COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002	\\M0NGR40\M1BASL30\.
C00006 ENDMK
C⊗;
\\M0NGR40;\M1BASL30;\.
\F0\CSTANFORD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LABORATORY
\CDEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
\CSTANFORD UNIVERSITY
\CSTANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305

						January 25, 1974

Dear Mr. Atkinson:

	The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is interested in the
representation of structured data in the following sense:

	At present there are many files of information in a variety of
computers accessible to us.  Some of these are disk files in our own
computer, some are accessible over the ARPA net, and some can be reached
by instructing the computer to dial a number and pretend to be a teletype.
These files contain information structured by the proprietors of the
information.  There is no way to get them to restructure the information in
a standard way, so we are interested in developing a standard way of describing
how the information is structured and may be accessed.  Of course, such
standard descriptions must be usable by a computer program.  The idea is
that a user should ask a question and the program should look up where the
information is and how to get it.  We are not much interested in
making an English language inquiry system and are quite willing to have
the user ask his questions in a prescribed form.

	Do you think that your interests have sufficient intersection with
this project to make prolonged interaction worthwhile.  If you come we will
offer you office space, computer access (all our offices have display
terminals), and modest secretarial help (we have three secretaries for 70
people).  Enclosed is a general description of the laboratory and its
facilities.

	Given such an intersection of interests, we will be glad to have you
if you get the fellowship given reasonably favorable comments from the referees.
If you don't get the fellowship, it would be more difficult and would partly
depend on our level of project support.

				Sincerely,

P.S. I would be interested in seeing your dissertation when it becomes
available.