Managing contextual and structural knowledge in an online document repository.

Abstract

I suggest that knowledge in an online document repository can be classified along the dimension of content (knowledge codified within documents), structure (how documents relate to each other) and context (how documents are used). While much research in online document repositories has focused on content management, structure and context management have been largely ignored. My dissertation contains a series of manuscripts that study how to manage contextual and structural knowledge in electronic document repositories. To utilize contextual knowledge, I analyze knowledge workers' collective document activities and identify prominent topics, important documents on these topics, and topical trends in a document repository. To cultivate and utilize structural knowledge, I design systems that allow individuals or organizations to collaboratively organize documents into useful document structures. In the dissertation I design statistical techniques, algorithms and systems with theoretical underpinnings. Results show promise.