SPIRE retrieval engine

[Matthew Dovey]

The "Annual Review of OCLC Research 1996" has an article which surveys
this kind of work and mentions SPIRE amongst others.

The online version of this is at 

http://www.oclc.org/oclc/research/publications/review96/visual.htm

Matthew J. Dovey
Client-Server Development
Libraries Automation Service
Oxford University
65 St Giles
Oxford OX1 3LU
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 1865 278272
Fax: +44 1865 278175
E-Mail: Matthew.Dovey at las.ox.ac.uk



> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Ernest Perez [SMTP:perez at opac.osl.state.or.us]
> Sent:	Friday, October 03, 1997 10:15 PM
> To:	Multiple recipients of list
> Subject:	SPIRE retrieval engine
> 
> I'd not heard of this product before running across it in a small
> mention in an article about intelligence community applications. 
> Article was in InfoWorld, as I recall.
> 
> I dropped an e-mail to theem, and got the following reply. Thought it
> might be of interest to others.  Anyone on the list have experience
> with
> this, and wish to comment?
> 
> -ernest
> Ernest Perez//Oregon State
> Library//perez at opac.osl.state.or.us//503-378-4243
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> Paradise is exactly like where you are right now, only much, much
> better.
> 
> 
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------
> 
> Ernest,
> 
> The following Word RTF doc will bring you up-to-date on ThemeMedia and
> our 
> software applications. Please contact me with any questions.
> 
>  
> Thanks,
> 
> Steve Ardire
> Sr. Director Business Development
> steve at thememedia.com
> PH: 425-602-3559
> 
> ThemeMedia Company Backgrounder and Technology Overview
> 
> ThemeMedia is developing software tools for "content mapping"  -  a
> process 
> that graphically represents thousands of unstructured documents on a
> single 
> computer screen for quick, focused navigation, retrieval, and insight.
> 
> Our work is based on technology that emanated from the Battelle
> Pacific 
> Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) under contract with the U.S.
> Department of 
> Energy. PNNL was asked to design software that could help intelligence
> and 
> national security research staffs efficiently access thousands of
> publications, 
> documents, and transcripts strewn across the world.
> 
> The result was SPIRE, the acronym for "Spatial Paradigm for
> Information 
> Retrieval and Exploration," a software system for transforming
> text-based 
> information retrieval into a visual system for navigation, retrieval,
> and 
> analysis. Over the last three years, SPIRE has been actively used by
> the
> U.S. 
> intelligence community for research and analysis involving matters of
> national 
> security. In October 1996, the founders of ThemeMedia acquired the
> exclusive 
> worldwide license to SPIRE technology and formed a company around a
> core
> group 
> of the original SPIRE team.
> 
> Desperately seeking information
> 
> Today, the information search method of choice is based on Boolean
> logic, 
> whereby a document must include one or more user-specified terms, or
> keywords, 
> to make it eligible for consideration. Existing search engines, such
> as
> those 
> offered by Yahoo, Excite, AltaVista, Lycos, and others, typically
> generate a 
> list of hundreds or thousands of documents, with only limited ability
> to
> order 
> them by relevance. Moreover, there is no common measure of relevance
> to
> help 
> information seekers determine true value. What AltaVista considers
> relevant for 
> a particular query, Lycos may relegate to a position of less
> importance
> farther 
> down the list. Users are not only at the mercy of how each company
> defines 
> relevance, they have no way of evaluating the methodology behind the
> retrieval 
> process - no way of actually seeing the relationships among the
> documents 
> listed.
> 
> The weakness of the Boolean search has to do with the user's role in
> two 
> standard retrieval measures: precision and recall. Recall measures how
> well a 
> search produces all the documents that fit the search criteria, while
> precision 
> measures how successful the search is at eliminating irrelevant
> documents from 
> that pool. If information seekers were capable of knowing exactly what
> they 
> wanted and, then, how to ask for it, there wouldn't be a problem. But,
> 
> understandably, it's extremely difficult for most of us to state our
> precise 
> information needs to a database we can't see and have never explored.
> As
> a 
> result, Boolean searches often return too much irrelevant information
> or
> not 
> enough of what we really need.
> 
> Given the sheer size and number of databases now available, the
> sweeping 
> diversity of information, and the lack of a common categorization
> scheme, it 
> seems unlikely that Boolean-based search methods can effectively
> manage
> our 
> ever increasing information retrieval needs.
> 
> Information Visualization and Relevance
> 
> As frustration with existing information retrieval methods mounts, the
> appeal 
> of visualization technologies grows. Visually-based software tools,
> like
> those 
> being developed by ThemeMedia, give users a quick way to actually see 
> everything available to them from a given information set, with topics
> and 
> documents grouped by degree of similarity and level of importance.
> 
> ThemeMedia's System for Information Discovery (SID) starts by
> capturing
> any 
> number of documents into a database. By analyzing patterns of word
> usage
> and 
> relationships between words, SID autonomously discovers salient
> themes,
> derives 
> semantic distances between them to represent degrees of similarity,
> and 
> transforms the results into vector representations arranged to reveal
> document 
> relevance.
> 
> In this way, ThemeMedia's technology eliminates the typical
> precision/recall 
> dilemma faced by information seekers - whether to retrieve all
> potentially 
> relevant documents (recall) or only those that are unquestionably
> relevant 
> (precision). By using ThemeMedia "visual content maps" to display
> information 
> users can immediately see everything available, along with the
> relationships 
> between content and the location of information. Our processes
> discriminate for 
> the user by recalling information in ample detail through
> visualization. 
> Consequently, the user is spared irrelevant information, while quickly
> and 
> precisely navigating to all relevant documents.
> 
> ThemeMedia Software Applications
> 
> ThemeMedia is in the process of transforming SPIRE, an existing
> standalone 
> application designed primarily for analysts that runs on an SGI
> workstation, 
> into a "new look" three-tiered client/server application designed for
> the 
> specialized needs of several business markets:
> 
> * Information Providers and Content Aggregators like Lexis/Nexus and
> Individual 
> Inc.
> * Publishers such as Ziff Davis and Knight-Ridder.
> * Corporate Intranets and archives.
> 
> Our new product application will consist of three modules:
> 
> * NT or UNIX server software for capturing and organizing text
> documents.
> * An editorial tool for creating and publishing customized content
> maps.
> * Java-based client software used for navigating content maps and
> linking to 
> documents.
> 
> SPIRE is available today for $5,000/seat that will be fully credited
> to
> the 
> purchase of our new client/server application that will be released in
> Q1 '98. 
> An early adopter/beta site program for our "new look content mapping
> software" 
> will begin this November. ThemeMedia will provide additional
> information
> once a 
> Confidentiality Agreement is signed.
> 
> For more information and details please contact:
> 
> Steve Ardire
> Sr. Director Business Development
> steve at thememedia.com
> PH: 425-602-3559