Knowledge retention plays an important role in combating organisational knowledge loss. However, some organisations, including mining companies, still lose organisational knowledge due to employees retiring, resigning, downsizing, attrition and so on. This leaves the companies with a shortage of qualified and senior, experienced employees to meet production needs, which has a negative impact on the running of the operational functions on a day-to-day basis. This qualitative study utilised the knowledge-retention model as a theoretical framework to investigate knowledge-retention strategies at a platinum mine in the North West province in South Africa. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 10 employees of the platinum mine in North West province who were chosen purposively, as well as organisational document review. The key findings revealed that although the mine has a knowledge-retention policy, some of the employees are not aware of its existence and there is no enough investment in knowledge-retention initiatives within the organisation. The study concludes by arguing that having knowledge retention policy, strategies and initiatives on paper but failing to implement is as good as not having it. The study recommends that management become involved, support knowledge-retention initiatives, and ensure that knowledge retention policy is implemented in the organisation. / Information Science / M.A. (Information Science)

Propõe-se na presente dissertação divulgar e apresentar à pesquisadoras e pesquisadores a organização da informação e a educação aberta, a plataforma Zotero, uma ferramenta de gestão de referências, por meio de oficinas e tutorial. Expor o contexto histórico de construção desta ferramenta, na perspectiva das humanidades digitais, mostrar sua utilização para coleta, organização, citação, formatação, compartilhamento e contextualização histórica do conhecimento.Como exemplo de organização da informação foi utilizada a coleção de documentos da Lélia Gonzalez, do Projeto Memória, assim como a disponibilização do tutorial para uso da plataforma Zotero como um Recursos Educacionais Abertos (REA). Os procedimentos metodológicos adotados, a partir da abordagem qualitativa e exploratória, do levantamento bibliográfico que compõe a fundamentação teórica, no aspecto comparativo das ferramentas de gestão de referências, Zotero e Mendeley e a escolha pela Zotero para a organização da coleção Lélia Gonzalez, refletem as perspectivas das humanidades digitais, assim como as perspectivas da educação aberta para a aplicação das oficinas à pesquisadoras e pesquisadores. / This dissertation intends to publicize and to present to researchers the organization of information and the open education, the Zotero platform, a tool for management of references, through workshops and tutorial. It also aims at exposing the historical context of the making of that tool, from the perspective of digital humanities, to show its use for collecting, organizing, citing, formatting, sharing and historical contextualization of knowledge. Lélia Gonzalez's collection of documents from “Projeto Memória” (Memory Project) was used as an example of organization of information, as well as the tutorial regarding the use of Zotero platform as an Open Educational Resource (OER). Based on the qualitative and exploratory approach of the bibliographic survey that composes the theoretical foundation, the methodological procedures adopted on the comparative aspect of the reference management tools, Zotero and Mendeley, and the choice by Zotero for the organization of Lélia Gonzalez collection reflect the perspectives of the digital humanities, as well as the perspectives of open education for the application of workshops to researchers.

Propõe-se na presente dissertação divulgar e apresentar à pesquisadoras e pesquisadores a organização da informação e a educação aberta, a plataforma Zotero, uma ferramenta de gestão de referências, por meio de oficinas e tutorial. Expor o contexto histórico de construção desta ferramenta, na perspectiva das humanidades digitais, mostrar sua utilização para coleta, organização, citação, formatação, compartilhamento e contextualização histórica do conhecimento.Como exemplo de organização da informação foi utilizada a coleção de documentos da Lélia Gonzalez, do Projeto Memória, assim como a disponibilização do tutorial para uso da plataforma Zotero como um Recursos Educacionais Abertos (REA). Os procedimentos metodológicos adotados, a partir da abordagem qualitativa e exploratória, do levantamento bibliográfico que compõe a fundamentação teórica, no aspecto comparativo das ferramentas de gestão de referências, Zotero e Mendeley e a escolha pela Zotero para a organização da coleção Lélia Gonzalez, refletem as perspectivas das humanidades digitais, assim como as perspectivas da educação aberta para a aplicação das oficinas à pesquisadoras e pesquisadores. / This dissertation intends to publicize and to present to researchers the organization of information and the open education, the Zotero platform, a tool for management of references, through workshops and tutorial. It also aims at exposing the historical context of the making of that tool, from the perspective of digital humanities, to show its use for collecting, organizing, citing, formatting, sharing and historical contextualization of knowledge. Lélia Gonzalez's collection of documents from “Projeto Memória” (Memory Project) was used as an example of organization of information, as well as the tutorial regarding the use of Zotero platform as an Open Educational Resource (OER). Based on the qualitative and exploratory approach of the bibliographic survey that composes the theoretical foundation, the methodological procedures adopted on the comparative aspect of the reference management tools, Zotero and Mendeley, and the choice by Zotero for the organization of Lélia Gonzalez collection reflect the perspectives of the digital humanities, as well as the perspectives of open education for the application of workshops to researchers.

