Information sharing system and computer program product for causing computer to support the information sharing system

Abstract

An information sharing system using a computer so as to allow a plurality of users to share disclosed information, the system comprising, input section for receiving responses to the disclosed information from references of the disclosed information, evaluation information generation section for totalizing and processing the responses to generate evaluation information and storing the evaluation information after correlating it with the disclosed information, and evaluation information notifying section for presenting the evaluation information generated by the evaluation information generation section.

Claims

What is claimed is:

1. An information sharing system using a computer so as to allow a plurality of users to share disclosed information, said system comprising:

an input section for receiving responses to the disclosed information from referencers of the disclosed information;

an evaluation information generation section for totalizing and processing said responses to generate evaluation information and storing the evaluation information after correlating it with said disclosed information; and

an evaluation information notifying section for presenting the evaluation information generated by the evaluation information generation section,

said evaluation information notifying section including a section for notifying a provider of said disclosed information of said evaluation information.

2. An information sharing system according to claim 1, wherein:

said evaluation information generation section includes a section for generating evaluation information on the disclosed information; and

said section for generating evaluation information on the disclosed information being adapted to obtaining information on a utility value of said disclosed information from said responses and generating said evaluation information for said disclosed information on the basis of the obtained information by totalizing and processing said information on the utility value.

3. An information sharing support system according to claim 2, wherein

said evaluation information generation section includes a section for weighting said utility value according to the attributes of the information referencer inputting an answer.

4. An information sharing support system according to claim 2, wherein

said evaluation information generation section includes an emotion recognizing section;

said emotion recognizing section comprising:

a dictionary of emotional expressions storage section having a dictionary of emotional expressions for correlating sentences and acts that may be contained in responses with specific emotions and storing them;

an emotion determining section for picking up sentences and acts representing emotions from the responses input by said referencers, determining the emotions of said referencers on the basis of said dictionary of emotional expressions stored in said emotional data storage section and generating evaluation information for the disclosed information on the basis of the determined emotions.

5. An information sharing support system according to claim 4, wherein

said emotion recognizing section includes a dialogue section;

said dialogue section being adapted to having a dialogue of questions and answers with said referencers;

said emotion determining section being adapted to for picking up sentences and acts representing emotions from the responses input by said referencers, determining the emotions of said referencers on the basis of said dictionary of emotional expressions stored in said emotional data storage section and generating evaluation information for the disclosed information on the basis of the determined emotions.

6. An information sharing support system according to claim 2, wherein

said evaluation information notifying section includes a section for notifying said evaluation data to the provider of said disclosed information according to the request of each referencer.

7. An information sharing support system according to claim 2, wherein

said evaluation information notifying section includes a section for notifying said evaluation data to the provider of said disclosed information according to the request of the provider of said disclosed information and that of a person with a predefined authority.

8. An information sharing support system according to claim 2, wherein

said evaluation information notifying section includes a section for presenting said evaluation information as information indicating the effectiveness of said disclosed information to each referencer referencing said disclosed information.

9. An information sharing support system according to claim 8, wherein

said evaluation information notifying section presents said evaluation information to each referencer referencing said disclosed information to a degree of detailedness that varies as a function of the attributes of the referencer.

10. An information sharing support system according to claim 2, wherein

said evaluation information notifying section includes a section for notifying the provider of said disclosed information only when the evaluation information generated on the basis of the utility value input for said disclosed information differs from the evaluation information accumulated before that time by a predetermined amount.

11. An information sharing support system according to claim 2 further comprising:

a detailed information input requesting section for requesting an input of detailed information on said utility value to the referencers who entered said responses when the evaluation information generated on the basis of the utility value contained in said responses differs from the evaluation information accumulated before that time by a predetermined amount.

12. An information sharing support system according to claim 2 further comprising:

a section for obtaining attribute information from the disclosed information and storing said disclosed information with said attribute information added thereto.

13. An information sharing support system according to claim 1, wherein

said evaluation information generation section has a section for generating evaluation information on the record of utilization of the information sharing system for each referencer;

said section for generating evaluation information on the record of utilization of the information sharing system for each referencer being so adapted to detect the utilization of the information sharing system on the basis of said responses and generate evaluation information on the record of utilization by totalizing the detections; and

said evaluation information notifying section has a section for notifying the referencer of said disclosed information of said evaluation information.

14. An information sharing support system according to claim 13, wherein

said section for generating evaluation information on the record of utilization of the information sharing system for each referencer includes a section for prompting said referencer to input incidents of utilization of said disclosed information.

15. An information sharing support system according to claim 13, wherein

said section for generating evaluation information on the record of utilization of the information sharing system for each referencer includes a section for weighting said record of utilization according to the attributes of said referencer.

16. An information sharing support system according to claim 1, further comprising:

a utilization conditions storage section for storing notifying conditions for notifying said responses to the information provider of the disclosed information;

said notifying conditions being modifiable only by said information provider; and

a response notifying section for notifying said information provider of any response meeting said notifying conditions.

17. An information sharing system using a computer so as to allow a plurality of users to share disclosed information said system comprising:

an input section for receiving additional information to be added to the disclosed information from a referencer of said disclosed information;

a semantic relationship specifying section for specifying a semantic relationship of said additional information relative to the disclosed information;

an additional information accumulation section for storing said additional information with the semantic relationship; and

an additional information presentation section for extracting said semantic relationship from said additional information accumulation section and presenting said additional information on the basis of the semantic relationship when presenting the disclosed information to an information referencer.

18. An information sharing support system according to claim 17, wherein

said semantic relationship specifying section includes:

a semantic relationship accumulation section for storing in advance predetermined semantic relationships; and

a semantic relationship determining section for analyzing said additional information and determining the semantic relationship of said additional information relative to said disclosed information by section of said semantic relationship accumulation section.

19. An information sharing support system according to claim 17, further comprising:

a section for interpreting the disclosed information for determining if said disclosed information represents an objective fact or a subjective view;

said additional information presentation section being adapted to display additional information having a semantic relationship of correction relative to said disclosed information if said disclosed information represents an objective fact at the time of displaying said disclosed information.

20. An information sharing support system according to claim 17, further comprising:

a section for determining the technical field of said disclosed information;

a section for determining the professional field of the referencer who has entered additional information relating to said disclosed information;

a section for determining by computation the reliability of said additional information on the basis of the technical field of said disclosed information and the professional field of the user who has entered the additional information; and

an additional information presentation control section for controlling the presentation of the additional information according to the semantic relationship between said additional information and said disclosed information and the reliability of said additional information.

21. An information sharing support system according to claim 17, wherein

said additional information presentation control section includes a section for individually controlling the presentation of the additional information to the information discloser and the information referencer according to the semantic relationship between said additional information and said disclosed information.

22. An information sharing support system according to claim 17, further comprising:

a determining section for determining if the disclosed information represents a question or not; and

a section for notifying the additional information to the provider of the disclosed information according to the semantic relationship between the disclosed information and the additional information if it is determined that the disclosed information represents a question.

23. An information sharing support system according to claim 20, wherein

said information presentation control section includes:

a section for presenting the additional information as authorized information if the referencer who has input said additional information has a predetermined authority depending on the technical field of said disclosed information.

24. An information sharing support system according to claim 23, wherein

said information presentation control section includes:

a section for notifying all the information referencers who have referenced the disclosed information provided with the authorized information of the fact that said authorized information is added or removed whenever such addition or removal occurs.

25. An information sharing support system according to claim 17, further comprising a section for requesting privileged users to input additional information to the disclosed information depending on the technical field of the disclosed information presented by said information presentation section.

26. An information sharing support system according to claim 17, further comprising:

a storage section for storing presentation conditions for said additional information; and

an additional information presentation control section for controlling the presentation of said additional information on the basis of the semantic relationship between said additional information and the disclosed information and the presentation conditions stored in said section when presenting the additional information.

27. An information sharing support system according to claim 26, further comprising

a section for receiving presentation conditions from persons having a predetermined authority for the information sharing support system and the information referencer who has input said additional information.

28. An information sharing support system according to claim 26, wherein

said presentation conditions include conditions for presenting the additional information depending on the attributes of the information referencer; and

said additional information presentation control section controls the presentation of said additional information according to the presentation conditions and the attributes of the information referencer.

29. An information sharing system using a computer so as to allow a plurality of users to share disclosed information, said system comprising:

a request input section for receiving and storing the requests of information requesters; and

a request particulars presentation section for analyzing the contents of the disclosed information when said information is registered by an information discloser and extracting requests related to the disclosed information from said request input section to present the requests to the information disclosure wherein

said request input section analyzes the particulars of said request, extracts keywords therefrom and stores said request as correlated with said keywords;

said request particulars presentation section retrieves request information by using said keywords as clues and presents it to the information discloser.

