Knowledge Sharing Agents Over the World Wide Web

Abstract

Large and increasing amounts of information are now available both on the Internet and on corporate intranets. With the availability of these vast networked information resources comes a requirement for tools to manage the information and provide users with the information they want, when they want it.

This paper describes a system which facilitates and encourages the sharing of knowledge between groups of users within (or perhaps across) organisations. KSE (knowledge sharing environment) is a system of information agents for organising, summarising and sharing knowledge from a number of sources, including the World Wide Web, an organisation's internal intranet or from other users. Users are organised into closed user groups or communities of interest with related or overlapping interests. Such groups could be members of a project team, students studying the same subject (perhaps at different institutions), members of an organisational department, and so on. As well as sharing explicit (codified) knowledge, the sharing of tacit knowledge is encouraged via the automatic suggestion of, and support for, contact between people with mutual concerns or interests.