THESAURI FACING NEW CHALLENGES

The chairman of the Thesaurus Software Seminar held on August 14 (1999)in Darmstadt,introduces into the topic by asking the following 10 questions and by providing his answers to them : 1) What is new in the view ? 2) What is the real point of attraction ? 3) Cannot Information Retrieval(IR) profit from machine-processing of language ? 4) Can we do better now ? 5) How can we do better ? 6) When does fully automatic IR arrive ? 7) Thesauri for machine-aided IR-how do we get there ? 8 ) Which is the right way, which is the model, what to standardize ? 9) Can IR people do it alone ? 10) Are there advanced information services with a truly human intrerfaces ?