30. A computer program product for an information sharing system using a computer so as to allow a plurality of users to share disclosed information, said computer program product comprising:

a storage medium including a section for issuing commands to said information sharing support system including:

an input command for receiving responses from referencers of disclosed information;

an evaluation information generation command for generating evaluation information by summing up said responses correlating the evaluation information to said disclosed information and storing it; and

an evaluation information notifying command for presenting the evaluation information generated by the evaluation information generation section,

said evaluation information notifying command including a command for notifying a provider of said disclosed information of said evaluation information.

31. A computer program product according to claim 30, wherein

said evaluation information generation command includes a command for obtaining information on a utility value of said disclosed information from said responses and generating said evaluation information for the disclosed information on the basis of the obtained information by summing up and processing said information on said utility value.

32. A computer program product according to claim 31, wherein

said evaluation information generation command includes a command for weighting said utility value according to the attributes of the information referencer inputting an answer.

33. A computer program product according to claim 31, wherein

said evaluation information generation command includes an emotion recognizing command;

said emotion recognizing command comprising:

a dictionary of emotional expressions storage command having a dictionary of emotional expressions for correlating sentences and acts that may be contained in responses with specific emotions and storing them;

an emotion determining command for picking up sentences and acts representing emotions from the responses input by said referencers, determining the emotions of said referencers on the basis of said dictionary of emotional expressions stored in said emotional data storage command and generating evaluation information for the disclosed information on the basis of the determined emotions.

34. A computer program product according to claim 33, wherein

said emotion recognizing command includes a dialogue command;

said dialogue command being adapted to having a dialogue of questions and answers with said referencers;

said emotion determining command being adapted to for picking up sentences and acts representing emotions from the responses input by said referencers, determining the emotions of said referencers on the basis of said dictionary of emotional expressions stored in said emotional data storage command and generating evaluation information for the disclosed information on the basis of the determined emotions.

35. A computer program product according to claim 31, wherein

said evaluation information notifying command includes a command for notifying said evaluation data to the provider of said disclosed information according to the request of each referencer.

36. A computer program product according to claim 31, wherein

said evaluation information notifying command includes a command for notifying said evaluation data to the provider of said disclosed information according to the request of the provider of said disclosed information and that of a person with a predefined authority.

37. A computer program product according to claim 31, wherein

said evaluation information notifying command includes a command for presenting said evaluation information as information indicating the effectiveness of said disclosed information to each referencer referencing said disclosed information.

38. A computer program product according to claim 37, wherein

said evaluation information notifying command presents said evaluation information to each referencer referencing said disclosed information to a degree of detailedness that varies as a function of the attributes of the referencer.

39. A computer program product according to claim 31, wherein

said evaluation information notifying command includes a command for notifying the provider of said disclosed information only when the evaluation information generated on the basis of the utility value input for said disclosed information differs from the evaluation information accumulated before that time by a predetermined amount.

40. A computer program product according to claim 31, further comprising:

a detailed information input requesting command for requesting an input of detailed information on said utility value to the referencers who entered said responses when the evaluation information generated on the basis of the utility value contained in said responses differs from the evaluation information accumulated before that time by a predetermined amount.

41. A computer program product according to claim 31, further comprising:

a command for obtaining attribute information from the disclosed information and storing said disclosed information with said attribute information added thereto.

42. A computer program product according to claim 30, wherein

said evaluation information generation command has a command for generating evaluation information on the record of utilization of the information sharing system for each referencer;

said command for generating evaluation information on the record of utilization of the information sharing system for each referencer being so adapted to detect the utilization of the information sharing system on the basis of said responses and generate evaluation information on the record of utilization by totalizing the detections; and

said evaluation information notifying command has a command for notifying the referencer of said disclosed information of said evaluation information.

43. A computer program product according to claim 42, wherein

said command for generating evaluation information on the record of utilization of the information sharing system for each referencer includes a command for prompting said referencer to input incidents of utilization of said disclosed information.

44. A computer program product according to claim 42, wherein

said command for generating evaluation information on the record of utilization of the information sharing system for each referencer includes a command for weighting said record of utilization according to the attributes of said referencer.

45. A computer program product according to claim 30 further comprising:

a utilization conditions storage command for storing notifying conditions for notifying said responses to the information provider of the disclosed information;

said notifying conditions being modifiable only by said information provider; and

a response notifying command for notifying said information provider of any response meeting said notifying conditions.

46. A computer program product for an information sharing system using a computer so as to allow a plurality of users to share disclosed information, said computer program product comprising:

a storage medium including a section for issuing commands to said information sharing support system including:

an input command for receiving additional information to be added to the disclosed information from a reference of said disclosed information;

a semantic relationship specifying command for specifying a semantic relationship of said additional information relative to the disclosed information;

an additional information accumulation command for storing said additional information with the semantic relationship; and

an additional information presentation command for extracting said semantic relationship from said additional information accumulation command and presenting said additional information on the basis of the semantic relationship when presenting the disclosed information to an information referencer.

47. A computer program product according to claim 46, wherein

said semantic relationship specifying command includes:

a semantic relationship accumulation command for storing in advance predetermined semantic relationships; and

a semantic relationship determining command for analyzing said additional information and determining the semantic relationship of said additional information relative to said disclosed information by section of said semantic relationship accumulation command.

48. A computer program product according to claim 46, further comprising:

a command for interpreting the disclosed information for determining if said disclosed information represents an objective fact or a subjective view;

said additional information presentation command being adapted to display additional information having a semantic relationship of correction relative to said disclosed information if said disclosed information represents an objective fact at the time of displaying said disclosed information.

49. A computer program product according to claim 46, further comprising:

a command for determining the technical field of said disclosed information;

a command for determining the professional field of the referencer who has entered additional information relating to said disclosed information;

a command for determining by computation the reliability of said additional information on the basis of the technical field of said disclosed information and the professional field of the user who has entered the additional information; and

an additional information presentation control command for controlling the presentation of the additional information according to the semantic relationship between said additional information and said disclosed information and the reliability of said additional information.

50. A computer program product according to claim 46, wherein

said additional information presentation control command includes a command for individually controlling the presentation of the additional information to the information discloser and the information referencer according to the semantic relationship between said additional information and said disclosed information.

51. A computer program product according to claim 46, further comprising:

a determining command for determining if the disclosed information represents a question or not; and

a command for notifying the additional information to the provider of the disclosed information according to the semantic relationship between the disclosed information and the additional information if it is determined that the disclosed information represents a question.

52. A computer program product according to claim 49, wherein

said information presentation control command includes:

a command for presenting the additional information as authorized information if the referencer who has input said additional information has a predetermined authority depending on the technical field of said disclosed information.

53. A computer program product according to claim 52, wherein

said information presentation control command includes:

a command for notifying all the information referencers who have referenced the disclosed information provided with the authorized information of the fact that said authorized information is added or removed whenever such addition or removal occurs.

54. A computer program product according to claim 46, further comprising a command for requesting privileged users to input additional information to the disclosed information depending on the technical field of the disclosed information presented by said information presentation command.

55. A computer program product according to claim 46, further comprising:

a storage command for storing presentation conditions for said additional information; and

an additional information presentation control command for controlling the presentation of said additional information on the basis of the semantic relationship between said additional information and the disclosed information and the presentation conditions stored in said command when presenting the additional information.

56. A computer program product according to claim 55, further comprising

a command for receiving presentation conditions from persons having a predetermined authority for the information sharing support system and the information referencer who has input said additional information.

57. A computer program product according to claim 55, wherein

said presentation conditions include conditions for presenting the additional information depending on the attributes of the information referencer; and

said additional information presentation control command controls the presentation of said additional information according to the presentation conditions and the attributes of the information referencer.

58. A computer program product for an information sharing system using a computer so as to allow a plurality of users to share disclosed information, said computer program product comprising:

a request input command for receiving and storing the requests of information requesters; and

a request particulars presentation command for analyzing the contents of the disclosed information when said information is registered by an information discloser and extracting requests related to the disclosed information from said request input command to present the requests to the information discloser.

59. A computer program product according to claim 58, wherein

said request input command analyzes the particulars of said request, extracts keywords therefrom and stores said request as correlated with said keywords;

said request particulars presentation command retrieves request information by using said keywords as clues and presents it to the information discloser.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

In recent years, information can easily be transmitted to a large number of people as a result of the development of computer networks such as Internet. In such an environment, the intellectual productivity of the society at large may be improved rapidly and remarkably because the information disclosed by a person including his or her achievements, know hows and knowledge can easily be shared by many people. Therefore, disclosure of information has to be encouraged in the modern society.

