Dear All,

The issue of identifying and collating important facts, key concepts or cross-related topics within the reams of e-mail and other bumpf that I get is becoming a major problem.  Are members / readers aware of or can  refer me to any data / knowledge management or cognitive software that one can use to store, relate / link and manipulate "conceptual" information (Yes, I know, I can always use my brain, but ...)?  Big corporations use some pretty fancy software to process real-time data to see developing patterns in sales or production, but I was hoping that the academic community might have developed a smaller system for grouping and indexing conceptual information, identifying patterns of development in thinking about a subject, that could be used in decision making, learning, or implementation situations.  Banxia has a "decision-maker" type of software but its linking / indexing system is not transparent nor particularly robust.  Even "card index" software has potential for doing this if its cross-linking of concepts is good enough.  

And this brings me on to fuzzy searches.  In constructing "thesaurical" systems, we need to be aware that languages and word usage change.  We should not seek to create a new Tower of Babel or a type of Newspeak, but allow for conceptual and linguistic "creep" over time.  Of course, one would need an "audit trail" so to speak, but we should allow for the public to search on dialectical, mis-attributed, and possibly commonly misspelled terms.  For example, there may be a source, commonly known as coming from and attributed to an historical person, but actually a forgery by a later author.  Only experts would know the true author, but avocational enquirers might still refer to the commonly attributed author.  Similarly there was e-mail about "Belgian bricks" not so long ago which showed up the importance of local and vernacular terms.  Somebody might look up the Place-Names of England using either A H Smith or EPNS under the field of Author/Editor. Admittedly a little far-fetched perhaps, but I know that "poussins" (small chickens) are called "poussauds" by some people, so there may well be cases where an enquirer gives an inaccurate site name or archive name because that's what they heard it called by word of mouth (there would be patterns to this inaccurate reproduction of names, so we needn't include all inaccurate variations).  All good dictionaries include obsolete, archaic and corrupted versions of a word, so the thesaurus needs to take account of these linguistic processes, and allow for searches that are "off-target", at least to a limited extent. 

You should now be able to see my desire in getting some IT solution to linking terms, sources or ideas that have common understanding, but are expressed individually, locally, or dialectically.  

Cheers,
Neil