This may be of interest to list members!

Margaret E Graham


-----Original Message-----
From: Bonnie MacKay [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 5:49 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Publicizing the 2003 SIGIR Conference



Hello,

   We are currently publicizing the up coming 2003 SIGIR Conference in
Toronto next summer. We would appreciate if you could post the two
attached announcements on the conference call for papers, and the
mentoring program to your members or let us know how to do so.

Thank you for your assistance,

Bonnie MacKay
[log in to unmask]




         26th ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL ACM SIGIR CONFERENCE
        RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

                       www.sigir2003.org

                   July 28 to August 1, 2003
                         Toronto, Canada

                ACM SIGIR 2003: Mentoring Program
                       Deadline Oct. 31


Authors who have not previously had a full length paper accepted for an
ACM SIGIR (Special Interest Group in Information Retrieval) Conference,
and who are unsure about how to best prepare a paper for the SIGIR
audience, are invited to participate in the conference Mentoring
Program.  The goal of this program is to broaden participation in the
2003 SIGIR Conference, which will take place in Toronto July 28 to
August 1, 2003. (http://www.sigir2003.org/).

Authors participating in the mentoring program will be paired with an
experienced SIGIR author well in advance of the submission date.  The
mentors will assist authors with their submissions to the conference by
reviewing a draft and providing feedback.

Authors wishing to participate in the mentoring program should prepare
a draft paper or extended abstract by October 31, 2002. For further
information on participating in the mentoring program, please contact
the Mentoring Chair, Edie Rasmussen ([log in to unmask]).

The Call for papers and information on the Mentoring Program is
available at http://www.sigir2003.org/cfp.html






         26th ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL ACM SIGIR CONFERENCE
        RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

                       www.sigir2003.org

                   July 28 to August 1, 2003
                         Toronto, Canada

                         Call for Papers

SIGIR is the major international forum for the presentation of new 
research results and the demonstration of new systems and techniques 
in the broad field of information retrieval(IR). The Conference and 
Program Chairs invite all those working in areas related to IR to 
submit original research contributions, posters, and proposals for 
tutorials, workshops,and demonstrations of systems.

                 Topic Areas of Interest include 
               but are not limited to the following:  

* Machine Learning for IR, Text Data Mining, Clustering, Text 
  Categorization 
* Cross-language Retrieval, Multilingual Retrieval, Machine Translation
  for IR 
* Topic Detection and Tracking, Content-Based Filtering, Collaborative
  Filtering, Agents 
* Web IR, Distributed IR, Digital Libraries, Search Strategies, 
  Citation and Link Analysis
* Text Representation and Indexing, XML and Metadata
* Video and Image Access, Audio and Speech Retrieval, Music Retrieval 
* Performance, Compression, Scalability, Architectures, Mobile 
  Applications
* Interfaces, Visualization, Interactive IR, User Models, User Studies 
* Natural Language Processing for IR, Summarization, Question Answering 
* Information Extraction, Lexical Acquisition
* Evaluation, Building Test Collections, Experimental Design and 
  Metrics 
* Formal Models, Language Models, Fusion/Combination 
* Specialized Applications of IR, including Genomic IR, IR in Software 
  Engineering and IR for Chemical Structures

                        Important Dates

        October 31, 2002  -  deadline for mentoring program
        January 31, 2003  -  submission deadline for research papers
        February 28, 2003 -  submission deadline for tutorial, 
                             workshops, posters, and demonstrations
        April 11, 2003    -  notification of acceptance for all 
                             submissions
        May 9, 2003       -  camera-ready copy due

                       Submission Guidelines

Authors are invited to submit research papers, posters, and proposals 
for tutorials, workshop, and demonstrations.  Research papers are not 
to exceed 5000 words, must contain  original, previously unpublished 
work, and are not to be under review by other conferences or journals. 
Posters and demonstrations offer researchers an opportunity to present 
late-breaking results, significant work in progress, or original 
research that is best communicated in an interactive or graphical 
format.  For requirements and submission details, please see the 
conference website, www.sigir2003.org.

                        Mentoring Program

As part of our efforts to broaden participation, SIGIR 2003 will 
feature a mentoring program to assist authors with their submissions 
to the conference.  Authors who have not previously had a full length 
paper accepted to SIGIR, and/or who are unsure about how to best 
prepare a paper for the SIGIR audience, will be able to request 
feedback on their work from an experienced SIGIR author in advance of 
the submission deadline.  Authors wishing to participate in the 
mentoring program should prepare a draft paper or extended abstract by 
October 31, 2002. For further details on the mentoring program, please 
see the conference website.

                        About Toronto

The largest city in Canada, Toronto is the most ethnically diverse and 
multi-cultural city in the world.  The ethnic diversity of Toronto is 
reflected in its wide variety of fine restaurants, more than 5000, with
over 80 varieties of international cuisine.  The city is easily 
accessible.  Toronto's Pearson International Airport is the third 
busiest gateway to North America, with daily direct flights from major
Asian and European cities.  60% of North America's population is within
500 air-miles of Toronto.  Toronto is home to professional baseball, 
basketball, football and hockey teams, as well as numerous museums and
art galleries.  The Niagara region, a short drive from Toronto, 
features vineyards and wineries, the Shaw drama festival, and Niagara 
Falls.

                      Conference Committee

Charles Clark, University of Waterloo, Canada
Gordon Cormack, University of Waterloo, Canada
Jamie Callan, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Alan Smeaton, Dublin City University, Ireland
David Hawking, Australian National University, Australia
David J. Harper, The Robert Gordon University, UK
Efthimis Efthimiadis, University of Washington, USA
Jian-Yun Nie, University of Montreal, Canada
Michael Nelson, University of Western Ontario, Canada
Carolyn Watters, Dalhousie University, Canada
Elaine Toms, University of Toronto, Canada
Wendy Rush, University of Waterloo, Canada