-------- Original Message -------- Subject: 'The Mapping of Knowledge' Date: Fri, 09 Apr 2004 10:26:04 -0700 From: Brian Bach <[log in to unmask]> ------------------ Fellow Listservers, I found this item in the 'Chronicle of Higher Education': Brian MAGAZINES & JOURNALS A glance at the April 6 issue of the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences": The mapping of knowledge As the sciences continue to advance into uncharted territory, a new discipline is following on their heels to create useful "maps" of knowledge. "Mapping knowledge domains" is the process of "charting, mining, analyzing, sorting, enabling navigation of, and displaying knowledge," say Richard M. Shiffrin, a professor of psychology, and Katy Boerner, an assistant professor of information science, both at Indiana University at Bloomington, in an introduction to a special issue. Knowledge maps could help researchers use and make connections with data from other disciplines that would have been unavailable or unwieldy to study under previous systems, they say. "The user will be able not only to visualize a few nearby trees in the forest of knowledge, but also to understand the entire landscape," they write. The 19 articles in the issue discuss techniques that, if they can be made to operate effectively, the authors predict, "may well change the way that science is conducted and the way the business of the world is carried out." The issue is available online for subscribers. Abstracts of the articles are available at http://www.pnas.org/content/vol101/suppl_1 Brian P. Bach Maps Specialist Documents/Maps Brooks Library Central Washington University 400 E. University Way Ellensburg, WA 98926-7548 USA [log in to unmask]