However, with any of the existing systems, disclosure and utilization of information has not been effectively promoted so far. For example, while the number of times a particular piece of information has been accessed can be referenced in Internet, the evaluations given to it cannot be known to users. Therefore, users are not strongly motivated to access any particular piece of disclosed information to exploit its potential. In other words, there is a demand for means that can encourage users to access disclosed information and evaluate it for utilization.

In the field of communication using personal computers, a piece of information is often associated with a number of pieces of related information so that the user may access any of them. However, if there are too many pieces of information annexed to a specific piece of information, the user is more often than not left at a loss to single out the piece of information exactly he or she want to know. Thus, any existing information systems that can be shared by a number of users do not provide the user with an environment that makes him or her comfortable in retrieving disclosed information and exploit the potential it has.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

(Objects)

Thus, a first object of the present invention is to provide an information sharing system adapted to receive references' responses to the disclosed and uploaded information and generate evaluations for them by statistically processing the responses in order to encourage disclosure of information and promote the utilization of disclosed information in the information sharing system.

A second object of the invention is to provide an information sharing system adapted to feed back the evaluations given to a specific piece of disclosed information in order to give an incentive to the information discloser to further the disclosure of information.

A third object of the invention is to provide an information sharing system adapted to determining the degree of contribution of a specific user to the system on the basis of the frequency of access and the contents of the retrieved by the user and feeding it back to the user in order to give an incentive to the user to further the utilization of information.

A fourth object of the invention is to provide an information sharing system adapted to present any response to the disclosed information immediately to the information discloser once the notifying conditions provided by the information discloser are met in order to give an incentive to the information discloser to further the disclosure of information.

A fifth object of the invention is to provide an information sharing system adapted to improve the efficiency of utilizing disclosed information by controlling the presentation of additional pieces of information, if any, annexed to a particular piece of information on the basis of the semantic relationships (modification, addition, etc.) of the annexed information.

A sixth object of the invention is to provide an information sharing system adapted to control the presentation of annexed information as a function of information responders and other factors to make the utilization of information more adapted to circumstances.

A seventh object of the invention is to provide an information sharing system adapted to store users' questions and, once a piece of disclosed information matching one or more than one specific questions is registered, notifying the information discloser of the questions in order to improve the efficiency of utilizing disclosed information that matches specific questions.

An eighth object of the invention is to provide a computer program product that can achieve the above first through seventh object of the invention.

(1st aspect of the invention)

An information sharing system using a computer so as to allow a plurality of users to share disclosed information, the system comprising:

input section for receiving responses to the disclosed information from referencers of the disclosed information;

evaluation information generation section for totalizing and processing the responses to generate evaluation information and storing the evaluation information after correlating it with the disclosed information; and

evaluation information notifying section for presenting the evaluation information generated by the evaluation information generation section.

With an information sharing system having a configuration as described above, various evaluation data become available on the basis of the responses obtained for disclosed information, which may be fed back to the users of the information sharing system to promote the use of the system.

(2nd aspect of the invention)

According to a second aspect of the invention, in an information sharing system according to the first aspect,

the evaluation information generation section has section for generating evaluation information on the disclosed information;

the section for generating evaluation information on the disclosed information being adapted to obtain information on the utility value of the disclosed information from the responses and generate evaluation for the disclosed information on the basis of the obtained information; and

the evaluation information notifying section has section for notifying the provider of the disclosed information of the evaluation information.

With the above arrangement, the evaluation information on the utility value of the disclosed information is fed back to the discloser of the disclosed information for further utilization so that the discloser may have an incentive to further the disclosure of information and promote the use of the system.

(3rd aspect of the invention)

According to a third aspect of the invention, in an information sharing system according to the first aspect,

the evaluation information generation section has section for generating evaluation information on the record of utilization of the information sharing system for each referencer;

the section for generating evaluation information on the record of utilization of the information sharing system for each referencer being so adapted to detect the utilization of the information sharing system on the basis of the responses and generate evaluation information on the record of utilization by totalizing the detections; and

the evaluation information notifying section has section for notifying the referencer of the disclosed information of the evaluation information.

With the above arrangement, the record of utilization of the information sharing system can be evaluated for each user and fed back to the user so that the user may have an incentive to further the utilization of the information sharing system.

(4th aspect of the invention)

According to a fourth aspect of the invention, the information sharing system according to the first aspect further comprises:

utilization conditions storage section for storing notifying conditions for notifying the responses to the information provider of the disclosed information;

the notifying conditions being modifiable only by the information provider; and

response notifying section for notifying the information provider of any response meeting the notifying conditions.

With the above arrangement, the information discloser may be directly and selectively notified of the responses of information referencers according to the conditions provided in advance by the information discloser so that the information discloser may have an incentive to update the disclosed information.

(5th aspect of the invention)

According to a fifth aspect of the invention, there is provided a information sharing system using a computer so as to allow a plurality of users to share disclosed information, the system comprising:

input section for receiving additional information to be added to the disclosed information from a reference of the disclosed information;

semantic relationship specifying section for specifying a semantic relationship of the additional relative to the disclosed information;

additional information accumulation section for storing the additional information with the semantic relationship; and

additional information presentation section for taking out the semantic relationship from the additional information accumulation section and presenting the additional information on the basis of the semantic relationship when presenting the disclosed to an information referencer.

With an information sharing system having a configuration as described above, whenever there is provided additional information for the disclosed information, the presentation of the additional information can be controlled on the basis of the semantic relationship (modification, addition, etc.) of the additional information relative to the disclosed information so that the disclosed information may be utilized more efficiently along with the additional information.

(6th aspect of the invention)

According to a sixth aspect of the invention, an information sharing system according to the fifth aspect further comprises:

storage section for storing presentation conditions for the additional information; and

additional information presentation control section for controlling the presentation of the additional information on the basis of the semantic relationship between the additional information and the disclosed information and the presentation conditions stored in the storage section.

With the above arrangement, the additional information can be presented according to the semantic relationship between the additional disclosed and the disclosed information and controlled according to a different set of presentation conditions, which may be, for example the attributes of the information referencer so that the additional disclosed may be presented according to the circumstances of utilization of information and hence may be utilized more efficiently.

(7th aspect of the invention)

According to a seventh aspect of the invention, there is provided an information sharing system using a computer so as to allow a plurality of users to share disclosed information, the system comprising:

request input section for receiving and storing the requests of information requesters; and

request particulars presentation section for analyzing the contents of the disclosed information when the information is registered by an information discloser and taking out requests related to the disclosed information from the request input section to present the requests to the information discloser.

With an information sharing system having a configuration as described above, requests including questions from information requesters can be received and stored so that, when disclosed information that meets the requests is registered subsequently, the requests can be presented to the information discloser. Then, the user may reliably obtain the information he or she want from the information sharing system to promote the utilization of the system.

(8th aspect of the invention)

According to an eighth aspect of the invention, there is provided a computer program product that can be applied to a computer system to realize a information sharing system according to any of the first through seventh aspects of the invention.

Additional object and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The object and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by section of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERAL VIEWS OF THE DRAWING

The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of the specification, illustrate presently preferred embodiments of the invention, and together with the general description given above and the detailed description of the preferred embodiments given below, serve to explain the principles of the invention.

FIG. 1 is a schematic block diagram showing the configuration of a first embodiment of information sharing support system according to the invention.

FIGS. 2A and 2B show examples of disclosed information stored in the disclosed information storage section.

FIG. 3 shows an exemplary image on the display screen of the information registration section.

FIG. 4 shows an exemplary image on the display screen of the information registration section, where information is being registered.

FIGS. 5A and 5B show exemplary images on the display screen of the information referencing section.

FIGS. 6A and 6B show exemplary images on the display screen of the evaluation input section.

FIGS. 7A, 7B, 7C and 7D show exemplary images of disclosed information on the display screen.

FIG. 8 is an exemplary image of classified evaluations on the display screen.

FIG. 9 is an exemplary image of a graph representing the evaluations on a piece of disclosed information on the display screen.

FIG. 10 is an exemplary image of a list of evaluations on a piece of disclosed information on the display screen.

FIG. 11 is an exemplary image of personal evaluations on the display screen.

FIG. 12 is a flow chart for a processing operation of the evaluation notifying section.

FIG. 13 is another flow chart for a processing operation of the evaluation notifying section.

FIGS. 14A and 14B are exemplary images on the display screen of the additional information registration section.

FIGS. 15A and 15B are exemplary images of a piece of disclosed information having additional information on the display screen of the information referencing section.

FIG. 16 is an exemplary image of additional information accumulated in the additional information accumulation section.

