Expert profile: Dr Barbara Ann Kipfer

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BARBARA ANN KIPFER, Ph.D.
29 Brooks Lane, Ivoryton CT 06442
phone 860 767 1551; fax 860 767 1288
email bkipfer@earthlink.net

EMPLOYMENT

freelance/contract work (1991-present) 
Dictionary.com/Thesaurus.com: Development of lexicographic content. 
CitySearch, GoTo (now Overture): Categorization and lexicographic work for 
Internet services. 
eHow: Creation content (eHows) and answering customer questions via email. 
encyclopedias (Columbia, Funk & Wagnalls, Grolier) and dictionaries (Collins): 
Development of categorization schemes. 
HarperCollins, Writer’s Digest: Compilation, editing, and writing major 
reference books. 
major publishers, including Longman, Random House, Scholastic, etc: Diverse 
lexicographic assignments. 
telephone companies, including Ameritech, Bell South: Categorization and 
revision of Yellow Pages’ headings. 

Cymfony (Buffalo, NY) Head Lexicographer (1/2001-8/2001). Design, development, 
and maintenance of lexical resources and tools for natural language processing 
and information extraction products. 

Ask Jeeves (Emeryville, CA) Research and Dictionary Specialist (3/1999-1/2001). 
Developmental work on dictionaries for question-answering system; 
question-and-answer evaluation and personal answering of general reference 
questions via email and community.

Answers.com (Pasadena, CA) Director of Research (4/96-11/96, 6/98-3/99). 
Development of Internet question-answering service; answered all questions 
posed to system (6/98-3/99). 

Mindmaker, Inc/Associative Computing (San Jose, CA) Head Lexicographer 
(4/97-5/98). Research and development of lexicon (based on WordNet) for natural 
language processing and intelligent agent system.

TextWise (Syracuse, NY) Lexicographic Analyst (10/95-4/96). Lexicographic and 
classification/hierarchy work for information retrieval system; conducted 
dictionary research. 

Knowledge Adventure (La Crescenta, CA) Author/Developer (4/93-10/95). Writing, 
editing, development of multimedia reference works for software products.

General Electric Corporate Research (Schenectady, NY) Lexicographer, Artificial 
Intelligence Program (8/88-4/90, 11/96-4/97). Wrote large, hierarchically 
arranged lexicon for use with a natural-language processor. Compiled radiology 
lexicon and ontology.

Bellcore/Telcordia (Morristown, NJ) Lexicographer, Artificial Intelligence & 
Information Science Research (8/85-8/88). Research of dictionaries and other 
reference works for development of a lexical knowledge base.

IBM T.J. Watson Research Center (Yorktown Heights, NY) Lexicographer, Lexical 
Systems Group (10/84-8/85). Research of dictionaries for inclusion in lexical 
knowledge base.

Wang Electronic Publishing (New York, NY) Lexicographer (11/83-10/84). Edited 
dictionary databases, thesauri, and other reference works for software products.

Yale University School of Organization and Management (CT) Newsletter Editor, 
9/82-11/83.
Laurence Urdang Inc. (CT) Assistant to the Publisher (dictionary work); 
5/82-7/82.
University of Houston (TX) Director of Word Processing Center; 6/81-5/82.
City of Valparaiso (IN) Assistant to the Mayor; 11/79-6/81.
Chicago Tribune newspaper (IL) Sports Scoreboard Page Editor; 6/79-10/79.
Gary Post-Tribune newspaper (IN) News and Sports Correspondent; 2/79-6/79.
Vidette-Messenger newspaper (IN) Sports Editor; 11/76-1/79.

EDUCATION

Master’s program in Buddhist Studies, Greenwich University, 2002
Doctor of Philosophy in Archaeology, Greenwich University, 1998
Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics, University of Exeter, 1989
Master of Philosophy in Linguistics, University of Exeter, 1985
Bachelor of Science in Physical Education, Valparaiso University, 1978




BARBARA ANN KIPFER, Ph.D.
Publications

Roget’s International Thesaurus, Sixth Edition, New York: HarperCollins, 
2001
Roget’s Thesaurus of Phrases, Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest, 2001
8,789 Words of Wisdom, New York: Workman Publishing, 2001
Flip Dictionary, Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest, 2000
Something to Talk About, Lincoln, Nebraska: iUniverse.com, 2000
Encyclopedic Dictionary of Archaeology, New York: Plenum-Kluwer, 2000
5,001 Things for Kids to Do, New York: Plume, 2000
Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus in Dictionary Form, New York: 
Dell/Laurel/Delta; 1992, second edition 1999
Dictionary of American Slang, Third Edition, New York: HarperCollins, 1998 
(co-editor with Robert L. Chapman)
The Wish List, New York: Workman Publishing, 1997 (100,000 copies in print)
The Order of Things: Hierarchies, Structures and Pecking Orders, New York: 
Random House; 1996
The Optimist’s/Pessimist’s Guide to the Millennium, New York: 
Perigee; 1996
USA Today Crossword Puzzle Dictionary, New York: Hyperion; 1996
Webster’s 21st Century Large Print Dictionary, New York: Dell/Laurel, 1996
The Best of 14,000 things to be happy about Page-A-Day Calendars (annually 
1995-2003), New York: Workman
1,400 things for kids to be happy about, New York: Workman; 1994. (120,000 in 
print)
Bartlett's Book of Business Quotations, New York: Little, Brown; 1994
Bartlett's Book of Love Quotations, New York: Little, Brown; 1994
Sisson's Word and Expression Locater, New York: Prentice Hall; 1994
21st Century Manual of Style, New York: Dell/Laurel, 1993
21st Century Spelling Dictionary, New York: Dell/Laurel, 1993
21st Century Synonym & Antonym Finder, New York: Dell/Laurel, 1993
Random House Kid’s Encyclopedia text of 2,000 articles: La Crescenta, CA: 
Knowledge Adventure, Inc., 1993
14,000 things to be happy about, New York: Workman Publishing; 1990 (980,000 in 
print; published in Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, 
Swedish, German, Bulgarian) (see www.thingstobehappyabout.com)
Workbook on Lexicography: A Course for Dictionary Users, Volume 8, Exeter 
Linguistic Series (General Editor: R.R.K. Hartmann), University of Exeter 
Press; 1984

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"Computer Applications in LexicographyA New Summary of the State-of-the-Art," 
presented at the Dictionary Society of North America meeting, University of 
Michigan, 2001.

