Relevance engines are advanced search engines emerging from recent developments in the field, aimed at improving the meaningfulness of search results. Looking for a piece of information is not a standard process. Selecting and interpreting the result of a search are activities whose outcome is deeply dependent on the mindset of the searcher and on the context of the operation. However, even the “best” search engines, for any given search, always give the very same result to different persons and in different situations. Instead, relevance engines, using special algorithms and different philosophies, attempt to take into account the specific parameters of a search, that is, its context. One engine, for instance, collects anthropological and professional data about the searcher and, based on them, proposes to focus the search on alternative knowledge domains. Another very clever engine, installed in the PC, continuously “watches” the activity of the user and, based on what he does, what tools he calls out, what material he manipulates, “speaks” in a side window. It provides, in real time, suggestions,, pointers to information, document excerpts and categories appropriate to the domain of “knowledge” that emerges in the working environment of the user. Relevant information is found without any need for a search.
Published in Chapter:
From Knowledge to Personal Knowledge Management
Fortunato Sorrentino (Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 8
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-845-1.ch067
Abstract
Personal knowledge management (PKM) is a conceptual framework applicable to personal knowledge. It is about taking an individual responsibility towards one’s competencies in the community where one belongs, be it an enterprise, a professional group, an institution, a class, and so forth. PKM implies developing methods and skills in using software and hardware technologies specifically applied to knowledge. These ideas are capturing much attention and analysis, but there are no books about PKM. PKM is an emerging discipline that sometimes challenges the principles of KM (Knowledge Management), from which it descends. To understand PKM we need to consider first the concepts of knowledge and knowledge management. Some widely shared beliefs are the following: • Knowledge is so valued today that our society defines itself as a “ knowledge society”; • Knowledge management is not a technology or a software solution, it is a discipline; • We are able to make distinctions among different forms of knowledge, that is, explicit, tacit and implicit knowledge, and see their transformations.