Small Knowledge Canvas: Software for Managing Fragmental Knowledge

Abstract

We propose a concept called “Small Knowledge” and a prototype system called “Small Knowledge Canvas” that enables users to collect and utilize fragmental knowledge, “Small Knowledge”. We find pieces of Small Knowledge in our daily life, such as a book that seems interesting, a phrase that might be used in ones writing, or a beautiful place to go. For the first step, though the concept is general, we limit the target for adopting this concept to the Web browsing environment. Small Knowledge can be regarded as an enhanced bookmark with personal context. We also propose a simple browsing model and context extraction algorithm for extracting personal context for Small Knowledge. Finally, we discuss the results of a user experiment of our prototype system.