Knowledge has always been a decisive factor of humankind's social evolutions. Collecting the world's knowledge is one of the greatest challenges of our civilization. Knowledge involves the use of information but information is not knowledge. It is a way of acquiring and understanding information. Improving the visibility and the accessibility of information requires to organize it efficiently. This thesis focuses on this general purpose.<p><p>A fundamental objective of computer science is to store and retrieve information efficiently. This is known as the dictionary problem. A dictionary asks for a data structure which allows essentially the search operation. In general, information that is important and popular at a given time has to be accessed faster than less relevant information. This can be achieved by dynamically managing the data structure periodically such that relevant information is located closer from the search starting point. The second part of this thesis is devoted to the development and the understanding of self-adjusting dictionaries in various models of computation. In particular, we focus our attention on dictionaries which do not have any knowledge of the future accesses. Those dictionaries have to auto-adapt themselves to be competitive with dictionaries specifically tuned for a given access sequence. <p><p>This approach, which transforms the information structure, is not always feasible. Reasons can be that the structure is based on the semantic of the information such as categorization. In this context, the search procedure is linked to the structure itself and modifying the structure will affect how a search is performed. A solution developed to improve search in static structure is the hotlink assignment. It is a way to enhance a structure without altering its original design. This approach speeds up the search by creating shortcuts in the structure. The first part of this thesis is devoted to this approach. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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Modeling the "thick description" of photographs began at the intersection of personal and institutional descriptions. Comparing institutional descriptions of particular photos that were also used in personal online conversations was the initial phase. Analyzing conversations that started with a photographic image from the collection of the Library of Congress (LC) or the collection of the Manchester Historic Association (MHA) provided insights into how cultural heritage institutions could enrich the description of photographs by using informal descriptions such as those applied by Facebook users. Taking photos of family members, friends, places, and interesting objects is something people do often in their daily lives. Some photographic images are stored, and some are shared with others in gatherings, occasions, and holidays. Face-to-face conversations about remembering some of the details of photographs and the event they record are themselves rarely recorded. Digital cameras make it easy to share personal photos in Web conversations and to duplicate old photos and share them on the Internet. The World Wide Web even makes it simple to insert images from cultural heritage institutions in order to enhance conversations. Images have been used as tokens within conversations along with the sharing of information and background knowledge about them. The recorded knowledge from conversations using photographic images on Social Media (SM) has resulted in a repository of rich descriptions of photographs that often include information of a type that does not result from standard archival practices. Closed group conversations on Facebook among members of a community of interest/practice often involve the use of photographs to start conversations, convey details, and initiate story-telling about objets, events, and people. Modeling of the conversational use of photographic images on SM developed from the exploratory analyses of the historical photographic images of the Manchester, NH group on Facebook. The model was influenced by the typical model of Representation by Agency from O'Connor in O'Connor, Kearns, and Anderson Doing Things with Information: Beyond Indexing and Abstracting, by considerations of how people make and use photographs, and by the notion of functionality from Patrick Wilson's Public Knowledge, Private Ignorance: Toward a Library and Information Policy. The model offers paths for thickening the descriptions of photographs in archives and for enriching the use of photographs on social media.