Information extraction (IE) and text summarization (TS) are powerful
technologies for finding relevant pieces of information in text and
presenting them to the user in condensed form. The ongoing information
explosion makes IE and TS critical for successful functioning within the
information society.
These technologies face particular challenges due to the inherent
multi-source nature of the information explosion. The technologies must
now handle not isolated texts or individual narratives, but rather
large-scale repositories and streams---in general, in multiple
languages---containing a multiplicity of perspectives, opinions, or
commentaries on particular topics, entities or events. There is thus a
need to adapt existing techniques and develop new ones to deal with
these challenges.
This volume contains a selection of papers that present a variety of
methodologies for content identification and extraction, as well as for
content fusion and regeneration. The chapters cover various aspects of
the challenges, depending on the nature of the information
sought---names vs. events, --- and the nature of the sources---news
streams vs. image captions vs. scientific research papers, etc. This
volume aims to offer a broad and representative sample of studies from
this very active research field.