Data Processing at Regensburg University. Electronic data processing lecturer for the Department. 1975 : Doctorate in Linguistics |
| 1976-1980 |
Founding member of the LDV - Fittings (Society for the Advancement of Scientific Linguistic Data Processing.) |
| 1978 - 1979 |
Postdoctorate IBM-Fellow IBM Scientific Center Heidelberg |
| 1979 - 1980 |
Member of the governing body of the LDV-Fittings: deputy chairman |
| 1981 - 1995 |
Professor for Information Science at the University of Regensburg |
| 1983 - 1985 |
Chairman of GLDV (Society for Linguistics Data Processing) |
| Since 1985 |
Editor (together with P. Hellwig) of the publication "Language and Computer" (Sprache und Computer; Olms); in 1986 : guest scientist in the expert system group of the IBM Scientific Center in Heidelberg |
| Since 1986 |
Activities as a consultant of "Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung" (Vienna, Austria) |
| Since 1987 |
Member of the editorial board of the journal "Computers and the Humanities (Chum). Paradigm Press, Florida |
| Since 1992 |
Head of the management consulting company SETT (Software-Ergonomics and Technology Transfer). Since 1993 : Member of the Editorial Board "Journal of Document and Text Management.Taylor Graham Publishing. London. |
| 1993 - 1995 |
Head of the faculty "Language and Literature" at the University of Regensburg |
| Since 1994 |
Chairman of the HI (German Academic Association for Information Science), since 1995 : Full Professor of Computer Science at the University of Koblenz-Landau; Scientific Director of the Social Science Information Center (IZ) in Bonn. |
| Since May 1997 |
Chairman of the GESIS (German Social Science Infrastructure Services) |
Innovative current research information systems in the information society.
Keynote - Plenary Session
This paper discusses the information science and information technology background of innovative CRIS, which can be outlined by four lines of development:
- In information science current research data are today treated like text data and therefore accessed by descriptors. However, they are rather a mixed form consisting of factual as well as textual information. Furthermore, current research data do not stand just for themselves. Users looking for text documents concerning a special topic might want to retrieve all the data available in different databases. They might be looking for time series, survey results, current research data or a list of experts. Therefore, future innovative research information systems should be embedded in the context of an extensive texts-facts-integration.
- As for all textual data, the question arises which kind of content analysis should be used. The days of sole intellectual indexing based on a given thesaurus are certainly over. Large scale evaluations showed that the quality of automatic probabilistic indexing and retrieval compares to traditional models in terms of recall and precision (e.g. TREC-Conferences). However, combined forms which are heuristically adapted to the domain are the most promising in future (e.g. integration of intellectual indexing combined with automatic probabilistic indexing). For CRIS, also the problem of multi-lingual retrieval needs to be considered. Queries in one language should also result in documents in other languages.
- Current CRIS usually still offer only simple form-based interfaces, even when they are available for modern graphical operating systems. However, new techniques like visualization can already greatly improve and facilitate user access. Many WWW applications and graphical user interfaces explore such methods and offer much more than standard controls such as buttons, icons or scroll bars. Basically, there are no practical limits for innovative and expressive designs and layouts, at least for experimental systems. Software engineers are currently testing these methods and will shortly transfer them to the world of everyday user interfaces. As a result, the standards of software-ergonomic design will change dramatically. The present state of the art will prove to be a mere period of transition. The question is not whether user interfaces will undergo a fundamental shift, but rather towards which direction.
- Worldwide searches for current research will need to consider many different data sources. Regardless of efforts to regulate and standardize the indexing methods, CRIS will face documents which were made accessible through various different methods of content analysis (e.g. detailed thesaurus for special purpose collections). The quality of these pools, their content analysis methods and their relevance will differ immensely. Data consistency will loose its primary importance in the global context. Retrieval methods of the future need to cope with this reality.
The information society is now in a period of fundamental change. Innovative CRIS of the future will differ greatly from today's software in many aspects. Today's development needs to take that direction.
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