Editorial
The Spring issue was mainly about conferences, specifically ECIR 2020. This issue is much more about people but first I must highlight the third of the three ECIR 2020 keynotes by Joana Gonçalves de Sá which did not make it into the Spring issue. I am delighted to be able to publish a tribute by […]
The state of enterprise search in Scandinavia in 2019
IntraTeam was established in 2000 with a vision of creating and supporting a community of intranet managers in Denmark. There are 23 communities in Sweden and Denmark that meet quarterly to exchange experience and ideas. Every Spring members of these communities come together at the three-day IntraTeam Event in Copenhagen. From the very beginning IntraTeam […]
Peter Willett – reflections on the occasion of his retirement
Peter Willett retired from the Information School at The University of Sheffield at the end of 2019 after a long and hugely successful career. Peter is well known throughout the world for his contributions to information retrieval, bibliometrics and chemoinformatics. As well as being a hugely influential researcher, Peter is also held in very high […]
BCS IRSG Search Solutions 2020 goes virtual and CfP
Search Solutions is the BCS Information Retrieval Specialist Group’s annual forum focused on practitioner issues and latest innovations in the area of Search and Information Retrieval. Search Solutions 2020 will be an online event taking place on November 23, 2020. Search Solutions will consist of invited talks, but we also invite proposals for 30-minute presentations […]
Call for Online Tutorials: Search Solutions 2020
Search Solutions is the BCS Information Retrieval Specialist Group’s annual event focused on practitioner issues in the area of Search and Information Retrieval. We invite proposals which focus on any area of the practical application of search technologies to real world problems, for the tutorial day due to take place the day after Search Solutions […]
Meeting in a time of lock-down – ISKO UK’s experience
Many of us have been adapting to life in lock-down, including groups such as ISKO UK, which I have the honour of chairing. We are a small, specialist and very active group that promotes the science of knowledge organization. As part of an international network of societies, the UK chapter is particularly interested in the […]
Microsoft Research New Future of Work Conference 3-5 August 2020 – Part 1 The conference technology platform
Microsoft Research was able to set up its New Future of Work conference (August 3-5) as a virtual conference right from the start. This meant that it was probably one of the first to be designed at the outset to be virtual rather than adopting and adapting an existing one-site conference agenda. The conference was […]
Free as the BIRDS — Bridging the Gap between Information Science, Information Retrieval and Data Science
BIRDS is an interdisciplinary workshop for students, practitioners and researchers in Data Science, Information Retrieval and Information Science held at SIGIR 2020. The aim of BIRDS was to foster the cross-fertilization of Information Science (IS), Information Retrieval (IR) and Data Science (DS). The idea behind BIRDS was the observation that all disciplines operate in the […]
ECIR 2020 Keynote Joana Gonçalves de Sá
[Note from the Editor – this is the third of the three ECIR 2020 keynotes. Summaries of the keynotes given by Chirag Shah and Jamie Callum can be found in the Spring 2020 issue of Informer] Joana Gonçalves de Sá is an Associate Professor at Nova School of Business and Economics, Universidade Nova de Lisboa […]
Book Review – Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments: A Practical Guide to A/B Testing
One of the benefits of web technology is that it is relatively easy to make design changes to a web site or intranet both at the development stage and even when in production. The same is true of course of open source enterprise applications, such as e-commerce and enterprise search. In principle it seems so […]
Book Review – Systematic Searching
The first of my fourteen books was published in 1981 and was entitled ‘Profit from Information’. It was one of the first in a series of monographs published by the Institute of Information Scientists and was about how to set up and run an information broking business. Information broking companies started to spring up in […]
Taxonomy Boot Camp 2020 Awards
There’s still time to make a nomination for London’s Taxonomy Boot Camp 2020 Awards which highlight practitioners and organisations working with taxonomies today. In a year that has presented everyone with new challenges, the organisers are keen to showcase the great work being done by those in the taxonomy community, particularly examples of creativity, determination […]
The Tony Kent Strix Award 2020: a call for nominations
The UK e-information Group (UKeiG), is pleased to announce a call for nominations for the prestigious Tony Kent Strix Award 2020. Nominations should be received by 6 pm GMT on Friday 25th September 2020. The Tony Kent Strix Award was inaugurated in 1998 by the Institute of Information Scientists. It is now presented by UKeiG […]
Strix Annual Memorial Lecture 26 November 2020
The Strix Memorial Lecture will be given by Professor Ingemar Cox, Head of Media Futures Research Group at University College London and a Professor at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen. His current research interests include information retrieval and data analytics of online social media, twitter and query logs. The Lecture […]
Events Summer 2020
Note: Due to the COVID-19 crisis some events have been cancelled, postponed or will be run virtually. We have provided information on each of the events with the current status at the time of writing. Please check the URL of the event for further details.
And finally
The biography of Peter Willett in this issue started me thinking about other distinguished UK-based contributors who had made a significant contribution to information retrieval. The list below is a personal one, and if you feel that I have missed anyone please do respond.
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