"Towards the Onomasiological Dictionary: The Use of the Computer in Providing 
Diversified Access", Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics dissertation, 
University of Exeter, 1989.

"Dictionaries and the Intermediate Student: Communicative Needs and the 
Development of User Reference Skills", in The Dictionary and the Language 
Learner, edited by Anthony Cowie, Lexicographic Series Maior 17, Tubingen: Max 
Niemeyer Verlag, 1987: 44-54.

"Investigating an Onomasiological Approach to Dictionary Material," in 
DICTIONARIES 1986, Journal of the DSNA, Number 8, 1987.

"The Declining Role of the In-House Dictionary Staff" and a review of The 
Wordtree, in DICTIONARIES 1985, Journal of the DSNA, Number 7, 1986.

"Computer Applications in Lexicography--A Summary of the State-of-the-Art," in 
Advances in Lexicography, (Proceedings of the 1983 DSNA meeting), Edmonton, 
Canada: Boreal Scholarly Publishing, 1986.

"Dictionaries and the Intermediate Student: Communicative Needs and the 
Development of User Reference Skills," Master of Philosophy in Linguistics, 
University of Exeter, 1985.

"Methods of Ordering Senses Within Entries," in Lexicographica, Series Maior 1: 
LEXeter '83 Proceedings, edited by R.R.K. Hartmann, Tubingen: Max Niemeyer 
Verlag, 1984: 101-108.

"Computer Applications in Lexicography: A Bibliography," in DICTIONARIES 1982, 
Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America, No. 4, 1983: 202-237

BARBARA ANN KIPFER, Ph.D.
Summary of Specific Experience 

Natural language processing and information retrieval research 
§ WordNet -- complete revamping, adding synonyms and removing erroneous 
synonyms, and enhancing with weighting 
§ added obscurity coding at sense and word level to lexicon
§ prepared thesaurus of collocations and created many collections of 
collocations
§ conducted research of dictionaries, encyclopedias, almanacs, and other 
reference works for artificial intelligence, natural language, and information 
retrieval projects
§ prepared hierarchies and subject-field categorization/classification 
schemes
§ prepared thesauri for use in an advanced information retrieval and 
intelligent text processing system
§ wrote a lexicon of 10,000+ words assigned to a 1000-concept hierarchy 
for use in a natural- language processor
 
Internet content and question-answering
§ answered thousands and thousands of questions at Ask Jeeves via email 
§ developed basic plan and categorization scheme of Ask Jeeves’ 
“community”
§ developed basic plan of Answers.com and answered thousands and thousands 
of questions personally via email
§ researched and wrote many how-to articles for eHow
§ researched best answers to thousands and thousands of knowledgebase 
questions at Ask Jeeves
§ set up hierarchical schemes and synonym tables for online shopping 
(Shopping.com), online city directories (CitySearch), and search engine (GoTo) 
of idealab companies 

Reference book publishing 
§ carried out Americanization of dictionaries 
§ created two spinoff quotations books from a renowned general quotations 
reference
§ definition writing, revision, and copyediting for publishing projects
§ designed and compiled a large-print dictionary, style manual, spelling 
dictionary, and synonym/antonym finder
§ designed and compiled an A-to-Z thesaurus with a concept index
§ designed categorization scheme and complete revision of the Yellow 
Pages' headings for three companies
§ developmental editor of major slang dictionary
§ prepared complete revision of several major thesauri
§ prepared pronunciations in a respelling system for dictionaries
§ wrote workbook on lexicography for dictionary users and students

Multimedia reference products
§ conducted analyses of multimedia product containing multiple major 
reference books and developed plan for improving the index/browser, access, and 
presentation of the text 
§ copyedited and proofread content and documentation for multimedia 
reference products
§ designed and coded subject categorization for Bartlett’s Quotations 
CD-ROM product
§ designed categorization scheme and encoded the 90,000+ articles of three 
sets of Grolier encyclopedias, 50,000+ articles of Funk and Wagnalls 
Encyclopedia, and 25,000 articles of the Columbia Encyclopedia
§ edited databases of reference materials for software products, including 
spelling checkers, thesauri, and dictionaries
§ edited thousands of articles for multimedia products and categorized 
them by subject
§ wrote 2000+ encyclopedia articles for children, including amazing facts 
and bibliographic information

Summary of Skills

§ Extremely good organizational and planning skills. Intense desire to 
learn.
§ Very communicative and easily reached via email, phone, and fax.
§ Experienced at writing proposals and reports based on ideas, needs, and 
research.
§ Always meet deadlines, often finishing ahead of target.
§ Have supervised assistants, especially during the past 10 years. Have 
worked closely with programmers/engineers.
§ Strength is self-motivation to complete tasks beyond expectations and 
on-time.
§ Offer a unique combination of talent and training: PhDs in linguistics 
and archaeology, work in artificial intelligence research, reference 
publishing, reference software, Internet content and question-answering; and 
development of categorization schemes, classifications, and hierarchies.
§ More than 20 years’ experience as a telecommuter; very willing to 
make regular and special visits to headquarters.
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