Technologies for Knowledge Management

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Technologies for Knowledge Management

• Enrico MottaKnowledge Media InstituteThe Open
  University, UK

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Which KM Processes?

• Knowledge Retrieval
• Smart ways to find the right knowledge
• Knowledge Publishing
• Smart ways to ensure your knowledge becomes
  available
• Knowledge Sharing
• Effective publishing and retrieval mechanisms
  which ensure multi-way communication
• Collaborative, distributed group work
• How to make team work more effective
• Knowledge Reuse
• Effective representation/adaptation mechanisms to
  ensure reuse in different contexts/domains/applica
  tions

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What I am not going to present

• The 300-page, overarching, all-encompassing,
  comprehensive methodology for Knowledge
  Management, which explains how to turn knowledge
  into gold

• The 500,000 lines of code, integrated effective
  software solution for all your Knowledge
  Management needs

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Some Tenets/Slogans

• Emphasis on pluggable technologies
• Solutions to specific needs (e.g., retrieval,
  publishing, etc.)
• Multiple Representations/Multiple Media
• Different combinations best for different
  contexts
• Wide range of technologies
• Knowledge, Web, Language, HCI technologies
• Evolutionary approach
• Gradual enhancement of vanilla solutions
• Enriching rather than replacing content
• Reductionism is bad!
• Integration with Workpractices
• Attention to soft (e.g., HCI, social,
  cognitive) issues

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Example 1 KMi Planet

• High quality, web-based newsletter from plain
  email or web forms
• In routine use since 1996
• Addresses internal communication issue
• Used as front end to KMi
• Licensed to several other organisations
• http//kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/planet

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Planet Address
Author
Headline
Story Text
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Limitations of Vanilla Planet Newsletter

• Information retrieval problem
• Find me stories related to knowledge management
  research
• Newsletter only part of broad range of
  information sources
• Who else works on medical informatics?
• Need to integrate it with other sources, - e.g.
  web pages, mailing lists, etc.
• Need for additional services
• Personalised news feeds for registered readers
  (currently about 500)
• Eliciting new stories from journalists

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Extension 1 Planet-Onto

• Integration of the Planet newsletter with a
  knowledge base (Planet KB)
• Planet KB describes academic life in KMi
• Support for intelligent knowledge retrieval
• Enables the development of intelligent agents for
  personalisation and news hunting
• KB constructed by instantiating a generic ontology

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Ontology Inclusion Hierarchy
base-ontology
simple-time
common-concepts
generic-events
bibliographic-data
generic-technologies
organization-ontology
kmi-ontology
kmi-planet-ontology
kmi-planet-kb
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Key Concepts in Planet KB
Relates-event
Event
Story
Concerns
Concerns
Concerns
Concerns
Concerns
Research Area
People
Technology
Project
Organization
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Extension 2 MyPlanet
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Extension 3 Smart Front Page Layout
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Instantiating Tenets/Slogans

• Emphasis on pluggable technologies
• No complete KM solution
• Addressing specific need how can people be
  within and outside KMi be informed about what
  happens in KMi?
• Intg. with Workpractices
• Email already main form of communication in KMi
• Enriching rather than replacing content
• Ontologies and KB added to textual content
• Wide range of technologies
• Web, Ontologies, Agents, Automatic Classification
• Evolutionary approach
• Attention to soft (e.g., social, cognitive)
  issues
• Storytelling effective method for internal
  communication
• Approach stimulates competitive nature of lab
  members

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Example 2 Compendium
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Compendium Capturing discussions as visual maps
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Capturing Collaborative Ontology Design
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Enhancing Compendium
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Example 3 ScholOnto
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The Web Hyperlinked Resources
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A Digital Library as Hypertext
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A Digital Library with added meaning
buildsOn
contradicts
criticises
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Phenomena of interest to scholars

• Whos building on the ideas in this paper?
• Whos challenged this paper?
• Has anyone proposed a similar solution but from
  a different theoretical perspective?
• Are there groups building on theory T, but who
  contradict each other?
• Is there any software which tackles problem P?
• What impact did Language L have?
• Are there distinctive theoretical perspectives
  on problem P?

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Scholarly Ontologies Project

• Use scenario researchers submit claims about
  their documents to a digital library internet
  server key contributions and connections to the
  literature
• Server maintains model of the literature network,
  and provides intelligent search, automated
  linking, structural analysis, agents, concept
  maps...

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ClaimMaker
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Are there any arguments against the
intellectual framework on which this paper
builds?

• arguments against negative relations
• intellectual framework a set of concepts is the
  extended set of concepts that are linked to/from
  the concepts in the original set by a positive
  relation.
• this paper

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Example 4 Magpie
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Conclusions

• Shown examples of how Web, Knowledge, HCI and
  Language technologies can be harnessed to support
  KM processes
• Approach based on pluggable functionalities and
  evolutionary enhancements
• Concrete technologies in concrete settings
• Seamless integration of software agents
• E.g., artificial newspaper editor no more
  intrusive than human editor!
• See also
• D3E, BuddySpace, Stadium, etc
• http//kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/

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