books

Knowledge elicitation: principles, techniques and applications

Dan Diaper (ed) Ellis Horwood Ltd., UK (1989) £35, ISBN 0745804519, 270 pp

This book sets out to present a coherent set of perspectives on knowledge elicitation, with the par- ticular object of demonstrating the contribution which can be made by psychologists, linguists and soci- ologists. It arose from a meeting of the British Computer Society's Human-Computer Interaction Spe- cialist Group in February 1988. The book concentrates on knowledge elicitation, i.e. the extraction and representation of expert know- ledge, rather than the coding of that knowledge. It is intended for those who are ' . . . currently, or about to be, actually involved in knowledge elicitation and to provide a single reference for those involved in other aspects of building expert sys t ems . . . ' Its readership is there- fore designed to be either academics or practitioners in indus- try who need to know about the complexities and realistic objectives of knowledge elicitation. It is not intended to be an undergraduate primer, but a suitable reference book for an 'advanced undergradu- ate' or postgraduate.

It would be almost impossible to provide a 'comprehensive' overview of knowledge elicitation. The book comprises seven chapters by diffe- rent authors, including one by the editor, who has also written short introductions to each of the other six chapters. This provides diffe- rent, albeit mainly UK-oriented, perspectives, but the book has been edited so that chapters cross-refer to each other. There is also, in places, a healthy disagreement be- tween authors.

There is a strong view in the community, as voiced in this book, that knowledge elicitation can be viewed as almost distinct from other stages in expert system building. There is also, however, the view that knowledge elicitation is part of

a modelling process in the life cycle of a software system, and that knowledge engineers can learn a lot from software engineering. This view is not strongly represented in the book, and an almost unfair criticism of prototyping is pre- sented. Rapid prototyping can be used as a very effective means of knowledge elicitation. It is the con- trol of the prototyping and system development which is crucial, which is why it may be unwise to concen- trate on knowledge elicitation in its own right.

Each chapter presents a different view, describing some mix of theory, methods and applications. The core of the book is one chapter which provides a fairly substantial and well referenced overview of different methods. The book also covers task analysis, mediating rep- resentations, a description of the knowledge engineer as a 'mediator', and some practical 'down to earth' advice about how to organize knowledge elicitation. In parts the book suffers because it fails to state explicitly which methods have been tried and

tested, and on what type, size and complexity of systems. One sus- pects that some of the methods are proposed rather than the results of actual experience, whereas others have clearly been used in some domains. Given the aims of the text it would have been helpful had this been spelt out more clearly.

The book could not meet its rather grandiose objectives, but it makes a useful contribution to the literature on the subject. It could not be, and would not claim to be, definitive, but it does present views of knowledge and of knowledge elicitation from a number of per- spectives. It is worth reading or dipping into, but the reader must bear in mind that knowledge elicita- tion for expert systems is a part of the system development process, and that there are other perspec- tives which are not described in detail here.

A multi-author book is bound to have different styles. In this case, the styles vary from the analytical to that almost of popular literature--I found the latter annoying, and it detracted from the content. The presentation is clear, and the biblio- graphy and index are quite good. The book is hardbound, it is not underpriced, and it is a typical example of the Ellis Horwood series on expert systems.

Anna Hart Lancashire Polytechnic, UK

Advances in natural language generation: an interdisciplinary perspective (vol 1)

M Zock and G Sabah (eds) Pinter Publishers Ltd., UK (1988) £27.50, ISBN 0-86187-965-1, 200 pp

Within the field of natural language technology, the generation of natu- ral language text by computer is a subject area which has, during the past decade, risen pleasingly from a Cinderella like status to a position of prominence, and now represents a thriving research enterprise which has attracted investigators from a variety of academic backgrounds.

One of the side-effects of this growth has been the establishment of a regular series of international workshops on natural language gen- eration, and this book comprises part of the proceedings of the fourth such workshop, held at the Abbey of Royaumont, France, in January 1987.

Following an editorial intro-

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