Spire, conceptual, "landscape," retrieval

[Ernest Perez]

<http://www.smaby.com/regpages/index.html>

FYI, Web4Lib subscribers might be interested in taking a look at the
ThemeMedia web site, featuring their Spire retrieval software product.
This is a PR release summary, with links to their home page.

I noticed mention of SPIRE in a sidebar in current (July 7, 1997)
InfoWorld, p. 62. It's software which analyzes text not otherwise
classified by humans, which creates conceptual maps of the
topics/subject matter, to assist in retrieval. (Don't know exactly how
one gets to Document # 1, though).

"...developed for federal government spies...but has been licensed to
ThemeMedia for business use. After creating links between related
documents in a database, Spire visualizes the data as landscapes, called
Themescapes, or galaxy shapes. For example, a mountain in a Themscape
reflects a large volume of related data files, and the close proximity
of two mountains means that their documents have similar themes."

Sounds like some visualization advances on top of some of  tried&true
methods tested out by software like SMART, Personal Librarian, & the
"vector analysis" approach to relevance-ranking.  We've also seen a good
amount of messages refering to the visualization approach, in postings
here on Web4Lib.

Great, hope ThemeMedia is thinking about a Web-interface product
version!

Cheers,
-ernest

Ernest Perez//Oregon State Library//perez at opac.state.or.us//503-378-4243

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Where is the knowledge that is lost in information?  Where is the wisdom
that is lost in knowledge?       -- T.S. Eliot