Divisions
Organization and Interoperability of Community Knowledge
Knowledge communities can exist on the network when there is a cooperative sharing environment for knowledge and information where everybody can be a provider, and, at the same time, a user of knowledge. Communities create much that can be utilized as information resources on the network.
This division promotes research and development of information technologies required for accumulating, sharing, and utilizing the information resources produced by network communities. Particularly, sharing of information resources and improvement of their mutual usability are a central research topic. To be concrete, research was conducted mainly on the themes of digital libraries utilized on the network and metadata technologies to support them.
Research was conducted on digital libraries to configure a sharing base for digital content access, such as the multilingual subject gateway. Research was conducted on metadata technologies as the key for improving mutual operability of digital libraries, such as metadata schema registries for accumulating and sharing metadata rules.
Formation and Representation of Community Knowledge
For effective transfer of knowledge in a knowledge community, how to express that knowledge is important. For example, though it is difficult to understand the knowledge containing polyphyletic contents, as can be seen in the example of three-dimensional CAD, accurate knowledge transfer will be possible by devising a method for expression. Therefore, this division will conduct studies for technologies and techniques to express such knowledge in an understandable manner, observe complex events visually, and develop a viewer that allows interactive operation.
Furthermore, members of a knowledge community possess varying levels of knowledge. When such a condition is assumed, a system that buffers the differences in intellectual levels is required to proceed smoothly with communications within the knowledge community. This division will conduct studies for the technologies and techniques that support formation of a community of varying knowledge levels, and develop a support system for professionals for transmitting information of scientific and technological knowledge to society.
Communication and Collaboration in Knowledge Communities
Research conducted on a network library supports knowledge communities mainly from the viewpoint of relations with society and communities. These can be considered in two ways: (1) research on behavior of knowledge transfer, such as community activities and formation and maintenance of knowledge communities, and (2) research on accumulation and organization of various types of information handled by knowledge communities. The first aims at clarifying the ideal way of knowledge transfer in various types of knowledge communities, as well as the social burden of each information service institute and the method for evaluating its functions.
The second aims at providing a framework that assures a quality higher than a certain level with regard to accumulation and organization of information through the analysis of knowledge schemes of metadata on the subject gateway.
This division handles a wide area concerning the element of ginformation transferh ranging from users consisting of community members to providers consisting of libraries and information service institutes and conducts sociological analysis.
Media and Technological Bases for Community Knowledge
For information technologies to develop, development of media materials is essential. This division conducts evaluation and research of media materials to promote the development of basic technologies as the environment to support the formation of knowledge communities. Network library media and ubiquitous library media are two basic technologies to be developed.
Network library media is aimed at developing high-speed and large-capacity recording media required for realizing a huge library function to effectively utilize a diversified and large-volume of information on the network. @Furthermore, evaluation of reliabilities will be made, including the integration of LSIfs and clarification of the deterioration mechanism of electronic media. For ubiquitous library media, evaluation will be made on media materials as basic technologies to achieve a comfortable and safe network environment where transactions of networks and information can be performed at any time, in any place, and by anybody.
In parallel with the evaluation research, researchers in this field will pursue the formation and development of knowledge communities that are open to society.