The enterprise knowledge dictionary

One of the difficulties in knowledge management is that knowledge sources are widely distributed and exist in many forms. Earl's taxonomy of knowledge management systems, particularly, the Technocratic school – Systems, Cartographic, and Engineering – is described to provide a context for discussing the different types of knowledge management systems. To support these different types of knowledge sources, we describe an Enterprise Knowledge Dictionary (EKD) and the supporting n-tier architecture that allows access to many types of knowledge though a common interface. The EKD provides a knowledge portal that allows the knowledge seeker to locate and access the various types of knowledge for a domain of interest from a single source. In addition to facilitating knowledge reuse, the EKD is used for evaluation and planning of knowledge management activities within the firm. An n-tier architecture that both optimizes knowledge management implementations and minimizes the load on transaction processing systems is outlined.