From Information to Knowledge Using
Astronomical Databases
A Workshop, Strasbourg Observatory Wednesday 23 to Friday 25 June 1999
Workshop Times:
14:00, Wednesday 23 June, to 12:30, Friday
25 June
See below for Web links for presentations.
About the Workshop
Quite a range of innovative activities are being pursured
in relation to knowledge
extraction from stored astronomical data, so it is a particularly good time
to draw provisional conclusions, and to chart our course for the future.
Astronomical data stores offer a particularly good basis for knowledge
discovery. "It is the destiny of astronomy to become the first all-digital
science", as Larry Smarr is quoted as saying in the frontspiece of
Intelligent Information Retrieval: The Case of Astronomy and Related
Space Sciences, A. Heck and F. Murtagh, Eds., Kluwer, 1993. The depth
and expanse of online data in astronomy has been surveyed in two volumes
by D. Egret and M.A. Albrecht, the more recent of which is
Information and
On-Line Data in Astronomy, Kluwer 1995.
The European Science Foundation
network on Converging Computing Methodologies in
Astronomy ended at the beginning of 1998, and this workshop can be seen
as a late progeny. With new initiatives in the air, and the start of
the Fifth Framework, it is a good time to take stock of our achievements,
and to judiciously plan for the near future.
Themes
Knowledge Discovery from Astronomical Databases
Information Retrieval
Resource Discovery
Information Agents
Information Summarization
Relevance
Distributed Computing Technologies
Object-Oriented Databases
Visualization
Round Table on Large Archives/Databases
The Round Table was led by Marc Wenger, Strasbourg Observatory (and
virtually by Rudi Albrecht, Space Telescope - European
Coordinating Facility) and aimed at
providing recommendations to all providers of large databases and archives
in astronomy: how can the providers of information and data
in astronomy best help serendipitous discovery of information and knowledge?
Venue and Proceedings
This topical workshop took place at Strasbourg Observatory.
Paper from the workshop will be refereed for a special issue of
Computer Physics
Communciations.
Web Links for Presentations
Patrice Bonhomme, LORIA,
Nancy, "Retrieval of structured and normalized
XML documents".
Josiane Mothe,
IRIT, Toulouse, Taoufiq Dkaki and Daniel Egret,
"Information discovery from semi-structured sources - application
to astronomical literature".
Alberto Accomazzi and
Guenther Eichhorn, Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge,
"ADS - user typologies".
Alberto Accomazzi, Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge,
"Information and data fusion: the ADS perspective".
Damien Guillaume, ULP/QUB/NCSA,
"AML - Astronomical Markup Language - software support tools and
applications".
Patricio Ortiz, Strasbourg Observatory,
"The hierarchical organisation of information in astronomy".
François Ochsenbein and Daniel Egret, Strasbourg Observatory,
"Data mining in astronomy".
Françoise Genova, CDS, Strasbourg Observatory,
"The CDS information hub in the distributed astronomical information
system".
Fionn Murtagh, Queen's University of Belfast, and Strasbourg Observatory,
"Visualization in information retrieval and knowledge discovery:
achievements and new issues arising".
Marc Wenger,
Round-Table on Large Archives and Databases.
Organizing Committee
Daniel Egret
Soizick Lesteven
Fionn Murtagh
Proceedings
A Proceedings Volume is planned, as a special issue of
Computer Physics Communications. Papers to be
considered for this volume must be available at the time of the Workshop.
All papers will be refereed. The volume will be edited by Fionn Murtagh
and Daniel Egret.
