Posted by Denham on June 17, 2001 at 08:32:46:

I'm not entirely sure it is knowledge we have in documents, or if it is, we need to consider the chances it becomes diluted (and corrupted?), and thus in need of revaldidation after we nterpret and filter what we read.

Working my way through some of the introductory stuff for Topic Maps (TM) and XTM, I came across some quotes I would like to share.

"Topic maps are a new ISO standard for describing knowledge structures and associating them with information sources. As such they consitiute an enabling technology for knowledge management. Dubbed "the GPS of the information universe", topic maps are also destined to provide powerful new ways of navigating large and interconnected corpora"

"A traditional index is in fact a map of the knowledge contained in a book"

"And if as one writer claims [Ruggles 97], "knowledge management covers three main knowledge activities: generation, codification and transfer", then topic maps can be regarded as the standard for codification that is the necessary prequisite for the development of tools that assist in the generation and transfer of knowledge".

"The ability to encode arbitrarily complex knowledge structures and link them to information assets indicates a major role for topic maps in the realm of knowledge management"

TAO of topic maps

IMO topic maps are a navigation tool, a representation for organizing information, perhaps topic maps can be considered the on-line equivalent of traditional indexes? They are a reification of key concepts in a document.

These quotes raise interesting questions around the role of reification in knowledge work. Reification is the process whereby we make abstract thoughts / concepts / ideas real by assigning more familiar properties, making attributations and analogies - is the map really the territory?

Does selecting, organizing and portraying key concepts from a document (as topic maps) really equal the knowledge contained in that document?

• Topic map notes

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