BUŘITA, Ladislav. Information Systems and Knowledge Systems – why is the gap so large? Advances in Decision Technology and Intelligent Information Systems, Volume IX, 2008, p. 36-40. ISBN 978-1-897233-26-9.
The motivation for writing this article stems from my personal findings. I devote myself to information systems (IS) on a long-term basis, and recently I have been concerned with knowledge systems (KS) as well. I have to admit that the approach to the knowledge subject matter steadily poses problems for me. Both fields seem to be close to each other, but in fact, in my opinion, they represent two separated problem areas so far, including different communities of interest. Though both communities originate from different environments, they use a similar conceptual system, which, however, in each of the communities means something variably different. IS specialists’ field of expertise includes software creation and databases and data structures designs, especially for business applications in an almost standardized environment. On the other hand, KS specialists obviously deal with texts in library science, organizing metadata, semantic web development, ontology elaboration, in particular as original research solutions, although a certain progress in standardization is noticeable. To illustrate the situation, an example from the conferences “Knowledge-2008” and “The World of Information Systems-2008” is given: it includes the composition of participants, published papers and themes discussed. An intelligent IS and an IS with knowledge infrastructure are examples of both IS and KS fields at conferences. The proposals for possible starting points connecting both fields are:
· to show actual benefits of knowledge approaches;
· to attract and engage industry;
· to develop common groups of interests;
· to organize conferences for both IS and KS.