FIG. 17 is a chart showing exemplary semantic relationships that can be accumulated in the semantic relationship accumulation section.

FIG. 18 is a flow chart for a processing operation of the presentation procedures control section.

FIGS. 19A and 19B show exemplary images on the display screen of the additional information notifying section for a modification request, where a user (referencer of disclosed information) is entering a "modification request" for a piece of disclosed information.

FIGS. 20A and 20B show exemplary images on the display screen of the additional information notifying section for a modification request. In FIG. 20A, the information discloser is being notified of the modification request, whereas, in FIG. 20B, the user is requested to modify the additional information.

FIGS. 21A and 21B show exemplary images on the display screen of the additional information notifying section for an addition request. In FIG. 21A, the information discloser is being notified of the addition request, whereas, in FIG. 21B, the user is requested to add something to the additional information.

FIG. 22 is a flow chart for a processing operation of determining by calculation the reliability of the additional information.

FIGS. 23A and 23B are examples of terms (classified terms, synonyms) accumulated in the dictionary/terms accumulation section.

FIG. 24 is an example of described profiles accumulated in the profile accumulation section.

FIGS. 25A and 25B are examples of terms (objective expressions, subjective expressions) accumulated in the dictionary/terms accumulation section.

FIG. 26 is a flow chart of a processing operation of the information contents comprehension section.

FIG. 27 is a schematic block diagram showing the configuration of a second embodiment of information sharing support system according to the invention.

FIG. 28 is a schematic block diagram showing a configuration of the emotion recognizing section.

FIG. 29 is a schematic block diagram showing another configuration of the emotion recognizing section.

FIG. 30 is a flow chart for a processing operation of the emotion recognizing section.

FIGS. 31A and 31B are exemplary images of the display screen of the information referencing section.

FIGS. 32A and 32B show part of the dictionary of emotional expressions.

FIGS. 33A and 33B are exemplary images showing two possible dialogues between the system and an information referencer on the display screen.

FIG. 34 is a flow chart of another processing operation of the emotion recognizing section.

FIG. 35 is a flow chart of still another processing operation of the emotion recognizing section.

FIG. 36 is a schematic block diagram showing still another configuration of the emotion recognizing section.

FIG. 37 shows an exemplary list of referenced histories accumulation in the reference history accumulation section.

FIG. 38 is an exemplary image on the display screen of the information referencing section of a third embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 39 is an exemplary image on the display screen of the information referencing section of a fourth embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 40 is another exemplary image on the display screen of the information referencing section.

FIG. 41 is a schematic block diagram of a fifth embodiment of information sharing support system according to the invention.

FIG. 42 is a block diagram illustrating the information sharing support system of FIG. 28 in greater detail.

FIG. 43 is a chart illustrating how data flow among a plurality of information sharing support systems.

FIG. 44 is a chart of ramified retrieving keywords that can be stored in the information storage section.

FIGS. 45A, 45B and 45C show examples of retrieving keywords and related information.

FIG. 46 is a structured list of personal categories that can be stored in the user information storage section.

FIGS. 47A, 47B and 47C are exemplary personal categories.

FIG. 48 is an exemplary piece of annexed information that can be stored in the information storage section.

FIG. 49 is a list of utilization notifying conditions that can be stored in the utilization notifying condition storage section.

FIG. 50 is a chart illustrating utilization notifying conditions that can be used for the purpose of the invention.

FIGS. 51A, 51B and 51C are exemplary pieces of user information that can be stored for the purpose of the invention.

FIG. 52A, 52B, 52C and 52D are exemplary pieces of stored user information.

FIG. 53 is a flow chart for a processing operation for information retrieval/presentation in the information sharing support system of FIG. 28.

FIG. 54 is a flow chart for a processing operation of information registration/addition/edition in the information sharing support system of FIG. 28.

FIG. 55 is a flow chart for a processing operation of the evaluation of utilization notifying conditions in the information sharing support system of FIG. 28.

FIG. 56 is an exemplary piece of stored user information.

FIG. 57 shows an exemplary image on the information retrieving method window.

FIG. 58 shows an exemplary image on the information display window.

FIG. 59 shows an exemplary image on the information registration window.

FIG. 60 is an exemplary list of evaluations on utilization notifying conditions.

FIG. 61 is an exemplary image on the annexed information registration window and the annexed information editing window.

FIG. 62 shows an exemplary image that can be displayed for warning to an attempt to alter the name of an information provider on the annexed editing window of FIG. 48.

FIGS. 63A, 63B and 63C are exemplary pieces of information that can be registered in the information sharing support system of FIG. 28.

FIG. 64 shows an exemplary image on the utilization notifying window for notifying an information provider of how the disclosed information provided by the information provider has been utilized by other people.

FIG. 65 shows an exemplary image on the editing window for utilization notifying conditions.

FIGS. 66A and 66B show exemplary images on the information registration window that are displayed initially for an information editing operation.

FIG. 67 shows an exemplary image on the new information preparation window.

FIG. 68 shows an exemplary image on the utilization notifying conditions editing window for a new information preparing operation.

FIG. 69 shows an exemplary image on the information retrieval window for retrieving referenced information when editing existing information.

FIG. 70 shows an exemplary image on the referenced information editing window displayed when editing existing information.

FIGS. 71A, 71B and 71C are other exemplary pieces of information that can be registered in the information sharing support system of FIG. 28.

FIG. 72 shows an exemplary image that can be displayed on the referenced information editing window when referencing other information.

FIG. 73 is an exemplary piece of information generated by processing referenced information on the referenced information editing window.

FIGS. 74A and 74B are respective exemplary pieces of annexed information and utilization notifying information generated by processing referenced information on the referenced information editing window.

FIG. 75 is a block diagram of another information sharing support system according to the invention.

FIG. 76 is a block diagram of a sixth embodiment of information sharing support system according to the invention.

FIGS. 77A and 77B are still other exemplary pieces of disclosed information that can be accumulated in the disclosed information accumulation section.

FIG. 78 is an exemplary utilization history accumulated in the utilization history accumulation section.

FIG. 79 shows an exemplary image on the display screen for retrieving/referencing information by way of the information referencing section.

FIG. 80 shows another exemplary image on the display screen for retrieving/referencing information by way of the information referencing section.

FIG. 81 shows an exemplary image on the display screen for registering a utilization case by way of the utilization case registration section.

FIG. 82 shows an exemplary image on the display screen for referencing a utilization case by way of the utilization case reference section.

FIG. 83 shows another exemplary image on the display screen for referencing a utilization case by way of the utilization case reference section.

FIG. 84 is a flow chart of a processing operation of the utilization record evaluation section.

FIG. 85 shows an exemplary image on the display screen for displaying personal and overall utilization records by way of the utilization record evaluation notifying section.

FIG. 86 shows an exemplary image on the display screen for displaying a "personal" utilization records by way of the utilization record evaluation notifying section.

FIG. 87 is an "overall" utilization records by way of the utilization record evaluation notifying section.

FIGS. 88A, 88B show exemplary images on the display screen illustrating statistics on the utilization of disclosed information obtained on the bases of the utilization histories and the utilization cases accumulated in the utilization history accumulation section.

FIG. 89 is a block diagram of still another information sharing support system according to the invention.

FIG. 90 is a block diagram of a seventh embodiment of information sharing support system according to the invention.

FIG. 91 is a flow chart of a processing operation of the seventh embodiment of information sharing support system.

FIG. 92 is a flow chart for a registration processing procedure.

FIG. 93 is a flow chart for another registration processing procedure.

FIG. 94 is an exemplary interface for information registration.

FIG. 95 is another exemplary interface for information registration.

FIG. 96 is a still another exemplary interface for information registration that can be used for presenting and selecting candidate keywords.

FIG. 97 is an exemplary interface for presenting and correlating pieces of information that resemble a registered piece of disclosed information.

FIG. 98 is an exemplary interface for notifying a registered piece of disclosed information to the person who registered the information.

FIG. 99 is a flow chart for an information retrieval processing procedure.

FIG. 100 is a flow chart for an evaluation input processing procedure.

FIG. 101 is an exemplary interface for an information retrieving operation.

FIG. 102 is another exemplary interface for an information retrieving operation, prompting the operator to specify a retrieval keyword.

FIG. 103 is a still another exemplary interface for an information retrieving operation.

FIG. 104 is a further exemplary interface for an information retrieving operation, prompting the operator to specify a specific piece of information from the displayed candidates when a number of pieces of information can be retrieved.

FIG. 105 is an exemplary interface for presenting the user information provided with summarized evaluations.

FIG. 106 shows an exemplary image on the display screen displaying summarized evaluations.

FIG. 107 shows another exemplary image on the display screen displaying summarized evaluations.

