Elaine Svenonius, Professor Emerita,UCLA to provide keynote at E xtreme Conference

["Elledge, Marion" <melledge@printing.org>]

One of the key themes at the Extreme Markup Languages Conference 2001
(www.extrememarkup.com) is the continuing attempt to provide better access
to and control of large heterogeneous bodies of information, either
throughout an enterprise or a centerless network like the World Wide Web.
Presentations about RDF, Topic Maps, and the Semantic Web all, in one way or
another, deal with attempts to organize, maintain, improve, work with, and
disseminate information.

Many computer scientists, hypertext theorists, and software engineers fail
to recognize that the problems of organizing information and making it
accessible did not develop for the first time in the world in the early
1960s.  There is a long history of work in the area, the core ideas of which
are not only still relevant today, but have become even more relevant as
computers
make it possible to exploit them more fully than paper systems could.

Elaine Svenonious, Professor Emerita,Department of Information Studies,
UCLA, has done major research in the areas of cataloging and classification,
with particular emphasis on the design and evaluation of cataloging systems
in an automated environment. In her recent book THE INTELLECTUAL FOUNDATION
OF INFORMATION ORGANIZATION,  MIT Press, Cambridge, 2000 Dr. Svenonious
directly addresses how people involved in the design and development of
electronic information systems can use the knowledge of information
classification.  

In her keynote address at Extreme Dr. Svenonious will review what is meant
by "intellectual foundation" and then focus on a particular component of it:
the epistemological and semantic presuppositions underlying knowledge
representations: semantic structures for organizing information by subject,
such as classifications, subject heading systems and topic maps. Twentieth
century philosophers have addressed the problem of knowledge through
language, in particular, by examining the meaning of meaning. She will look
at three different approaches to the meaning of meaning, their implications
for the design of knowledge representations, and their impact on retrieval
effectiveness and compatibility. Ms. Svenonious will address attendees at
2:00 pm, Wednesday, August 15, 2001.

The Extreme Markup Languages Conference takes place August 12-17 at the
Sheraton Hotel in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. For information on the Extreme
Markup Languages Conference,please visit the event web site:
http://www.extrememarkup.com



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Marion Elledge 
Vice President
703-837-1093
melledge@idealliance.org

Check out our upcoming events:
Extreme Markup Languages -- PROGRAM NOW AVAILABLE!
12-17 August 2001
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
http://www.extrememarkup.com

XML Conference and Exposition 2001
December 9-14, 2001
Orlando, Florida
http://www.xmlconference.org