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2021 IDEA Institute on Artificial Intelligence – Call for Applications

New Application Deadline: March 1, 2021

Please spread the word to colleagues, librarians, and other information practitioners, who may be interested.​  Applications will be accepted until March 1, 2021. Fellows accepted to the Institute will be notified in mid-March 2021.​

We invite applications for the inaugural IDEA (Innovation, Disruption, Enquiry, Access) Institute on Artificial Intelligence (AI). We are seeking library and information professionals holding full-time positions in US institutions interested in enhancing and applying their knowledge of AI in their workplace, to participate in the Institute.

Funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the IDEA Institute offers one-week of intensive learning and practical experience in AI applications in library and information environments. The first Institute will be held at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville on July 10-16, 2021 (dates are tentative, pending COVID-19 circumstances).

We are seeking 15 IMLS-funded Fellows. IMLS-funded Fellows will have their Institute expenses covered (housing, meals and program fee) and will only be responsible for the cost of their transportation.

Our priority is to recruit and create a cohort of Fellows who will represent diverse socio-demographic backgrounds, types of positions, types of libraries, and capacities of implementing AI in their workplace. We are recruiting applicants who:

  1. are enthusiastic to learning, evaluating, and applying AI in library and information environments;
  2. are committed to learning web coding and statistics fundamentals during the Pre-Institute Onboarding Program;
  3. hold full-time positions in US institutions as library and information professionals;
  4. are committed to participating in the online Pre-Institute Onboarding Program (10-15 hours contact time over three months) and post-Institute activities (e.g., project presentations and implementation);
  5. can attend the 2021 IDEA Institute in Knoxville, Tennessee, for one week; and
  6. have institutional support to apply learning gained from the Institute to AI projects in their own workplace.

IDEA Fellows will be chosen through a competitive selection process.

The first Virtual Information Session was held on January 12, 2021. The recording can be accessed at: https://mediaspace.illinois.edu/media/t/1_g9syh01v/160939361.

To Apply, visit the Application Form directly or the Institute's website http://idea.infosci.utk.edu and select APPLY.

For more information, see http://idea.infosci.utk.edu or direct questions to Dania Bilal at dania@utk.edu

WEPIR 2021: Third Workshop on the Evaluation of  Personalisation in Information Retrieval at ACM CHIIR 2021

19 March 2021

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Hideo Joho, Associate Professor, University of Tsukuba, Japan

Evangelos Kanoulas, Professor, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

The Workshop on the Evaluation of  Personalisation in Information Retrieval (WEPIR 2021) is the third in a series of workshops focusing on the examination of evaluation strategies and methods for the exploitation of personalisation in information retrieval systems. series held previously at CHIIR 2018 and CHIIR 2019. WEPIR 2021 will build on the activities and outcomes of the previous editions of WEPIR held at CHIIR 2018 and CHIIR 2019. The goal of WEPIR 2021 is to move beyond identification and discussion of general topics relating to personalization in information retrieval and its evaluation, to the development of practical methods to tackle evaluation of personalization for several use cases. The specific use cases will be determined by the Workshop participants, but potential cases could be: Medical Search; Museum Visitors; General Web Search.

Workshop format

WEPIR 2021 will feature two Keynote talks, presentations of contributed papers, development by participants of the use cases for investigation and then exploration of practical evaluation strategies. Development of evaluation methods for individual use cases will take place in breakout groups of participants. The breakout groups will meet (virtually) throughout the day, according to their needs and constraints. Each group will seek to identify specific relevant factors relating to their use case in terms of user activities, data to be collected, ethical issues, evaluation metrics. Groups will share their findings in a final plenary session.  The overall goal of the workshop is to work towards developing a general set of principles and guidelines for addressing the evaluation of specific instances of the use of personalization in information retrieval tasks.

Paper submissions

While the focus of WEPIR 2021 is primarily on the examination of practical use cases, we also seek short paper contributions. Papers should be 2 to 4 pages in length in the standard ACM conference format. Contributions can be in the form of reports which describe evaluation plans, issues or problems of personalized systems, or position papers on designing or conducting evaluation of personalization of information retrieval in specific contexts.

Submissions should be in ACM Standard SIGCONF format. LaTeX and Word templates are available at https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template.

Papers should be submitted in pdf format through the EasyChair system (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wepir2021)
no later than midnight Sunday 28 February, 2021 (AoE). Submissions will be reviewed by members of the workshop program committee. Accepted papers will be included in the extended CHIIR 2021 Proceedings and will be available via the ACM Digital Library.

Important dates and times

  • Midnight Sunday 28th of February (AoE): Deadline for paper submission
  • Midnight Sunday 7th of March (AoE): Notification to authors
  • Midnight Tuesday 16th of March (AoE): Final version of papers due
  • 08:00 - 23:00 UTC, 19th of March: WEPIR 2021 at CHIIR 2021

 Participation and registration

Participation in WEPIR 2021 requires only a sincere interest in personalization of information retrieval, methods for the evaluation of information retrieval, and willingness to work with colleagues with similar concerns, to develop ideas to enhance the state-of-the-art in evaluation of personalization of information retrieval.

If this describes you, please register for WEPIR 2021 through the CHIIR 2021 website: https://acm-chiir.github.io/chiir2021/.

You will find further information about WEPIR 2021 at its website:
https://wepir2021.disco.unimib.it/

In addition to registering at the CHIIR 2021, we would appreciate those who intend to participate in WEPIR 2021 indicating your intention to join us on the WEPIR 2021 website.

Return to Inside ASIS&T, February 2021