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From Information Architecture to Knowledge Architecture by Tom Reamy, Director, and Information Architect, Charles Schwab and Co., Inc. Borrowing a quote from Animal Farm, "IA good, KA better, IA good, KA better." Or, in less "sheepish" words, information architecture (IA) has added a dimension to corporate intranets that was lacking once those intranets grew beyond vanity press home page sites: the ability to find information at a reasonable cost in time and labor. As needed as information architecture is, however, knowledge architecture (KA) adds a dimension that will dwarf the cost savings and productivity gains achievable by information architecture. Unlike the Animal Farm 4 legs good, 2 legs better, KA doesn't replace IA, nor is it a political coup. Rather, KA rests squarely on a foundation of IA, and the better the IA, the better the KA that can be built upon it. Before we begin to discuss the evolution from IA to KA, we need to spend a little time on what the relationship of information and knowledge is. I recently gleaned a number of definitions of knowledge and came up with the following incomplete list: Knowledge is information
+ meaning.
I'm not going to try to add to the list, but if you examine it, you quickly realize that despite the differences, each statement says pretty much the same thing. There is an intuitive sense that knowledge is broader, deeper, and richer than data or information. In other words, knowledge is information + something. Again, I'm not going to try to define too precisely what that something is except to call the something extra, contexts. So knowledge becomes information + contexts. Which means that knowledge architecture is information architecture plus contexts. What kind of contexts?
I would like to discuss three major types: intellectual, personal, and
social or community contexts. Each of the three types has different implications
for the shift from IA to KA.
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