Toward Human Computer Information Retrieval (HCIR) by Gary Marchionini October 17, 2005

The Thomson ISI Annual Samuel Lazerow Memorial Lecture
Time: 3:45 PM - 5:45 PM
Location: Mary Gates Hall, room 389 (UW Seattle)

"Toward Human Computer Information Retrieval (HCIR)"
by Gary Marchionini

Classical information retrieval had yielded novel techniques for applying computers to retrieval problems, including WWW search engines.
The classical model of retrieval is one of matching queries to documents and ranking these matches. It is apparent, however, that a new model of retrieval is needed as people access large-scale digital libraries of multimedia content and vast collections of unstructured
data in the WWW. What is needed are ways to bring human intelligence and attention more actively into the search process. To this end, researchers are beginning to combine the lessons from designing highly interactive user interfaces with the lessons from human information behavior to create new kinds of search systems that depend on continuous human control of the search process. I call this hybrid approach to the challenges of information seeking, human computer interaction (HCIR).

HCIR aims to empower people to explore large-scale information bases but demands that people also take responsibility for this control by expending cognitive and physical energy. This talk will discuss the underlying theoretical model for HCIR and illustrate some early designs that aim to support such interactions.

Gary Marchionini is Cary C. Boshamer Professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina (http://www.unc.edu) where he teaches courses in human-information interaction, interface design and testing, and digital libraries and heads the Interaction Design Laboratory. He has published over 100 articles, chapters and reports in a variety of books and journals and currently is the PI for a collaborative project funded by the National Science Foundation, Integration of Data and Interfaces to Enhance Human Understanding of Government Statistics: Toward the National Statistical Knowledge Network (http://ils.unc.edu/govstat). He leads the development of a digital video repository, The Open Video Project (http://www.open-video.org) and was PI for a NSF-funded project to develop and test interfaces for video retrieval and browsing (Agile Views for video browsing: Advanced surrogates, control mechanisms, and usability) and a new NSF-Library of Congress project to preserve digital video. He also leads a project "Annotating Structured Documents" supported by Microsoft. Professor Marchionini is Editor-in-Chief for the ACM Transaction on Information Systems (http://www.acm.org/tois) and serves on the editorial boards of a dozen journals. He served as program co-chair for ACM SIGIR 05, conference chair for ACM Digital Library 96, program chair for ACM/IEEE JCDL 02, and will be conference chair for ACM/IEEE JCDL 06.

Information on the Thomson ISI Samuel Lazerow Lecture Series:
The distinguished Samuel Lazerow Lecture, an annual event, is sponsored by Thomson ISI's Corporate Awards Program (http://www.isinet.com/).
The Lecture Series was established by ISI in 1983, to honor the memory of Samuel Lazerow, who was an outstanding librarian, administrator, and
pioneer in library automation.

Sponsored by the Information School

Co-sponsored by the ASIS&T UW Student Chapter
(http://students.washington.edu/asis/)