Advanced document management through thesaurus-based indexing: the IKEM platform

Electronic thesauri have been identified as strategic instruments for indexing electronic documents (Miller et al, 1990; Salton, 1968). However, one of the main problems of using electronic thesauri, remains the creation and maintenance (Grefenstette, 1994). In this paper, we provide some basic steps towards a solution for this maintenance problem through the IKEM-platform by combining groupware-methods and knowledge-based indexing techniques. IKEM is a client/server-based environment based on two indexing engines which generate automatically keywords, concepts and relation-frames for any electronic document. We present in this paper the basic functions of this platform and illustrate the maintenance issues that are solved by synchronous and asynchronous co-operation tools which support annotation clustering. We end by indicating some future development plans. IKEM is currently patent pending.