Discussion of automated information services focuses on information classification and collaborative agents, i.e. intelligent computer programs. Highlights include multi-agent systems; distributed artificial intelligence; thesauri; document representation and classification; agent modeling; acquaintances, or remote agents discovered through…

Presents a domain-specific thesaurus for linguistic support of an information broker that employs an adaptive semantic-distance function based on pathfinder networks and algorithms for automated population by nominal compound interpretation and relational inheritance. Mathematical structure of thesauri and issues for further research are also…

Presents a new stemming algorithm based on tree structures that improves relevance in information retrieval by conflation, grouping similar words into a single term. Highlights include the normalization process used in automatic thesaurus construction; theoretical aspects; the normalization algorithm; and experiments with English and Spanish. (LRW)

Describes a two-phase stemming algorithm which consists of word root identification and automatic selection of word variants starting with same word root from inverted file. Use of algorithm in book catalog file is discussed. Ten references and example of subject search are appended. (EJS)

Describes the design of an automatic indexing system that is based on statistical techniques and expert system technology. Highlights include system architecture; the derivation of topic indicators, including word frequency; experimental results using documents from ERIC; the effects of stemming; and the identification of characteristic…

Presents an algorithm that automatically extracts words and phrases containing geographic place names or characteristics from a text document and uses them as input to database functions that use spatial reasoning to approximate statistically the geoposition referenced in the text. Preliminary results and future work are discussed. (28 references)…