The recently published Fourth Edition of the "Encyclopedia of Computer Science" contains articles by three ITL contributors in the Information Access Division and the Mathematical and Computational Sciences Division. This encyclopedia is a comprehensive reference work on computers, computing, and computer science.

Sandy Ressler of the Information Access Division authored the article on "Markup Languages" which explains in layman’s terms what a markup language is and how it impacts work on the Web. Descriptions of several types of markup are included as well as methods to create markup. It describes the origins of HTML, the Hypertext Markup Language, currently the lingua franca of the Web that originated with SGML, the Standard Generalized Markup Language. SGML is also the basis for the Extensible Markup Language (XML) which is now a driving technology for e-commerce and the future Web standards. In addition, the article describes how markup can be used to create documents for use by persons with disabilities - making the Web accessible.

Donna Harman, also in the Information Access Division, contributed the article on "Information Retrieval" that details some of the basic principles behind today's current search engines. The article describes some of the issues involved in indexing and searching electronic material, either gathered by a webcrawler, or as part of an in-house document collection, and points to areas of active research interest.  Various types of retrieval applications are reviewed, along with discussion of some of the related legal and social issues raised by retrieval from open sources.

Ronald Boisvert of the Mathematical and Computational Sciences Division provided an article entitled "Program Libraries, Numerical and Statistical". The article traces the long history of reusable software libraries developed by researchers and commercial ventures for science and engineering applications. It summarizes current frameworks for the packaging of general-purpose mathematical and statistical software components, and indicates sources of both research-grade and commercially supported software libraries.

Information about the encyclopedia is available at

http://www.grovereference.com/science/ComputerScience.htm