FIG. 108 is an exemplary interface for an evaluation input.

FIG. 109 is an exemplary interface for a detailed evaluation input.

FIG. 110 shows an exemplary image on the interface screen, prompting the user to input the reason for the evaluation input by the user.

FIG. 111 shows an exemplary image on the interface screen, notifying an evaluation made on a piece of disclosed information to the registered discloser of the information.

FIG. 112 shows an exemplary image on the interface screen for an information referencing operation of the seventh embodiment of information sharing support system.

FIG. 113 shows an exemplary image on the interface screen, displaying the result of a retrieving operation performed on the basis of a question in the natural language.

FIG. 114 shows an exemplary image on the interface screen, displaying the result obtained by specifying one of the items displayed by the processing operation of FIG. 100.

FIG. 115 shows an exemplary image on the evaluation display window that can be displayed when evaluation "obsolete" is specified in the evaluation input menu of FIG. 101.

FIG. 116 shows an exemplary image on the interface screen that can be displayed when registering a piece of disclosed information.

FIG. 117 shows an exemplary image on the interface screen of the information registration section, notifying the user of a registered piece of information with annexed keywords.

FIG. 118 shows an exemplary image of a piece of information added to disclosed information on the display screen.

FIG. 119 shows an exemplary image of the retrieval window for hierarchically referencing disclosed information according to predetermined classifications.

FIG. 120 is a schematic block diagram of an eighth embodiment of information sharing support system according to the invention.

FIG. 121 is a flow chart for a processing operation conducted in an information sharing support system of FIG. 107.

FIG. 122 is a table of contribution points that can be referenced when determining by calculation the contribution information of a user operation by the contribution information generation section.

FIG. 123 is a flow chart for a processing operation for determining by calculation the contribution information of a user's operation by the contribution information generation section.

FIG. 124 is an example of contribution information that can be accumulated in the contribution information accumulation section.

FIG. 125 shows an exemplary image on the contribution information display window displaying contribution information.

FIG. 126 is a schematic block diagram of a ninth embodiment of information sharing support system according to the invention.

FIGS. 127A and 127B show exemplary images on the information retrieval/presentation screen of an information referencer terminal in a dialogue between the information referencer and the system.

FIGS. 128A and 128B show exemplary images on the information retrieval/presentation screen of an information referencer terminal in a dialogue between the information referencer and the information discloser.

FIGS. 129 shows an exemplary image for dialogue history on the display screen of the information discloser terminal, while the agent is disclosing information.

FIG. 130 is a flow chart for a processing operation of the ninth embodiment of information sharing support system.

FIG. 131 is a flow chart for a processing operation (information retrieval/presentation/dialogue history display) of the ninth embodiment of information sharing support system.

FIG. 132 is a flow chart for a dialogue history display processing operation at the information discloser terminal.

FIGS. 133A, 133B and 133C are examples of profile data that can be accumulated in the profile accumulation section.

FIG. 134 is a schematic block diagram of a tenth embodiment of information sharing support system according to the invention.

FIGS. 135A and 135B are exemplary pieces of disclosed information accumulated in the disclosed information accumulation section.

FIG. 136 shows an exemplary image on the user interface screen of the information registration section.

FIG. 137 shows an exemplary image on the user interface screen, specifying the disclosure conditions of additional information by the registerer of the disclosed information.

FIGS. 138A and 138B show exemplary images on the user interface screen for registering additional information.

FIG. 139 is a table of data that can be stored in the additional information accumulation section fore correlating the disclosing conditions and the evaluations on the disclosing conditions with the disclosed information and the additional information.

FIG. 140 is a flow chart for a processing operation of judging if a piece of additional information can be disclosed or not.

FIG. 141 is a flow chart for a processing operation of controlling the operation of judging if a piece of additional information can be disclosed or not.

FIG. 142 shows exemplary pieces of information accumulated in the disclosed information accumulation section of an eleventh embodiment of information sharing support system according to the invention.

FIG. 143 shows an exemplary image on the user interface screen for retrieving/referencing information by way of the information referencing section.

FIG. 144 shows an exemplary image on the display screen telling the result of an information retrieving operation.

FIG. 145 shows an exemplary image on the display screen illustrating the retrieved disclosed information.

FIG. 146 is a flow chart for a processing operation of the additional information registration section.

FIG. 147 shows an exemplary image on the display screen of the additional information registration section that can be displayed at the time of information registration.

FIG. 148 shows another exemplary image on the display screen of the additional information registration section that can be displayed at the time of information registration.

FIG. 149 shows still another exemplary image on the display screen of the additional information registration section that can be displayed at the time of information registration.

FIG. 150 shows still another exemplary image on the display screen of the additional information registration section that can be displayed at the time of information registration.

FIG. 151 shows an exemplary image on the display screen that can be displayed when the answer to a question is registered in the additional information registration and the related users are notified of the answer.

FIG. 152 shows exemplary data that can be accumulated in the disclosed information accumulation section.

FIG. 153 shows exemplary data that can be accumulated in the semantic relationship accumulation section.

FIG. 154 shows exemplary additional information that can be accumulated in the additional information accumulation section.

FIG. 155 is a flow chart for a processing operation in the information referencing section.

FIG. 156 shows exemplary data that can be accumulated in the profile accumulation section.

FIG. 157 shows an exemplary image on the display screen of the additional information notifying section, showing additional information.

FIGS. 158A and 158B show exemplary images on the display screen, showing additional information being registered in the additional information registration section.

FIG. 159 shows an exemplary image on the display screen, showing additional information being notified by the additional information notifying section.

FIG. 160 shows an exemplary image on the display screen of the information referencing section, showing disclosed information.

FIG. 161 is a schematic block diagram of a twelfth embodiment of information sharing support system according to the invention.

FIG. 162 is a schematic block diagram of a twelfth embodiment of information sharing support system according to the invention and having a modified configuration.

FIG. 163 is a schematic block diagram of a twelfth embodiment of information sharing support system according to the invention and having another modified configuration.

FIG. 164 is a flow chart for a processing operation of the twelfth embodiment of information sharing support system.

FIG. 165 is a flow chart for another processing operation of the twelfth embodiment of information sharing support system.

FIG. 166 shows an exemplary image on the display screen for an input operation displayed to an accessing user by way of the input section.

FIG. 167 shows an exemplary result of morpheme analysis at the input analysis section.

FIG. 168 shows an exemplary table of grammatical rules that can be used for syntax analysis at the input analysis section.

FIG. 169 shows an exemplary list of keywords of a keyword dictionary that can be used for input analysis by the input analysis section.

FIG. 170 shows an exemplary table of conceptual system that can be used for the keyword dictionary of FIG. 61.

FIGS. 171A and 171B show exemplary images on the display screen of the data retrieval section illustrating results obtained by a retrieval operation.

FIGS. 172A and 172B show exemplary images on the display screen displayed when additional retrieval conditions are requested for the result of a retrieval operation by the data retrieval section.

FIG. 173 shows another exemplary images on the display screen of the data retrieval section illustrating a result obtained by a retrieval operation.

FIGS. 174A and 174B show exemplary images on the display screen that can be displayed when the result of a retrieval operation is fruitless.

FIG. 175 shows another exemplary image on the display screen that can be displayed when the result of a retrieval operation is fruitless.

FIG. 176 shows an exemplary table of input sentences (for fruitless retrieval operations) and related retrieval formulas to be stored in the question storage section.

FIG. 177 shows another exemplary table of input sentences (for fruitless retrieval operations) and related retrieval formulas to be stored in the question storage section.

FIG. 178 shows still another exemplary table of input sentences (for fruitless retrieval operations) and related retrieval formulas to be stored in the question storage section.

FIG. 179 shows still another exemplary table of input sentences (for fruitless retrieval operations) and related retrieval formulas to be stored in the question storage section.

FIG. 180 shows still another exemplary table of input sentences (for fruitless retrieval operations) and related retrieval formulas to be stored in the question storage section.

FIG. 181 shows still another exemplary table of input sentences (for fruitless retrieval operations) and related retrieval formulas to be stored in the question storage section.

FIG. 182 shows an exemplary image on the display screen, asking the user who has input a question if he or she wants to record it or not.

FIG. 183 shows an exemplary image on the display screen, asking the user who has input a question, if he or she want to be notified of the answer obtained for the question or not.

FIG. 184 shows an exemplary image on the display screen, asking the user who has input a question, in case when no answer is obtained for the answer, if he or she want to be notified of the fact.

FIG. 185 shows an exemplary image on the display screen, displaying the result of an information retrieval operation performed in response to a request of a user.

FIG. 186 shows an exemplary image on the display screen that can be displayed when requesting registration of a piece of information by way of the input section.

