Building the basis for evidence-based library and information practice: a qualitative study. This project will help Australia's libraries to contribute in a more powerful way to national productivity. It will establish an empirical basis for evidence-based library and information practice that will help library and information professionals make tough decisions in an environment where there is competition for limited resources.
Methodologies for Designing and Evaluating Information Retrieval Experiments. Australian researchers have been highly successful in the area of information searching for more than two decades. This project will reinforce that position. By developing better measures of how retrieval systems such as web search engines perform, we will be able to advise the providers of such services on how to structure software so as to maximize the utility gained by their customers. Targeted access to the right ....Methodologies for Designing and Evaluating Information Retrieval Experiments. Australian researchers have been highly successful in the area of information searching for more than two decades. This project will reinforce that position. By developing better measures of how retrieval systems such as web search engines perform, we will be able to advise the providers of such services on how to structure software so as to maximize the utility gained by their customers. Targeted access to the right information is a goal of all organizations, regardless of their type, and improved methodologies for conducting information retrieval experiments will have widespread and tangible benefits. The techniques developed will also be applicable in fields such as document categorization, text summarization, and machine learning.Read moreRead less
Static and Dynamic Query Pruning Techniques for Complex Text Retrieval Systems. Targeted access to the right information is a goal of all organizations, regardless of their type, and improved methodologies for implementing information retrieval systems have widespread and tangible benefits. Australian researchers have been highly successful in this area of information searching for more than two decades, and this project will reinforce that position. By developing techniques for providing fast ....Static and Dynamic Query Pruning Techniques for Complex Text Retrieval Systems. Targeted access to the right information is a goal of all organizations, regardless of their type, and improved methodologies for implementing information retrieval systems have widespread and tangible benefits. Australian researchers have been highly successful in this area of information searching for more than two decades, and this project will reinforce that position. By developing techniques for providing faster search, even in the presence of complex query variants and distributed implementations, we will be able to advise the suppliers of such services on how to provide a maximally useful product.
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The Quantum Mechanics of Semantic Space. Quantum mechanics (QM) is a well known and successful theory from physics which has recently attracted quite some public interest. Quantum Mechanics is emerging out of physics and permeating into other areas, for example, information retrieval, human language and cognition. This offers tantalizing possibilities and bizarre implications, some of which, if realized, can lead to genuine breakthroughs in producing information technology to enhance human aware ....The Quantum Mechanics of Semantic Space. Quantum mechanics (QM) is a well known and successful theory from physics which has recently attracted quite some public interest. Quantum Mechanics is emerging out of physics and permeating into other areas, for example, information retrieval, human language and cognition. This offers tantalizing possibilities and bizarre implications, some of which, if realized, can lead to genuine breakthroughs in producing information technology to enhance human awareness in increasingly complex information environments. Through this project, Australia has the possibility to be at the forefront and have a hand in determining such developments.Read moreRead less
AI-driven Effective Query Formulation for Better Systematic Reviews. This project aims to develop novel AI-based search engine methods to make the creation of systematic reviews cheaper, faster and unbiased. Systematic reviews are the cornerstone for evidence-based decisions in clinical practice and government policy making. Given the pace new research is published at, it is unsustainable to manually conduct systematic reviews in the traditional manner, taking on average 2 years and $350K and be ....AI-driven Effective Query Formulation for Better Systematic Reviews. This project aims to develop novel AI-based search engine methods to make the creation of systematic reviews cheaper, faster and unbiased. Systematic reviews are the cornerstone for evidence-based decisions in clinical practice and government policy making. Given the pace new research is published at, it is unsustainable to manually conduct systematic reviews in the traditional manner, taking on average 2 years and $350K and becoming already outdated when published. The outcomes of this project will lead to systematic reviews of higher quality, while reducing their financial and temporal costs, providing significant benefits to organisations performing reviews and their funders, and to people impacted by decisions made from the reviews.Read moreRead less
