Knowledge Management |The Semantic Puzzle

Knowledge Management and the Semantic Web

July 28, 2009 by Helmut Nagy, Category: Knowledge Management, Literature & Publications

That’s the title of my diploma thesis and first of all, thanks to SWC for the possibility to say some words about it. My interest in knowledge management reaches back some time now and I decided to make it the subject of my diploma thesis in my first attempt to write one back in 2001. The semantic web “came to me” in the last one or two years and the TRIPLE-I conference last year was somehow the trigger for me to connect the two topics.

My basic idea was very simple. When you read about the Semantic Web you are confronted right away with connections to creating knowledge and knowledge management. But in my understanding the Semantic Web is a technical thing and knowledge management is primarily a cultural and organisational thing. So the research questions for my thesis where:

What relevance do knowledge management and semantic technologies have in the daily work of people working in knowledge intensive domains?

Which possibilities lie in the adoption of knowledge management and semantic technologies?

Are semantic technologies already fit for practical use?

The basis of the empirical part of my thesis are group discussions held in different organisations. As a result I developed starting points for an understanding of the topics “Knowledge Management” and “Semantic Web” and their relevance in organisations. The empirical results, in short, provide the following answers to the research questions:

The “theoretical relevance” of both topics is high, the “practical relevance” on the other hand is rather low. Neither do structured concepts for knowledge management exist in the studied organisations, nor are there attempts at using semantic technologies
Most of the participants have not heard of the “semantic web” prior to the discussions. After having been introduced to the topic, the relevance of the semantic web and of semantic technologies is rated high
Possibilities are seen in a better management of information or knowledge in organisations and, especially for semantic technologies, in the improvement of search functionality’s and search results
Semantic technologies are not yet seen as fit for practical use
The connection between knowledge management and semantic web is taken as a fact without giving any justification for it.

In my conclusion I tried to match my results with the results of the Semantic Web Barometer 2009 and it was very interesting for me, that there were several similarities. I also found that talking to the people that have to work with technologies that are developed for them can be quite interesting and that group discussion are a great way to do that.

I wrote most parts of my diploma thesis in a wiki (and the rest is available as PDF) so you can find it on my wiki.

Your comments and annotations are very welcome!

Thanks for reading as far as this, Helmut

ISWC Workshop on Semantic Web Applications in Scientific Discourse (w3.org)
Leo Sauermann – gnowsis: Weak memory remedy @ webinale (tiburon-tv.com)

Calais, Zemanta or textwise?

July 7, 2009 by Andreas Blumauer, Category: Mashups & Web services, Text Mining

Beside W3C´s Linked Data Initiative, it were semantic services like Calais, Zemanta or textwise which have made the advantages of the Semantic Web visible for a broader community in the last few months.

Each of those services follow a slightly different approach, but in a nutshell: They all offer an API to provide “similarity search” around social media or also to enhance enterprise information management.

Like a magic bullet those services offer a relief from information overflow and seem to become kind of a “semantic web killer application“.

If you´re familiar with one or many of those services, drop a comment and let us know, what you´ve been experienced so far, or also if you can think of any applications or further developments you would like to see around these kind of services.

If you are not familiar with this stuff, for a quick demo go to

The widget uses text from this blog to calculate similar stuff from the web.

semantic technology conference 2009 (web2express.org)
Zemanta: semweb at work for your blog (squio.nl)

1000-and-one pulldowns

May 12, 2009 by Thomas Thurner, Category: Internet & Media, Knowledge Management, Search Engines

: Image by wocrig via Flickr

Luckily, times have come, where semantic search techniques have found their way to enhance knowledge providing theme portals. Nearly once a week a new knowledge portal with built-in semantic search pops up. They deal with environmental issues, health care, economy etc. These sites are good examples how the vision of a knowledge web is fostered by semantic technologies. Such focused approaches are great showcases for “a” semantic web (even if they are not based on “the” RDF semantic web) in the next few months besides general knowledge portals like Wolfram Alpha.

But the potential of these semantic theme portals is often reduced essentially by their bad usability. You get lost in categories and flags – you get puzzled by pulldowns, mouseovers and embedded hierachies – it’s sometimes a mess out off 1001 functions. You need to understand the underpinning semantic concept to get oriented within these applications – and this is not the goal of the exercise. Search has to be easy.

To show the potential of semantic technologies, we need good examples, which offer good usability. This is a call to everyone to provide such examples.

See my favorites:

NextBio, a platform that enables life science researchers to search, discover, and share knowledge locked within public and proprietary data
reegle, the Search Engine for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency
CultureSampo, a Finnish cultural heritage platform for institutional organizations as well as private citizens

	if not otherwise specified

Related articles by Zemanta

Related articles by Zemanta