Knowledge & Networks John Goubeaux Ariane Gravel Darren Hardy

26 April 2006Hardy2 (Fleming, 1996) What is knowledge? Information relates to description, definition, or perspective (what, who, when, where) Knowledge comprises strategy, practice, method, or approach (how) Wisdom embodies principle, insight, moral, or archetype (why) (Bellinger, 2004)

26 April 2006Hardy3 Epistemic communities Produces small-t local truth, not big-T universal Truth. (Miller & Fox, 2001) Epistemology (Oxford)  The theory of knowledge, esp. with regard to its methods, validity, and scope.  The investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion. What do we know? How do we know it? Shared concepts, language, symbols

26 April 2006Hardy4 The Information Age Epistemic communities  What are our social institutions for knowledge? (e.g., science, libraries)  How does ICT change them? Key questions  Can networks improve these institutions?  How do online communities support epistemic communities?

26 April 2006Hardy5 Roles Information seeker  Search, Browse Information provider  Authorship, Aggregation Knowledge managers KMI KSL

26 April 2006Hardy6 Information retrieval P R (Frakes & Baeza-Yates, 1992) Precision Recall

26 April 2006Hardy7 Information seeking Lancaster (1979)  Information need -> stated request -> selection of database -> search strategy -> search in database -> screening of output Pharo & Järvelin (2006)  “Irrational” searchers vs. IR-Rational researchers  Disjointed incrementalism  Searchers learn during a search process  Searchers have subjective & dynamic information needs over time

26 April 2006Hardy8 Knowledge management Categorization  Controlled vocabulary, taxonomy Search  Full text or metadata Collaboration  Flow in social networks

26 April 2006Hardy9 Categorization Library of Congress Subject Headings  To assign information to a subject  Get a degree, become a librarian  To find information on a subject  Talk to a librarian  Go to the Card Catalog  Wander the stacks

26 April 2006Hardy10 LCSH Example BT (Broader Topic) NT (Narrower Topic) RT (Related Topic) SA (See Also) UF (Used for) RF (Refer from) Substance abuse (May Subd Geog) [HV4997-HV5840 (Social pathology)] [RC563-RC568 (Psychiatry)] UF Abuse of substances Addiction, Substance Addictive behavior Chemical dependence Chemical dependency Substance addiction BT Crimes without victims Psychology, Pathological SA subdivision Substance use under classes of persons and ethnic groups NT Aerosol sniffing Alcoholism Betel chewing Caffeine habit Church and substance abuse Drug abuse Dual diagnosis Solvent abuse Tobacco habit Psychology, Pathological -- Substance abuse -- Alcoholism

26 April 2006Hardy11 The Semantic Web (Berners-Lee et al., 2001) Today: hypertext links related content Tomorrow: links content by meaning The hype: “The Semantic Web can assist the evolution of human knowledge as a whole”  Structured content (XML)  Meaning (RDF)  Ontology (OWL) - automated reasoning  A graph; nodes = concepts, links = semantics  Or, a taxonomy plus set of inference rules

26 April 2006Hardy12 Seriously, onto-whatnow? FOAF SIOC (Harth et al., 2004) SIOC SWOOP (Hendler et al., 2005) SWOOP

26 April 2006Hardy13 Social tagging 100% pure simplicity Author  Whatever “tags” she thinks appropriate  No controlled vocabulary, no suggestions Social network dynamics does the rest

26 April 2006Hardy14 Social tagging examples Information seeking  By popularity (Tag clouds)  By example (Read an article, see tag)  By surfing (Edited what’s new page) Meets “good enough” standards? Application: Social bookmarking  Technorati Technorati  36.6 million sites, 2.3 billion links  del.icio.us del.icio.us

26 April 2006Hardy15 Tag cloud Adland

26 April 2006Hardy16