Improving Interactions for Digital Browsing of Large Collections. Browsing for information is an established and fundamental part of how people find the knowledge that they need. However, our current understanding of how browsing succeeds or fails is poor. This is because we have limited empirical data, and until recently, the available technologies to create detailed data on what people actually look at and when were very limited. As a result, digital browsing methods have been almost universal ....Improving Interactions for Digital Browsing of Large Collections. Browsing for information is an established and fundamental part of how people find the knowledge that they need. However, our current understanding of how browsing succeeds or fails is poor. This is because we have limited empirical data, and until recently, the available technologies to create detailed data on what people actually look at and when were very limited. As a result, digital browsing methods have been almost universally inferior to real-world counterparts. Given the lack of fundamental theories to inform design, this is unsurprising. After creating a detailed and systematic account of user behaviour in browsing, we will create novel designs that will accelerate the discovery of information, particularly for innovative work.Read moreRead less
Finding answers for complex questions. This project aims to develop a new search paradigm for on-line search engines that presents users with answers to complex questions, rather than forcing them to find answers themselves from lists of retrieved documents. The project will develop a taxonomy of complex answer search tasks, devise novel techniques to increase the effectiveness of complex answer retrieval through interaction and, create a new evaluation framework for precise measurement of syste ....Finding answers for complex questions. This project aims to develop a new search paradigm for on-line search engines that presents users with answers to complex questions, rather than forcing them to find answers themselves from lists of retrieved documents. The project will develop a taxonomy of complex answer search tasks, devise novel techniques to increase the effectiveness of complex answer retrieval through interaction and, create a new evaluation framework for precise measurement of system effectiveness. This project should provide significant advances that will benefit all users of search engines.Read moreRead less
Suharto's enablers? Social complicity in the Indonesian killings of 1965-66. This projects aims to revolutionise understandings of civilian involvement in the most critical and bloody turning point in modern Indonesian history, the 1965-66 killings, and to transform the evidence base for Indonesian history-writing. By accessing critically endangered and never before used survivor community archives, the project will examine the complicity of civilians in the killings and how the violence shaped ....Suharto's enablers? Social complicity in the Indonesian killings of 1965-66. This projects aims to revolutionise understandings of civilian involvement in the most critical and bloody turning point in modern Indonesian history, the 1965-66 killings, and to transform the evidence base for Indonesian history-writing. By accessing critically endangered and never before used survivor community archives, the project will examine the complicity of civilians in the killings and how the violence shaped modern Indonesian national identity and moral consciousness. It will further generate a new, centralised archive of these preserved materials and compile new oral history interviews with the remaining witnesses to these pivotal events.Read moreRead less
Reformulating an Australian Cultural Infrastructure: Strategic Intersections Between the Publishing Industry, Libraries and Cultural Policy. This project will clarify the national understanding of the Australian literary cultural infrastructure by examining the intersection of the publishing industry, the national library network and cultural policy. While these elements separately and collectively generate and promote Australian literary culture and books, governments and the cultural sector ha ....Reformulating an Australian Cultural Infrastructure: Strategic Intersections Between the Publishing Industry, Libraries and Cultural Policy. This project will clarify the national understanding of the Australian literary cultural infrastructure by examining the intersection of the publishing industry, the national library network and cultural policy. While these elements separately and collectively generate and promote Australian literary culture and books, governments and the cultural sector have mostly treated these as separate, isolated units. This study will identify the connections and clarify the disconnections among these domains. It will seek to formulate an appropriate framework for describing the workings of the literary cultural infrastructure which will assist in the development of policy and professional strategy.Read moreRead less
Personalised Ontology Learning and Mining for Web Information Gathering. The project will provide a flexible framework for a sound theoretical model of personalised systems. It will significantly influence the development of personalised Web services and many leading industry organisations that attempt to deliver personalised services to their valuable customers. The proposed project will also strengthen the pre-existing international collaboration networks. It will establish Australian researc ....Personalised Ontology Learning and Mining for Web Information Gathering. The project will provide a flexible framework for a sound theoretical model of personalised systems. It will significantly influence the development of personalised Web services and many leading industry organisations that attempt to deliver personalised services to their valuable customers. The proposed project will also strengthen the pre-existing international collaboration networks. It will establish Australian researchers leading position in the related research fields and communities, and provide an established paradigm for other researchers to follow. In addition, the project will provide significant contributions to Australian National Research Priority in the areas of Smart Information Use.Read moreRead less