Knowledge Cartography; Software Tools and Mapping Techniques

Knowledge maps are ideal tools for capturing, organizing and extracting meaning from many different sources. They provide powerful graphic tools for classifying, representing and communicating information. This book discusses significant new research and explains its underlying principles in terms of Knowledge Cartography. With contributions from leading researchers and practitioners, it offers a rich variety of conceptual frameworks, mapping techniques and case studies.

Knowledge Cartography is the discipline of mapping intellectual landscapes. The focus of this book is on the process by which manually crafting interactive, hypertextual maps clarifies one s own understanding, as well as communicating it.

The authors see mapping software as a set of visual tools for reading and writing in a networked age. In an information ocean, the primary challenge is to find meaningful patterns around which we can weave plausible narratives. Maps of concepts, discussions and arguments make the connections between ideas tangible and disputable.

With 17 chapters from the leading researchers and practitioners, the reader will find the current state of-the-art in the field. Part 1 focuses on educational applications in schools and universities, before Part 2 turns to applications in professional communities, but with many cross-cutting themes:

• conceptual frameworks for understanding knowledge cartography
• visual languages, many of which work on both paper and with software
• specialist software, much of it freely available and open source
• case studies reflecting on successes and failures
• ways in which maps can be used both effectively and ineffectively
• examples of how to evaluate maps
• visit the website for updates on the field, and extra resources for each chapter:
  www.kmi.open.ac.uk/books/knowledge-cartography

Knowledge Cartography will be of interest to learners, educators, and researchers in all disciplines, as well as policy analysts, scenario planners, knowledge managers and team facilitators. Practitioners will find new perspectives and tools to expand their repertoire, while researchers will find rich enough conceptual grounding for further scholarship.