University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: February 22, 2007

By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer

Imagine all the information contained in lectures at a large research university throughout an entire semester. Imagine that all that spoken knowledge was recorded and searchable. What would that mean to a student who lives off-campus—or across the planet?

LIS faculty member Jianqiang Wang founded Beijixing, one of the earliest search engines in his native China. He also helped build the Web site ChinaInfo, which offers access to scientific and technical information throughout China.
PHOTO: NANCY J. PARISI

This is the sort of question Jianqiang Wang asks people so they will start thinking about the vast potential that lies in reliable tools that can search speech-based information.

"My research has focused on the development of systems and techniques that can facilitate users' access to information across language and media boundaries," says Wang, who joined the Department of Library and Information Studies in the fall as an assistant professor. "We're all familiar with textual information, but there are many, many other kinds of information that people also need."

Access to multimedia—as well as electronic texts in multiple languages—is the norm in modern libraries, he explains, which fuels pressure to create information-retrieval systems that are able to sort through spoken content, as well as retrieve relevant information in foreign languages.

"This topic—information access—has a very broad impact on every aspect of human life," Wang points out. "I don't view it purely as research; it has great applications. Everyone needs information, whether we have computer systems or not. Every day when we wake up, we need information."

The recipient of a master of information science degree from Beijing's Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC), Wang worked after graduation as a product manager at a state-affiliated computer and network center. While there, he founded Beijixing, one of the earliest search engines in China, and the experience, he notes, sparked his fascination with information retrieval. He also helped build the Web site ChinaInfo, which spreads scientific and technical information throughout that nation.

"The main mission of the institute (ISTIC) was to provide scientific and technical information for the decision-makers of the Chinese government," says Wang, "but with economic reform in China, it also began to serve the public."

Wang was the first participants in an exchange program between the University of Maryland-College Park and ISTIC, and returned to the Washington, D.C.-area institution about two years after he received his master's degree from ISTIC to earn a doctorate in library and information studies.

As a graduate research assistant and later faculty research associate at Maryland's Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) from 1998-2006, Wang ran a series of system-development studies that sought to boost the numbers of relevant foreign-language texts returned to users based on searches conducted in English. He also took part in a multimillion-dollar, National Science Foundation-funded collaboration that involved universities in the U.S. and the Czech Republic, as well as IBM and the Shoah Visual History Foundation. The Multilingual Access to Large Spoken ArCHives (MALACH) project is an initiative that uses the world's biggest collection of oral histories—a virtual wealth of 116,000 videotaped interviews in 32 languages with 52,000 survivors, liberators, rescuers and witnesses to the Nazi Holocaust—to test and build a speech-based retrieval system.

This is the sort of difficult development task that requires first-hand knowledge about the search behaviors of information seekers, notes Wang, adding that input from librarians is vital since the ultimate aim is to make information highly used, as well as highly searchable.

"Nobody in computer science [or] engineering has studied users as extensively as people in library science," he points out.

At UB, Wang plans to continue this work through research into the impact of audio and visual collections on the behavior of individuals who need to find information. Librarians have seen a significant decline in information seekers' use of specialized terms, such as "and," "or" and "not" to plumb online catalogues and databases—which, he notes, illustrates the impact of technological shifts on information seekers. Most patrons now expect all information-retrieval systems to understand the less precise "free text" submissions due to the proliferation online of simple-interface search engines like Yahoo or Google.

"It's important that we study this problem," he says. "Different people and different systems may lead to different information-seeking behaviors."

Yet, his role in the UB Department of Library and Information Studies is as much as an educator as a researcher, says Wang, who has taught courses in both library science and informatics.

"I want to pass the knowledge and skills I learned from research to my students so that more people will be interested in the field and information-processing problems," he says. "Talking to students also can expand my view of the problems, issues and technologies.

"I think the idea of having a department that's involved in multiple disciplines [is] still a good one," he adds. "I will continue to strive for interdisciplinary research, and maybe (interdisciplinary) courses in the department."

When he spoke earlier this month with the Reporter, Wang, a resident of Amherst, was excited at the arrival of the Chinese New Year, which came earlier this week, because it meant that his wife, Jia Luo, and 2-year-old daughter, Cindy Wang, soon will join him after a long visit with family in northern China.

"The people I have met on and off campus, in stores and supermarkets, are very nice, very friendly," adds Wang, who feels that the Buffalo area is safer than his previous residence of Washington, D.C. "Amherst is the third-safest city in the U.S.," he says, "So I think that's nice, especially when you have a family."