FIG. 187 shows an exemplary image on the display screen for a registration operation.

FIG. 188 shows an exemplary table of input sentences and related retrieval formulas to be stored in the question storage section that can be displayed when sorted according to the reappearing ratio and the applicability ratio.

FIG. 189 shows an exemplary image on the display screen displaying questions relating to a piece of information being registered.

FIG. 190 shows another exemplary image on the display screen displaying questions relating to a piece of information being registered.

FIG. 191 shows an exemplary image on the display screen that can be displayed when sentences are registered as information.

FIG. 192 shows another exemplary image on the display screen that can be displayed when sentences are registered as information.

FIG. 193 shows an exemplary image on the display screen for voice registration.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Now, the present invention will be described by referring to the accompanying drawing that illustrates preferred embodiments of the invention. In view of the large number of views contained in the drawing, the leading one, two or three digits of the reference symbols denoting the components refer to the respective numbers allocated to the views in order to clarify the correspondence between the components and the related views.

First Embodiment

(Configuration)

FIG. 1 is a schematic block diagram of a first embodiment of information sharing support system according to the invention.

Referring to FIG. 1, the information sharing support system 1 comprises an information registration section, an information referencing section 3, an evaluation information processing section 4 and an additional information processing section 5.

The information registration section 2 operates to accumulate documents describing disclosed information including personal knowledge and know hows along with computer software and images in the disclosed information accumulation section 6.

The information referencing section 3 operates to retrieve and reference information from the information accumulated in the disclosed information accumulation section 6 in response to the request of a user, or an information referencer, other than the information discloser. The information referencing section 3 accumulates the reference history of the disclosed information in the reference history accumulation section 7 after correlating it with the disclosed information accumulated in the disclosed information accumulation section 6.

Upon receiving an evaluation on the disclosed information from the information referencer, the evaluation information processing section 4 operates to process the evaluation. The evaluation information processing section 4 comprises an evaluation input section 8, an evaluation section 9, an emotion recognizing section, an evaluation notifying section 11 and an input/output section 25.

The evaluation input section 8 operates to receive evaluations to the disclosed information input by the information referencer who has accessed the information.

The evaluation section 9 operates to retrieve the information disclosure records from the disclosed information accumulation section 6 and information referencing records from the reference history accumulation section 7 and totalize the evaluations input into the evaluation input section 8. The result obtained by the operation of the evaluation section and the identification information on a referencer and his or her evaluation on the disclosed information input into the evaluation input section 8 are correlated to the disclosed information and accumulated in the reference history accumulation section 7.

The emotion recognizing section 10 operates to recognize the emotion of the information referencer to the disclosed information on the basis of the data input by the information referencer consciously or unconsciously. The emotion recognized by the emotion recognizing section 10 is then input into the evaluation section 9 as a satisfaction point given to the referenced information by the information referencer.

The evaluation notifying section 11 operates to take out the evaluations correlated to the disclosed information and stored in the reference history accumulation section 7 to notify the information discloser and authorized persons thereof.

On the other hand, the additional information processing section 5 operates to manage the information (additional information) added to the disclosed information by the information referencer. The additional information processing section 5 comprises an additional information registration section 12, a presentation procedure control section 13, a presentation procedure strategy section 14, an additional information notifying section 15, an additional information accumulation section 16, an information contents comprehension section 17, a dictionary/terms accumulation section 18, a semantic relationships accumulation section 19 and a profiles accumulation section 20.

The additional information registration section 12 operates to receive and process additional information including "additions", "corrections" and "comments" input for the disclosed information referenced by way of the information referencing section. The additional information processed by the additional information registration section 12 is accumulated in the additional information accumulation section 16. The data relating to the semantic relationship between the disclosed information and the additional information (e.g., "addition", "correction", etc.) are accumulated in the semantic relationships accumulation section 19.

The presentation procedure control section 13 operates to control the method of presenting additional information according to the instruction of the presentation procedure strategy section 14 when presenting the additional information to the information referencing section 3.

The information contents comprehension section 17 operates to check the contents of the disclosed information to see if the information comprises an objective fact or a subjective view and specify the technical field of the disclosed information. The dictionary/terms accumulation section 18 operates to accumulate terms including keywords necessary for the information contents comprehension section 17 to check the contents of the information.

The profiles accumulation section 20 operates to accumulate professional profiles of individuals and groups. The information contents of the information contents comprehension section 17 and the individual and group profiles accumulated in the profiles accumulation section 20 are referenced when the presentation procedure strategy section 14 determines the reliability of the additional information.

The additional information notifying section 15 operates to notify the information discloser of the fact that additional information is added to the disclosed information.

The input/output section 25 is connected to each of the above processing sections so that the user may input any necessary information and information may be displayed to the user. The information sharing support system 1 is connected to one or more than one information sharing support systems 1 by way of said input/output section 25 and a network. Thus, the information sharing support systems 1 on the network and mutually connected with each other can communicate with each other by way of the respective input/output sections 12 to access any disclosed information accumulated in the other systems.

While FIG. 1 shows a system that can be accessed for disclosed information by some other information sharing support system 1 by way of a network, it may alternatively be implemented as a stand alone system. That is, such an information sharing support system may be so arranged that both information providers and information referencers can access it. Note that an information sharing support system 1 may simply be referred to as a terminal in the following description.

(Registration and Retrieval of Information)

FIGS. 2A and 2B shows examples of disclosed information stored in the disclosed information accumulation section 6. Referring to FIG. 2A, each piece of information includes an information identification number 21, attributes 22 and an attribute value 23. The attribute may be expressed in terms of classification and category such as title, discloser, date of disclosure, knowhow, software, picture, topic, related information, keyword, contents, reference history and so on.

FIG. 2A shows an exemplary knowhow. In the disclosed information shown in FIG. 2A, the title is a lecture meeting holding procedure, the discloser is Taro Yamada, the date of disclosure is Oct. 1, 1995, the category is knowhow, the classification is visitor services, the related information is how to write a letter of request (information ID#200) and a list of scholars (information ID#350), the keywords are lecture, visit, professors and agenda and the contents are (1) through (7) as listed there.

The reference history describes reference history per individual in the form of file ID# and includes/log /#24, /log/#38 and /log/#105.

FIG. 2B shows an example of disclosed information which is computer software. According to the information, the title is a budget control program, the discloser is Momoko Yoneyama, the date of disclosure is Oct. 1, 1995, the category is software, the classification is budget control service, the related information is a list of issued requests for arrangement, the keywords are budget, scheduled procurements and overtime, the contents are program file /etc/yosan_kanri and the reference history includes /log/#60, /log/#62 and /log/#120.

Now, the processing operation of inputting a piece of disclosed information through the information registration section 2 will be described.

FIG. 3 shows an exemplary image on the user interface screen provided by the information registration section 2.

The information registration window 31 comprises a main screen 32 and a control panel 33.

The control panel 33 has a "specify classification" button 34 for specifying the classification of the information to be registered. Classification is one of the attributes of the information stored in the disclosed information accumulation section 6 and refers to the operational classification or the information category to which the information belongs. The disclosed information is accumulated in the disclosed information accumulation section 6 when a classification is assigned to the disclosed information by the information discloser to correlate it to the classification.

More specifically, as the information discloser depresses the "specify classification" button on the control panel 33, a conceptual image of the classification system to which the information is correlated is displayed on the main screen 32 typically in a hierarchical form as shown. Then, the information discloser can correlate the disclosed information to one or more than one classification by selecting one of the classification items displayed on the window 32.

The "input information" button 35 on the control panel is used to switch the interface to the mode for inputting disclosed information. As the information discloser depresses the "input information" button 35 on the control panel 33, the main screen 32 is switched to show an image for prompting an information input.

FIG. 4 shows an exemplary image on the display screen on the information registration window 31 that can be used when the information discloser inputs information in the form of text.

More specifically, the information discloser inputs the title, the category, the format and the contents of the information he or she is going to disclose. The discloser may input the contents directly or, alternatively, by specifying a specific file that has already been edited and referencing to the contents of the file. Note that information that can be registered in the disclosed information accumulation section 6 is not necessarily in the form of text. The information discloser can register information in the form of a still picture, movie, speech or program by specifying a file name. A plurality of pieces of information may share a common file when such a file is specified by the information discloser.

Now, the operation of retrieving/referencing the disclosed information accumulated in the disclosed information accumulation section 6 by way of the information referencing section will be described.

FIGS. 5A and 5B show exemplary images on the user interface that can be used for retrieving/referencing information.

