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Full‐text documents are usually searched by means of a Boolean retrieval algorithm that requires the user to specify the logical relationships between the terms of a query. In this paper, we summarise the results to date of a continuing programme of research at the University of Sheffield to investigate the use of nearest‐neighbour retrieval algorithms for full‐text searching. Given a natural‐language query statement, our methods result in a ranking of the paragraphs comprising a full‐text document in order of decreasing similarity with the query, where the similarity for each paragraph is determined by the number of keyword stems that it has in common with the query. A full‐text document test collection has been created to allow systematic tests of retrieval effectiveness to be carried out. Experiments with this collection demonstrate that nearest‐neighbour searching provides a means for paragraph‐based access to full‐text documents that is of comparable effectiveness to both Boolean and hypertext searching and that index term weighting schemes which have been developed for the searching of bibliographical databases can also be used to improve the effectiveness of retrieval from full‐text databases. A current project is investigating the extent to which a paragraph‐based full‐text retrieval system can be used to augment the explication facilities of an expert system on welding.

This paper reports the findings of a study of knowledge management courses included in the curriculum of academic disciplines of business, computing, and information. Based on a review of course descriptions selected from Web sites of universities in different countries, the paper describes levels of courses, curriculum areas and topics, and differences in emphasis in teaching knowledge management courses in different departments and schools. It highlights the multidisciplinary nature of the curriculum and suggests a collaborative approach in designing and conducting KM education programs for providing a balanced coverage.

This paper considers the use of a hypertext system, GUIDE, for paragraph‐based searching in full‐text documents. Searching can be effected in GUIDE using both a conventional, word‐based approach and using the inter‐textual linkage facilities. The effectiveness of these retrieval techniques are evaluated by means of searches of three full‐text documents for which relevance data are available. The results of the searches are compared with those obtained from use of a nearest neighbour retrieval system that has been developed for the ranking of paragraphs within full‐text documents. The comparison suggests that the linkage facilities in hypertext do not provide a very cost‐effective mechanism for paragraph‐based retrieval.

Internet technology has advanced very rapidly over the last few years and a new trend in educational development for learning and teaching has emerged. Virtual Classroom is an online learning and teaching environment that facilitates the collaboration and integration of discussion forums, chat rooms, quiz management, lecture notes and assignment repositories, subscription services, relevant web links, e‐mail distribution lists and desk top video‐conferencing into a conventional lecturer‐based system.This paper reviews two existing modes of course delivery in a typical virtual classroom environment, namely synchronous communication and asynchronous communication, and presents a hybrid mode of delivery named near synchronous that adds to the conventional asynchronous technology the expressiveness and rapid recall of context of a synchronous delivery.The paper discusses the Singapore ‐MITAllianc (SMA) distance learning project and the current implementation of a virtual classroom in Nanyang Technological University.

With the advent of Internet technology and its rapid growth during the last few years, electronic commerce has become an increasing reality. While e‐commerce still constitutes a small part of many countries’ economies, it is seen by many as an opportunity to reduce cost and improve productivity. This is true, as many economies are transferring themselves into knowledge‐based economies, where information and innovation are the competitive instruments. Singapore as a small country with limited natural resources realized the importance of the new economy and the need to position itself as an information and knowledge hub in Asia. The government has taken an active role in the establishment of an e‐commerce infrastructure. The government’s vision is to build a premier service hub in the region with global orientation, and focusing on new high growth hub services. This paper reviews the development of e‐commerce in Singapore and studies its impact on the development of the information society in Singapore.

This study aims to identify the impact of intellectual capital (IC) on the bank’s performance using a cross-country approach with India and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries using the Skandia navigator model (SNM).

This study uses a mixed-methods research approach by taking financial and non-financial measures to assess the impact of the IC on the bank’s performance using the SNM. The study implies an analysis of the data from the top ten banks in India and twenty banks in GCC countries. The selection was done based on the volume of the bank’s business for three years (2019–2020, 2020–2021 and 2021–2022).

The research has three main findings: there is a positive impact of IC on the bank’s performance; amongst the factors of SNM, there is a direct impact of human capital and customer focus on the performance of the selected banks in both India and GCC countries; and the other factors of SNM such as structural capital and process focus, renewal and development focus also affect the selected banks.

The outcomes of the research may be useful for policymakers in India and GCC countries, as it identifies IC components that have a significant impact on the bank’s performance. This might enable them to develop policies that foster such factors, which, consequently, will improve the performance of the banks in the selected countries.

This study is an attempt to fill the gap in the existing literature on IC and bank’s performance for two different types of countries using the SNM.

Public libraries are incubators for collective action in the knowledge economy. As three case studies from the United States and Singapore demonstrate, public libraries can serve as influential champions that garner financial resources, communicate an urgent need for change, and respond to the unmet information and economic needs of marginalized individuals and communities. In the Raise Up Radio (RUR) case, public librarians engaged schools, museums, youth, and families in rural communities to develop and deliver STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) content over local radio stations. In collaboration with organizational partners, RUR librarians created a model for library-community-radio projects for the rural United States. In the What Health Looks Like (WHLL) case, public librarians engaged senior citizens in discussions of health and the creation of health comics. In partnership with an interdisciplinary health research team, WHLL librarians developed a pilot for library-community-public health projects aimed at information dissemination and health narrative generation. In the Singapore shopping mall libraries case, the National Library Board (NLB) created public libraries in commercial spaces serving working families, senior citizens, and the Chinese community. The NLB developed an exportable model for locating information centers in convenient, popular, and useful business spaces. These case studies demonstrate how libraries are nodes in the knowledge economy, providing vital services such as preservation of cultural heritage, technology education, community outreach, information access, and services to working families, small- and medium-size businesses, and other patrons. In the years to come, public libraries will be called upon to respond to shifting social norms, inequitable opportunities, emergencies and disasters, and information asymmetries. As the cases of RUR, WHLL, and the shopping mall libraries show, public librarians have the vision and capacities to serve as influential champions for collective action to solve complex problems and foster sustainable development and equitable participation in the knowledge economy.

This study seeks to investigate how a more lateral style of working, such as the Swedish model of management that reflects a more linear manner of managing organizational knowledge, is carried over and transferred to Swedish managed organizations in Singapore.

A total of 33 top‐level managers (23 Scandinavians and ten Asians) who worked in Swedish managed organizations in Singapore were interviewed for this study. It was necessary that the respondents were in top‐level management positions, the assumption being that it was their decisions and actions that steered the organization to its goals. The respondents were selected randomly and came from a variety of industry backgrounds.

The Swedish style of handling information and knowledge within the organization has proven more open, flexible and accessible than Singaporeans might initially expect or understand. This cultural difference of who gains access to timely information and who should use that information to make decisions, for example, first met with a lack of understanding and even inaction on the part of the Singaporeans and active measures are needed such as re‐structuring the organization or a constant communicative strategy by the Swedes to first make a change in direction in organization behaviour. This means that the organizations in this study, in keeping a high standard of employee satisfaction, get to retain, harvest and profit from their organization's knowledge base while enjoying a low turnover rate in human capital.

This study aims to take a complementary approach of exploring the Swedish management style via discourse analysis, with the transcribed long interview data sorted with the coding procedures adapted from grounded theory.