Information Research Weblog

I managed to finish off Fuller's book on the Amsterdam trip. As Elena Maceviciute said in her review in Information Research, it is an interesting work. However, its subject is not related to the current 'knowledge management' fad, but to science and science research policy and the role of universities in public policy on science research. It also takes a position on the role of scientific publication and the various alternatives that exist in a world of electronic publishing. Peer review comes in for critical comment, as does Stephen Harnad's espousal of 'e-prints' as a way of ensuring readier and open access to the scholarly literature. Fuller also pays attention to the rise of expert systems, but here his treatment is very similar to that for 'knowledge management', to which I drew attention in the earlier message. That is, he gives very little support for the statements he makes about expert systems and, at times, he is simply wrong about them - for example, he claims:

Thus, although knowledge engineers have amassed a record of designing expert systems in medicine and psychiatry just as reditable as in librarianship and engineering, computerization has made greater inroads in the latter pair of weak professional fields.

He cites a 1987 reference in support of this, but I know of no expert systems in librarianship that have made any lasting impact on the field - although attention has been devoted to the possibility, especially in relation to cataloguing. Generally, in relation to expert systems, Fuller does not give supporting references or examples - another straw man built up to support a rather weak case.

All very interesting, but the newly appointed 'knowledge manager' in industry reaching for this book to discover what he is supposed to be doing is going to be disappointed.