Preface for the Third Edition - Read

324 B. Concepts and Theories
display of access statistics for knowledge elements: the KMS displays the
numbers of accesses to certain knowledge elements and/or knowledge areas.
The participant can use this information, e.g., to get a feeling of how many
other participants have been interested in a topic or to detect trends.
After searching and navigating the knowledge space, knowledge presentation
comprises functions that support the presentation of search results and that visualize
the organization of knowledge elements, their structure and the relationships
between knowledge elements.
3. Presentation of relationships between knowledge elements before search:
three-dimensional visualization: this function uses three-dimensional models
to represent the organization of knowledge elements and their relationships.
Hyperbolic browsers use mathematical models to visualize three-dimensional
hierarchic structures on a two-dimensional medium (screen, paper). Examples
are the tools PersonalBrain (TheBrain Technologies) and InXight SmartDiscovery
(InXight) which help the participant to navigate through complex
knowledge structures and also handle the links from the leaves of the hyperbolic
tree to the actual knowledge elements,
integrated presentation of knowledge elements in knowledge maps: knowledge
maps are graphical representations of knowledge and its relation to organizational
concepts. Examples are maps about knowledge holders, knowledge
sources, knowledge structures, knowledge stocks, knowledge flows, knowledge
processes, knowledge application or competence cards. They are used to
visualize relationships between knowledge elements and their providers in an
organization (e.g., Eppler 1997, Probst et al. 1998, 107ff, Vogt 1998). With
this function, knowledge maps are integrated into the KMS and can be used in
the search for knowledge elements,
presentation of semantic closeness between knowledge elements (semantic
net): a number of tools use advanced text mining technology to analyze documents
and visualize the semantic relationships between the documents. An
example is the tool ThemeScape (Cartia) that clusters documents with similar
contents together with the distance between two documents visualizing their
semantic closeness. Themes are represented as “mountains” of documents,
presentation of access paths to knowledge elements/knowledge clusters: the
tool Answer Garden analyzes the paths (e.g., links in an Intranet’s web of
hypertext documents) which participants use to access knowledge elements.
These access paths are displayed as trails to knowledge elements. The more
participants have used a certain access paths, the more pronounced is the visualization
of the corresponding trail (“beaten tracks”),
4. Presentation of knowledge elements after the search (=search results):
ranking of knowledge elements: search results are presented in an order which
reflects either how closely they match the participant’s search term or the
“importance” of the knowledge element which might be calculated using criteria
such as publication date, number of links to this knowledge element