The Nonsense of 'Knowledge Management'  

Examines critically the origins and basis of 'knowledge management', its components and its development as a field of consultancy practice. Problems in the distinction between 'knowledge' and 'information' are explored, as well as Polanyi's concept of 'tacit knowing'. The concept is examined in the journal literature, the Web sites of consultancy companies, and in the presentation of business schools. The conclusion is reached that 'knowledge management' is an umbrella term for a variety of organizational activities, none of which are concerned with the management of knowledge. Those activities that are not concerned with the management of information are concerned with the management of work practices, in the expectation that changes in such areas as communication practice will enable information sharing.

Wilson, T.D. Information Research (2002). Articles>Knowledge Management

Web Search: How the Web Has Changed Information Retrieval

Topical metadata have been used to indicate the subject of Web pages. They have been simultaneously hailed as building blocks of the semantic Web and derogated as spam. At this time major Web browsers avoid harvesting topical metadata. This paper suggests that the significance of the topical metadata controversy depends on the technological appropriateness of adding them to Web pages. This paper surveys Web technology with an eye on assessing the appropriateness of Web pages as hosts for topical metadata. The survey reveals Web pages to be both transient and volatile: poor hosts of topical metadata. The closed Web is considered to be a more supportive environment for the use of topical metadata. The closed Web is built on communities of trust where the structure and meaning of Web pages can be anticipated. The vast majority of Web pages, however, exist in the open Web, an environment that challenges the application of legacy information retrieval concepts and methods.

Brooks, Terrence A. Information Research (2003). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search

Converting a Controlled Vocabulary Into an Ontology: The Case of GEM  

The prevalance of digital information raised issues regarding the suitability of conventional library tools for organizing information. The multi-dimensionality of digital resources requires a more versatile and flexible representation to accommodate intelligent information representation and retrieval. Ontologies are used as a solution to such issues in many application domains, mainly due to their ability explicitly to specify the semantics and relations and to express them in a computer understandable language. Conventional knowledge organization tools such as classifications and thesauri resemble ontologies in a way that they define concepts and relationships in a systematic manner, but they are less expressive than ontologies when it comes to machine language. This paper used the controlled vocabulary at the Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM) as an example to address the issues in representing digital resources. The theoretical and methodological framework in this paper serves as the rationale and guideline for converting the GEM controlled vocabulary into an ontology. Compared to the original semantic model of GEM controlled vocabulary, the major difference between the two models lies in the values added through deeper semantics in describing digital objects, both conceptually and relationally.

Qin, Jian and Stephen Paling. Information Research (2001). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>Controlled Vocabulary