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[Scott Jensen, assistant director for Information Services, MIT Corporate Relations, explains updates and innovations to the OCR Knowledgebase.]
Anyone at all familiar with the Institute knows that MIT has one of the largest and deepest pools of faculty talent and expertise ever assembled on one campus. While this is especially true in the areas of technology and economics, topics of interest to the MIT faculty cover a much wider range than what is seen at first glance. Specialties ranging from music, architecture, sociology, psychology, and history - to name a few - are all represented through the expertise of some portion of the MIT faculty and research staff. While much of this expertise is demonstrated by the many ongoing research projects, there is a great deal of additional knowledge and talent involving faculty and staff teaching, their consulting and involvement with startups and outside corporate interests, and even their hobbies and personal interests.
Trying to keep track of all of this knowledge and expertise has become no small task. With MIT faculty, scientists, and researchers involved in so many different areas of research, staying current with who's doing what and who is an expert in a specific field has become a very non-trivial goal. In order to make this a manageable task, about five years ago the Office of Corporate Relations developed a database of faculty expertise and research project information. Known as the OCR Knowledgebase, this database stores information about the faculty, the DLCs (department/lab/center), and the research projects on campus, and provides that information in various summary and detail report formats through a searchable interface. The Knowledgebase was originally developed to provide the Corporate Relations Officers with a tool to help them match faculty members and areas of research with outside corporate interests, but access to the Knowledgebase has since been opened up to the entire MIT community via the Web: http://knowledgebase.mit.edu/.
This Website is available to any client on the MIT network, and provides an interface that the MIT community can use to find such information as a faculty member's name, title, contact information, any DLCs with which they are affiliated, a brief overview of their educational and biographical history, and a description of their interests and expertise. It also contains references to news articles that involve the faculty member, as well as a list of any research projects for which the faculty member is the Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-Investigator (CI). People listed in the Knowledgebase include professors, lecturers, researchers, scientists, scholars, some graduate students, and even some staff members (over 4000 names). Basically, if the person is involved with research in some way, they should be listed in the Knowledgebase.
The section of the Knowledgebase that stores information regarding research projects on campus (often referred to as the RaMIT database) maintains data on each research project's affiliated DLCs, PIs and CIs, abstract, index terms, and other associated information. Information regarding each DLC (mostly a textual description and list of associated faculty) is also maintained in the Knowledgebase.
All of this information is maintained by a full-time administrator of the system, Ms. KC Klingensmith, who spends a great deal of time keeping the information in the Knowledgebase current, correct, and consistent. In addition, faculty are strongly encouraged to keep their own data up to date (see URL above). In the detail pages of both the faculty and RaMIT sections, there are buttons marked "Enter Update Mode." Clicking on these buttons will cause the current record information to be redisplayed in a form page. Once the user has updated the information on the page, he or she can submit the changes to the Knowledgebase, where it will be verified and entered into the production database.
The Knowledgebase system is always evolving, and that's certainly going to be the case in the next few months. As part of the development of a new office-wide information system currently underway, the Knowledgebase is going to be almost completely re-implemented. The graphical motif of the pages will be improved, more information will be maintained regarding the faculty, DLCs, and research projects (and in a much more structured format), and more report formats will be available as output options (such as faculty CVs – the number one requested enhancement to the system). Data stored in the Knowledgebase will also be reflected in the campus Data Warehouse, so other departments will be able to access this information using the standard query tools (Brioquery, etc.).
Our goal is to make the Corporate Relations Knowledgebase the one-stop-shopping solution for any and all faculty expertise and research information on campus. After the planned changes and improvements come to pass, we believe the new Knowledgebase will meet that goal. Both myself jensen@ocr.mit.edu and KC kc@ilp.mit.edu urge you to send us any questions, comments, or suggestions you have for the system. Hopefully, we can make the OCR Knowledgebase a tool worthy of the talent and expertise it reflects.
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