Gary Riley’s comment here on November 6 alerted me to a book that I didn’t have: The Engineering of Knowledge-Based Systems: Theory and Practice by Avelino J. Gonzalez and Douglas D. Dankel. So, I went to Amazon to track it down. The book is out of print, so I purchased a used copy.
When my copy arrived a little while ago, I quickly noticed that the owner’s name written inside the cover was that of John Durkin, the noted author of Expert Systems: Design and Development. I spotted it quickly since at a previous employer this book (along with Gary Riley’s book) was used in both internal and external training.
It appears that Dr. Durkin is retiring and selling off many of his books, and I purchased from him without even realizing. A quick email to him confirmed this. So, if you are like me and occasionally troll Amazon for out of print AI and expert systems books – you may find yourself purchasing from Dr. Durkin. Some days it is a small world.
(I also found the name “Hans Witt” in a different expert systems book that I purchased at Powell’s a few week ago. Somehow I doubt that it is the Han Witt who I know (of Haley Systems), but LinkedIn tells me that Hans is in Portland these days. Hmm. I should probably ask him.)
Small world indeed. Avelino was my supervisor many years ago at UCF and I still have a ‘pre-production’ copy of the book that he used in the introductory class.
It’s a good A.I. book, and an example of how small the world is.