Putting the word Information back into IT

On 17 September 2007, BCS-KIDMM held a ‘sharing and thinking’ day on knowledge, information & data management. About 90 people attended, from a wide range of backgrounds.

The event was recorded throughout, and we are currently seeing what kinds of output we can collect and share via this site — e.g. audio recordings, slide shows, supporting documents, hopefully even a full written account.

Visit the Mash-up Outputs page
 

Data, information resources and repositories of human knowledge — people and organisations increasingly gather, produce, manage, classify, index and access these with the aid of networked computer systems.

• Managing and exploiting information has become a leading application of computing technology – indeed perhaps the main consumer application – and has given rise to the terms ‘ICT’ and ‘informatics’.
• Computerised information leaves almost no human life, no scientific, industrial or government activity untouched.
• The whole topic area is fraught with complex sociopolitical issues of classification, authority and trust, privacy, usability, fitness for purpose, ethics etc.
• There are many knotty sociotechnical problems in planning information systems, capturing human expertise and knowledge, structuring unstructured information, building fast and scaleable systems, and ensuring information quality, workable standards, and the interoperability and archival durability of electronic data and information.

This is an issue that crosses specialisms:  within the British Computer Society we have discovered that a concern with the management of data, information and knowledge is common to a number of Specialist Groups (e.g. Data Management, Information Retrieval, Artificial Intelligence, Electronic Publishing to name but a few). And within the KIDMM project we have also learned to appreciate the old-established intellectual skills contributed by the disciplines of management, librarianship and the publishing industry, among others.

Why ‘MetaKnowledge Mash-up’ ?

MetaKnowledge:  In devising this event, we realised that what we were interested in was sharing our knowledge about managing knowledge (and data, metadata and information). Hence the coinage of ‘metaknowledge’...

A Mash-up for knowledge:  From an origin in Jamaican creole and the music industry, ‘mash-up’ has come to mean putting together data from different sources to produce a useful new resource. The aim of our event is to tear through the boundaries between different professional specialisms, and ‘mash-up’ the perspectives we carry from our own practice, to create something for the benefit of all. We hope to:

• identify issues of overwhelming public importance in information management
• uncover the key methodological problems, and promising solutions
• identify needs for educational and professional development in the field
• think about how to develop ongoing conversations on these topics within and between the relevant professional societies, communities of practice, academia and government, the media and the public at large.

Plans for the day

Presentations:  The day will start with a series of short presentations, which are being chosen to illustrate a diversity of information management issues and important fields of application in commerce, health and social services, science, librarianship, heritage, culture, education, media and government. Themes will include:

• making online search more productive
• data and text mining
• The pervasive role of metadata
• structuring the unstructured
• resource description methods
• categorisation through controlled vocabularies and formal taxonomies
• social tagging and ‘folksonomies’
• handling temporal and spatial data
• unambiguous electronic identity for things, documents and people
• ensuring data and information quality
• guaranteeing longterm preservation of digital information assets

Imagining the future of knowledge:  We will follow these presentations with structured discussions, looking at how Web 2.0 style social networking systems could foster effective online ‘knowledge communities’ and the development of shared and well-structured repositories of professional knowledge. In particular we want to think about how such systems can enrich the intellectual life and practical effectiveness of organisations and professional societies.

Finally, through a structured exercise, we will sketch out what we feel are the priority issues, and how to take discussion and action further forward – both within and beyond the BCS.

The programme for the day is intentionally fluid, but a list of expected presentations/contributions will be posted shortly.

Contact

Conrad Taylor, KIDMM project officer
(conrad@ideograf.demon.co.uk)  

I am happy to answer enquiries about KIDMM or the event.