Referring to FIG. 5A, the information retrieval window 51 comprises a main screen 52 and a control panel 53. The user specifies the information to be retrieved by section of the "specify classification" button and the "specify keyword" button on the control panel 53. For example, as the "specify classification" button is depressed, a conceptual chart illustrating the information classification system is displayed on the main screen 52 so that the user can select the classification he or she wants.

After specifying a classification and a keyword, the information referencer depresses the "execute retrieval" button 55 on the control panel 53. Then, a set of pieces of information relating to the specified classification and keyword will be retrieved. When more than one pieces of information are retrieved, their titles are displayed on in the information referencing section as a list of titles so that the user may select one of the pieces of information he or she want to reference from the title list.

In FIG. 5A, a title list having a plurality of information titles is displayed on the main screen 52.

In FIG. 5B, the information retrieved by selecting its title is actually displaced on the main screen.

(The Role of the Evaluation Information Processing Section 4)

Now, an embodiment adapted to evaluate disclosed information by section of the evaluation information processing section 4 will be described.

With this embodiment, the information referencer can input an evaluation on the information he or she has referenced by using the information referencing section 3 by way of the evaluation input section 8. Referring beck to FIG. 5B, when the "evaluation input" button 57 is depressed on the control panel 56, the screen shows an image for an evaluation input operation so that the information referencer can input his or her evaluation on the referenced information.

It may be so arranged that, if the information referencer selects the "end" button 58 without entering his or her evaluation, the evaluation input screen is automatically selected to prompt the information referencer to input his or her evaluation.

For an evaluation input operation, an image as shown in FIG. 6A appears firstly. The screen shows on the evaluation input window 61 a button 62 for selecting the evaluation input mode and three buttons 63 of "good", "medial" and "bad" as expressed by respective face marks for approximate evaluation to be selected by the user. Thus, the user may select the button 62 if he or she wants to enter his or her evaluation in a detailed way. Otherwise, the user may select one of the three buttons 63 of "good", "medial" and "bad" particularly if he or she does not want spend much time for the input operation.

Thus, every information referencer will give a rating to the information he or she referenced as simple evaluation buttons 63 are provided.

Alternatively, a message 64 for prompting the user to enter his or her evaluation may be displayed so that each and every information referencer may give a rating to the information he or she referenced.

FIG. 6B shows an exemplary image that may be displayed on the detailed evaluation input screen when the "detailed evaluation input" button 62 in FIG. 6A is selected. The information referencer can give numerical ratings to the listed respective items such as effectiveness, reusability and recommendability to others or enter his or comment other than numerical values. The entered evaluation is then stored in the reference history accumulation section 7.

The information discloser may be directly notified of the entered evaluation typically by electronic mail if the button 65 "notification to those who registered" is depressed. Then, the information discloser can quickly become aware of the response to the disclosed information by seeing the comment sent to him or her by electronic mail so that he or she may be motivated to provide additional information, upgrade the original information or disclose a different piece of information.

Now, the operation of notifying the information discloser of the obtained evaluations will be described by referring to the flow chart of FIG. 12.

Assume that an information discloser wants to know the evaluations given to the information disclosed by him or her. Firstly, the information discloser retrieves all the pieces of information registered by him from the disclosed information accumulation section 6 (Step S1) and makes them displayed on the screen as a list (Step S2).

FIGS. 7A through 7D show exemplary images that may be shown at this step.

In FIG. 7A, reference numeral 71 denotes "list of disclosed information items display window". A list of disclosed information items will be displayed by selecting one of the buttons 72 of "classification, "keyword" and "category". If, for example, the button "classification" is selected, the classification system used therein is graphically displayed as shown in 3. Then, by selecting a specific classification, a list of information items relating to the selected classification will be displayed. For example, if the classification of "updated information" is specified, an image 73 as shown in FIG. 7B will appear. If, on the other hand, the classification of "business-related" is specified, an image 74 as shown in FIG. 7C will appear. If, finally, the classification of "software" is specified, an image 75 as shown in 7D will appear.

Then, the information discloser can see a list of all the pieces of information he or she has disclosed along with the evaluations give to it.

For example, assume that the button "list of evaluations" 76 is selected in FIG. 7D (Step S3), all the evaluations given to the pieces of disclosed information listed on the screen will be displayed (Step S4).

FIG. 8 is an exemplary image of classified evaluations shown on the display screen. In FIG. 8, reference numeral 81 denotes a window for showing a classified evaluation list. In this example, evaluations given to the disclosed information classified as "updated information" are displayed. More specifically, approximate evaluations that have been input by section of the buttons 63 in FIG. 6 are shown in a graphic form to the right of the titles 82. The number of face marks for each title refers to the number of times the information with that title is referenced. Thus, the information discloser can grasp an approximate summary of the evaluations give to the information disclosed by him or her by seen the face marks.

If the information discloser wants to see a more detailed outcome of the evaluations given to the information disclosed by him or her, the detailed information display button 84 should be selected (Step S5) in FIG. 8. Then, a submenu 85 is displayed and if "graph display" is selected there, a graph representing the evaluations given to a selected title will be shown.

FIG. 9 is an exemplary image of a graph representing the evaluations on a piece of information and displayed on the display screen. The information discloser can select one of the indexes 91 including "effectiveness", "reusability" and "recommendability to others". Then, the evaluations relating to the selected index are totalized and the values obtained by section of an evaluation function for the selected index are displayed in the form of graph 92 as shown in FIG. 9.

If "list of evaluations" is selected here, the display now proceeds to show detailed evaluations. Note that any of the titles shown in FIGS. 7A through D may also be used to proceed to the next step (Step S6).

Then, in Step S7, the reference history of the selected information will be retrieved and the referencers and their evaluations will be displayed on the basis of the reference history (Step S8).

FIG. 10 is an exemplary of a list of evaluations given to a piece of disclosed information shown on the display screen.

Referring to FIG. 10, the ID codes 101 of the referencers (which may be, for example, log-in names or mail addresses) are listed with the evaluations 102 given by them and expressed in numerical values obtained by using an evaluation function in the descending order of the evaluation values 102.

Then, the information discloser may select an information referencer by shading it as shown to look into the detail of his or her evaluation (FIG. 11). For example, if "per individuals" button is depressed (Step S9), the detail of the evaluations of the selected information referencer is displayed (Step S10).

FIG. 11 is an exemplary image of personal evaluations that can be made by an information referencer and shown on the display screen. It contains the ID code 111 of the information referencer, the indexes to be selected in FIG. 9 for totalizing the evaluations and the values given by the information referencer 112 and the comment 113 given by the information referencer. Then, the information discloser can see the extent to which the information disclosed by him is effective and reusable to the information referencer. Additionally, the information discloser can read the comment of the information referencer to fully understand what the information referencer has in mind about the disclosed information. Thus, the information discloser can get useful suggestions that may be useful for expanding and/or improving the disclosed information and disclosing other pieces of information.

If "information on referencer" button 114 is selected (Step S11), the profile of the information referencer including the vocation is displayed (Step S12). Then, the information discloser may be able to understand to what types of people the disclosed information is useful.

It may be so arranged that an authorized person, who may be a manager and authorized to see the evaluations given to the disclosed information, is notified of the evaluations broken down into the information disclosers. FIG. 13 is a flow chart for such an operation.

Referring to FIG. 13, the disclosed information registered by the information discloser is retrieved from the disclosed information accumulation section 6 by operating a given display window (Step S20) so that the evaluations on the information discloser may be referenced and the total point is then initialized ([0]) (Step S21). Thereafter, a reference history identification number is taken out of the reference history accumulation section 7 (Step S22) and the evaluation data are taken out from the corresponding file (Step S23).

Then, an evaluation value is determined by referring to the evaluation data and a predetermined evaluation table (Step S24), which is added to the total point (Step S25). Steps S22 through S25 will be repeated until the above operation is completed for all the reference histories (Step S26) and the determined total point is notified as the outcome of the evaluations (Step S27).

Thus, the manager can see the evaluations given to each of the information discloser to improve the management of the disclosed information.

(How Additional Information is Processed)

Now, the operation of processing additional information by section of the additional information processing section 5.

In this system 1, an information referencer can input additional information for the information he or she has referenced by way of the information referencing section 3. FIGS. 14A and 14B are exemplary images on the interface screen provided by the additional information registration section 22.

Referring to FIG. 14A, the information referencer selects the presentation zone 141 to which he or she want to provide additional information by depressing the menu button of the mouse. Then, a menu as indicated by 142 will be displayed. Then, the information referencer may select "correction" from the menu 142. Then, additional information registration window 143 will be displayed as shown in FIG. 14B. Now, the information referencer inputs his or her name (the name of the registerer of additional information) 144 and the content of the additional information 145 on the additional information registration window 143 and, thereafter, selects the registration button 146. Thus, the input additional information is registered. Conversely, if the cancel button 147 is selected, the registration of the additional information is canceled and the additional information input mode will be terminated.

