Project Number 06 – 1993

Scholar

Project Number 06 – 1993

Abstract

SCHOLAR is a news service focusing on all aspects of natural language processing, such as foreign language instruction, text analysis, text databases, and machine translation, as well as the software and hardware related to those activities. This focus is justified by the belief that the major utilization of computers in the future will be for communication between users and with online databases. The modes of language instruction, the ability to query databases in any language and to receive responses in any language, the ability to search texts for all kinds of information — all these relate directly to the cluster of academic and applied research activities known collectively as natural language processing.

To serve its subscribership, presently about 1800 in 45 countries, SCHOLAR regularly posts contents pages of books in its field along with extracts from the prefaces or introductions; contents pages from journals along with abstracts of relevant articles; notes on text databases, hardware, software and courseware, reports on projects, news of network conferences and occasional publications, and a calendar of specifically relevant conferences.

Of special importance is the variety of subscribers, ranging from university-based academics to software developers and print publishers. SCHOLAR is thereby contributing to forging links among the constituents of the new environment that is being created by the widening applications of computers.

SCHOLAR was conceived from the first as a dynamic database: each discrete item is tagged with a succinct identifier that indicates its approximate time of entry into the database, its general character (e.g., book, software), and its links with related items (e.g., update of a software item, review of a book already entered). Subscribers periodically receive a list of the latest additions, from which they can select as many items as they wish to download at any time. (They can, in effect, as they would with print sources, copy out only those sections they wish to file.)

As Gopher, WAIS and more sophisticated search tools become available, this structure will encourage profitable searches by increasing numbers of users. Simultaneously, as a current-awareness service, SCHOLAR emphasizes the growing interdependence of libraries, databases and networks. Because it fully utilizes the communication links and distribution software of the Internet, SCHOLAR enjoys an economy of operation that permits its management by a single full-time operator with occasional contributions from two or three others. This is a pattern of operation that can be widely copied or adapted for similar operations in other fields.