Hi,

I am Giovanni Maria Sacco, an associate professor of Information
Systems at the University of Turin, Italy. My background goes from
formal languages to security, but I'm mostly interested in
information systems from the point of view of implementation,
modelling and human
factors.

I have been working on dynamic taxonomies, a multidimensional
classification scheme of which faceted classification is a special
case, since the late 80s. You can find some recent papers on my home
page at the university (www.di.unito.it/~sacco). You might want to
read the IEEE TKDE paper for an idea of dynamic taxonomies. 

At www.knowledgeprocessors.com you will find material on the Universal
Knowledge Processor (UKP), a commercial system based on dynamic
taxonomies, and three demos. One of the demos, the digital camera
shop, is in my opinion the only complete product selection system
currently available and includes faceted dynamic access and a product
comparator (patent pending) based on color coding. You might also be
interested in the La Stampa demo, which integrates dynamic taxonomies
(the classification scheme is admittedly awful) with full-text
retrieval: the text is in Italian, but you can use search terms such
as Clinton, Ford, etc. Note that the demos run smoothly and fast on a
dedicated lousy machine (Pentium II 400 Mhz,  Windows NT with 64 Mb
RAM: yes that's sixty-four Mb).

My current primary research interests are the efficient implementation
of dynamic taxonomies (a paper is forthcoming) and the automatic
classification of  text material. 

Both from the scientific and commercial point of view I am very
interested in new and exemplary applications. Right now we are doing a
pilot study on content management for RAI (the Italian BBC). If you
have an interesting application, let me know.

Finally, let me tell you that I am really glad to see an increasing
awareness on this topic. After a long period of blank stares,  I had
started thinking I was crazy. If this is the case, it's good to
see that I am in good company.

Giovanni

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