Gobinda G. Chowdhury

1. Knowledge Organization or Information Organization? A Key Component of Knowledge Management Activities Gobinda G. Chowdhury Graduate School of Informatics Department of Computer and Information Sciences University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

2. Outline • Knowledge or Information Management • Information Organization • Various Approaches to Information organization • Problems of Information Organization in the context of KM • Further research • An Interface for Corporate IM/KM • Discussions

3. Information Organization • The success (of an IM or KM) will largely depend on how efficiently we can organize, and provide access to, all the different varieties of information that are required for the day-to-day business operations as well as for making strategic business decisions • There are various approaches to organizing information

4. Knowledge Management: Key Characterisitcs • KM deals with knowledge from external as well as internal sources including documents and databases • KM systems embed and store knowledge in business processes, products and services • KM systems’ objective is to promote growth, transfer and share of knowledge within the organization • KM systems aim to assess on a regular basis the knowledge assets of an organization and its impact.

5. KM or IM? • KM rests on two foundations: • management of information and • effective management of work practices • the goal of a knowledge management system is to manage information for achieving the objectives of an organization.

6. Approaches to Information Organization • Library-based approaches • Expert Systems approaches • Mathematical approaches

7. Library-based Approaches • Classification schemes • Like DDC, UDC, CC, LC, etc. that were designed to organize information resources on the library’s shelves • These tools are also used for organizing Internet information • Subject heading lists and thesauri • Like LCSH and various subject-specific voc. Control tools that were designed to organize information on library catalogues and databases • These tools are also used for organizing Internet information

8. Information Organization tools used in DLs and Subject gateways

9. Expert Systems or knowledge-based approaches • e.g. frames, semantic networks, etc. • Several knowledge-based systems have been developed using these approaches • A recent example includes the knowledge-based information organization in AskJeeves

10. AskJeeves

11. Mathematical Approaches • Clustering is a technique used for organizing information • Recent examples include Vivisimo, Kartoo, etc.

12. Information Organization using Visualization tools: Vivisimo

13. Information Organization using Visualization tools: Kartoo

14. Knowledge Organization Using Ontology: a Project using Protege

15. Problems of Knowledge Organization in the Context of KM • Variety of information • internal or external databases, e-mail messages, memos, minutes of meetings, etc.; documents available in the restricted as well as public domain • Location of information • local as well as remote, on the corporate intranet, on the Internet • Corporate Culture and Work Patterns • who are going to use the information, the task or the purpose for which they are going to use them, and the overall organizational framework that controls the work environment and culture

16. Further Research • Identification of information resources: documentary and human • Creation of an ontology using the standard tools and corporate work culture • Visual knowledge map of information resources • A task-based one-window information access system

17. An Information Access System for KM

18. Discussions • Questions? • Thank You!