Summarizing Information

Summarizing is the process of reducing the large volume of information in something like a novel or a scientific paper to a short summary or abstract comprising only the most essential points. Summarizing is frequent in everyday communication, but it is also a professional skill for journalists and scientific writers. Automated summarizing functions are urgently needed by Internet users who wish to exploit the information available without being overwhelmed.This book presents the state of the art of summarizing and surveys related research; it deals with everyday and professional summarizing as well as computerized approaches. The author focuses in detail on the cognitive processes involved and supports this with a multimedia simulation system on the accompanying CD-ROM (for Mac OS and Windows 95).

1 Introduction.- 2 Communication and Cognition.- 2.1 Introduction.- 2.2 Communication situations.- 2.3 The cognitive structure of a situated communicator.- 2.4 Forms of representation.- 2.5 Understanding.- 2.6 Discourse production.- References.- 3 Summarizing in Everyday Communication.- 3.1 Introduction.- 3.2 The process of summarization.- 3.3 What we know about summarizing in everyday life.- 3.4 Assessing importance (relevance, interestingness).- References.- 4 Professional Summarizing.- 4.1 Introduction: Professional summarizing.- 4.2 Knowledge about professional summarizing.- 4.3 An empirical cognitive model of professional summarizing.- References.- 4.4 Appendix: The intellectual toolbox.- 5 Computational Approaches.- 5.1 Introduction.- 5.2 Early approaches: The creation of computer abstracts by sentence extraction.- 5.3 Systems following the advent of cognitive science.- 5.4 New technology, increased demand, a new wave of systems.- References.