Adopting an informational perspective towards knowledge work, this book investigates how enterprise portals can promote knowledge creation, distribution, and use. Moving beyond the design and delivery of portals as mere information retrieval tools, an enterprise portal is viewed as a shared information work space that can facilitate communication and collaboration among organizational workers, as well as support the browsing, searching, and retrieval of information content. Adopting an information vantage point, the book uniquely explores the human issues surrounding enterprise portal adoption and use, as well as the utilization of intelligent agents to ameliorate the use of portals for knowledge-based tasks. The result is a novel, rich and comprehensive discussion on the factors affecting the design and utilization of enterprise portals for knowledge work, suitable for both graduate-level students and organizational workers alike.

Foreword. Preface. 1: Portals and Knowledge Work. 1.1. Knowledge Work. 1.2. Knowledge Portals. 1.3. Information Behaviour. 1.4. Conclusion. 2: The Knowledge Portal Framework. 2.1.Introduction. 2.2. Expertise. 2.3. Barriers to Knowledge Portal Adoption and Use. 2.4. Knowledge Portal Implementations. 2.5. The Knowledge Portal Framework. 2.6. Research Investigation. 2.7. Conclusion. 3: Users and Knowledge Portals. 3.1. Introduction. 3.2. Knowledge Portal Case Study Results. 3.3. Knowledge Portals and Communities of Practice. 3.4. Knowledge Portal Adoption and Use. 3.5. A Participatory Design Approach to Knowledge Portals. 3.6. Conclusion. 4: The Information Environment and Knowledge Portals. 4.1. Introduction. 4.2. Information Environments. 4.3. Knowledge Portal Case Study Results. 4.4. Towards Healthy Information Environments. 4.5. Conclusion. 5: Information Design and Knowledge Portals. 5.1. Introduction. 5.2. What is Information Design? 5.3. Knowledge Portal Case Study Results. 5.4. Leveraging Information Design. 5.5. Supporting Browse and Search. 5.6. Conclusion. 6: Intelligent Agents and Knowledge Portals. 6.1. Introduction. 6.2. Intelligent Agents. 6.3. The Semantic Web. 6.4. Agent Toolkits. 6.5. Applications of Agents in Knowledge Portals. 6.6. An Agent Architecture for Knowledge Portals. 6.7. Conclusion. 7: Knowledge Portals and Digital Workers. 7.1. Summary of Chapters. 7.2. Meta-Analysis. 7.3. Research Directions and Final Words. References. Name Index. Subject Index.