The 2009 Tony Kent Strix Award winner is
Carol Ann Peters

The Tony Kent Strix Award, given by the UK eInformation Group of CILIP:
the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, has
been awarded to Carol Ann Peters of Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologia
dell'Informazione "A. Faedo". 

Carol was nominated for her work on the Cross Language Evaluation Forum
(CLEF), the world's leading forum for evaluating cross language
searching systems, which Carol initiated and has run for ten years. This
annual evaluation exercise has attracted a multi-disciplinary network of
researchers to collaborate on shared tasks, to contribute to the CLEF
testing resources, and to meet annually to present and discuss results.
In its opening year, CLEF counted 20 participants; thanks to Carol's
hard work, CLEF has expanded year on year to become a major
international event in information retrieval related research: in 2009
it attracted over 130 registrations from individual researchers and
leading research groups from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the
Americas. 

The nomination noted that none of this would have happened had it not
been for Carol Peter's initiation and continued drive to run and
maintain CLEF. Carol's tireless work with CLEF has driven the
information retrieval community to consider search in more than just the
English language that previously dominated information retrieval
research; thus she has made an enormous contribution to the awareness
and understanding of information retrieval. 

Initially, like most of the search evaluation exercises, CLEF adopted a
'pooled test collection' approach to evaluation that was adopted by
other well known evaluation exercises like TREC. However, again, thanks
to Carol's leadership, CLEF has explored and indeed continues to
investigate extensions to this basic model and the development of new
metrics for new tasks so as to provide a multifaceted approach to
performance evaluation. It is difficult to encapsulate here the huge
impact of CLEF. CLEF's academic output is strong, as evidence by the
nearly 3,500 citations to the hundreds of papers presented at CLEF
workshops. Multilingual search is garnering more interest in
professional circles, where previously nationally-based work tasks have
been extended to have international scope. As part of a long term plan
to consider future directions, Carol has secured funding through a large
number of consecutive EC projects, including the latest 'TrebleCLEF'
project, which kept CLEF going and provided funding to hold a series of
workshops where CLEF partners engaged with researchers and key
industrial contacts in order to understand better how CLEF's outputs
were impacting on a series of communities and areas. Carol Peter's
contributions to information retrieval have been many and wide ranging,
covering all of the areas for which the Tony Kent Strix Award is
offered.

The Tony Kent Strix Award is presented each year in memory of Dr Tony
Kent, a past Fellow of the Institute of Information Scientists, who died
in 1997. Tony Kent made a major contribution to the development of
information science both in the UK and internationally, particularly in
the field of chemistry. The award is offered in recognition of
individuals or groups for an outstanding contribution, practical
innovation or achievement in the field of information retrieval. A call
for nominations for the 2010 awards will be issued later in the year.

Press Contact	Chris Armstrong, Awards, UKeiG 
for Awards:	e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Notes to Editors
UKeiG - the UK eInformation Group - is a professional body for users and
developers of electronic information resources. Through its activities,
UKeiG actively encourages communication and the exchange of knowledge
among users of electronic information resources, providing expert
information, guidance and news, raising awareness of existing and new
technologies, encouraging innovation and supporting continuing
professional development. The Group, which has the CILIP Seal of
Recognition recognising high standards in the content and relevance of
training courses, offers an annual training programme that provides
affordable and practical workshops and seminars. These are open to both
members and non-members with discounted rates for members. Members of
the Group also receive exclusive access to the electronic journal,
eLucidate. UKeiG is a Special Interest Group of CILIP: the Chartered
Institute of Library and Information Professionals. Registered Charity
no. 313014


Megan Roberts
UKeiG PR & Marketing
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/meganjayneroberts
Skype: meganjayneroberts
Twitter: MeganJRoberts
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in the content and relevance of training courses. See
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UKeiG is a Special Interest Group of CILIP: the Chartered Institute of
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