FIGS. 15A and 15B are exemplary images shown on a display screen displaying a piece of disclosed information that is provided with additional information. In FIG. 15A, a piece of additional information 151 is added to and laid on the disclosed information of FIG. 14A to cover the latter. Such an arrangement is particularly useful when the disclosed information is part or the company regulations so that the user should and can see the update in the form of additional information.

If additional information is provided in the form of other than correction, the piece of disclosed information 152 provided with additional information is highlighted as in FIG. 15B so that the type of the additional information 153 may be displayed by depressing the menu button of the mouse after selecting the highlighted zone.

FIG. 16 is an exemplary image of additional information accumulated in the additional information accumulation section 16. As seen from FIG. 16, a piece of additional information can be constituted by an information ID number 161, attributes 162 and an attribute value 163. The attributes include the title, the registerer, the data of registration and the contents. FIG. 16 shows the additional information added in FIGS. 14A and 14B and including "procedure for applying for nursery leave" as title, "Natsuki Hasegawa" as registerer, "Dec. 6, 1996" as date of registration and the contents of the additional information.

As shown in FIG. 17, the semantic relationship between disclosed information and additional information may be defined in terms of an information ID number 171, a disclosed information ID number 172, an additional information ID number 173, a flag 174 indicating that the disclosed information describes an objective fact or a subjective view and a semantic relationship 175 showing if the additional is "addition", "correction", "request for addition" relative to the disclosed information.

Now, the information presentation procedure for cases where additional information is provided to disclosed information will be described by referring to the flow chart of FIG. 18.

Firstly, the information referencing section 3 displays the disclosed information selected by the procedure illustrated in FIG. 5 (Step S1). Then, the processing will be terminated if the disclosed information is not checked for any additional information added thereto (Step S2). If the disclosed information has additional information, the information referencing section 3 obtains the semantic relationship between the additional information and the disclosed information from the semantic relationship accumulation section 19 to check the semantic relationship (Step S3).

If the semantic relationship is "correction" (Step S4), the information contents comprehension section 17 checks if the disclosed information represent an objective fact or not by referring to the dictionary of terms of the dictionary/terms accumulation section 18. Alternatively, if the disclosed information represents an objective fact or not may be checked and registered in a predetermined field of the semantic relationship accumulation section 19 by the registerer of the additional information when he or she registers the additional information by referencing the disclosed information. If such is the case, the information referencing section 3 or the presentation procedures control section 13 determines if the disclosed information represents an objective fact or not by referring to the semantic relationship accumulation section 19.

If it is determined that the disclosed information represents an objective fact (Step S5), the information contents comprehension section 17 determines by calculation the reliability of the additional information and, if "1" is obtained to show that the additional information is reliable (Step S6), the presentation procedures control section 13 lays the additional information on the disclosed information for display (Step S7). This is because, if a piece of reliable correcting information is added to the disclosed information representing an objective fact, the users have to be provided with the update. FIG. 15A illustrates such an example. On the other hand, if the semantic relationship is "correction" but the disclosed information does not represent an objective fact and/or the additional information shows a low reliability, the additional information may not necessarily have to be presented to the users so that only the fact that the disclosed information is provided with additional information will be displayed as in FIG. 15B. Note that, in FIG. 15B, the semantic relationship of the additional information is "addition" and "request for addition".

Alternatively, the reliability of the additional information may be determined by calculation when the information referencer registers the additional information by referring to the disclosed information and registered in a predetermined field in the semantic relationship accumulation section 19. If such is the case, the presentation procedures control section 13 only refers to the semantic relationship accumulation section 19 in Step S9.

On the other hand, if it is determined in Step S4 that the semantic relationship is not "correction" but "request for correction" or "request for addition" (Step S9, Step S10), a request for the supply of information will be presented (Step S11). Firstly, a request for the supply of information will be placed with information discloser and, if the information discloser is not able to provide additional information, the users are requested for the supply of information by section of electronic new and/or electronic mail.

If the semantic relationship not "request for correction" nor "request for addition", only the fact that the disclosed information is provided with additional information will be displayed (Step S8).

FIGS. 19A and 19B show exemplary images on the display screen, where an information referencer inputs "request for correction" to a piece of disclosed information. The information referencer selects the information for which a request for correction is placed and selects "request for correction" in menu 191 in the screen of FIG. 19A. Then, as shown in FIG. 19B, an additional information input window 192 is displayed so that the information referencer can input the details of the request for correction.

FIG. 20A shows an exemplary image where the additional information notifying section 15 notifies the information discloser of the request for correction input by section of the screen of FIG. 19B. Note that the registerer 201 in the additional information input window of FIG. 20A is the information discloser.

FIG. 20B shows an exemplary image where general users are requested to correct the additional information. If "request for correction" is selected from the menu 191 in FIG. 19A, the additional information input window 202 of FIG. 20B is displayed.

FIG. 21A shows an exemplary image for notifying the information discloser of a "request for addition" of additional information made to the disclosed information. FIG. 21B shows an exemplary image that can be used to request general users to add additional information. An additional information input window 211 as shown in FIG. 21B may be displayed when "request for addition" is selected from the menu 153 of FIG. 15B.

If the registration button is selected in any of the additional information input windows of FIGS. 19A, 19B, 20A, 20B, 21A and 21B, the additional information is registered in the semantic relationship accumulation section 19. More specifically, the ID number of the additional information and the ID number of the referenced disclosed information are registered. As shown in FIG. 17, the semantic relationship 175 between the additional information and the disclosed information and the graph 174 illustrating the result of determining if the referenced disclosed information represents an objective fact or a subjective view will also be registered.

Now, the processing operation of determining the reliability of the additional information in the presentation strategy section 9 in Step S6 of FIG. 18 will be described by referring to the flow chart of FIG. 22.

The information contents comprehension section 17 identifies the technical field to which the disclosed information belongs as determined by referring to the dictionary of terms in the dictionary/terms accumulation section 18, said disclosed information being provided with additional information, to substitute the variable A with it (Step S21).

Then, the technical field is identified by referring to the profile of the registerer of the additional information accumulated in the profile accumulation section 20 to substitute the variable B with it (Step S22). Then, it is checked if A and B are equal to each other or not (Step S23). If they are equal to each other, "1" will be given to the reliability (Step S24). If not, "0" will be given to the reliability (Step S25).

FIGS. 23A and 23B show examples of terms accumulated in the dictionary/terms accumulation section 18. The dictionary of terms is referenced in the processing step of Step S21 in FIG. 22 and divided into a dictionary of a classification system and a dictionary of synonyms.

FIG. 23A shows examples of terms classified by way of global classification 231, medial classification 232 and minute classification 233. For each basic concept 234, a plurality of keywords 235 that can be used for describing the basic concept 235 are listed on the right side. For example, keywords "accident" and "non-accident" are listed for basic concept "duty".

FIG. 23B shows examples of synonyms. More specifically, a plurality of synonyms 237 are listed for each basic word 236. For example, "short distance" is listed as synonym of basic term "short distance trip".

Inclusion is also used for terms. For example, basic term "transportation" is defined to include the concepts of a plurality of terms 238 such as "train", "bus", "private car" and "aircraft". Note that the basic concept 234 of FIG. 23A has a corresponding basic term 236 in FIG. 23B.

When the technical field of a piece of disclosed information is checked, a basic term may be selected from the terms contained in the disclosed information by referring to FIG. 23B and then a corresponding basic concept may be selected from the classification system of FIG. 23A.

FIG. 24 shows an example of described profiles accumulated in the profile accumulation section 20. A personal profile typically comprises the name 241 of the person or the name of the group to which the person belongs, the attribute 242 and the attribute 243 and an attribute value 244.

Reference numeral 244 denotes the attribute of the professional field of the person and the attribute value shown there corresponds to the basic concept 234 of FIG. 23.

If the basic concept of the professional field obtained for the information discloser as shown in FIG. 23 agrees with the basic concept of the personal professional field obtained for the registerer of the additional information as described in FIG. 24, "1" will be given to the reliability of the additional information.

Now, the operation of determining if the disclosed information represents an objective fact or a subjective view will be described. Note that the obtained result will be accumulated in the semantic relationships accumulation section 19 of FIG. 25 as flag.

FIG. 25 is an example of terms accumulated in the dictionary/terms accumulation section 18 that can be referenced to determine if the disclosed information represents an objective fact or a subjective view. The dictionary of terms used here contains a table of expressions for describing objective facts as shown by (a) in FIG. 25 and a table of expressions for describing subjective views as shown by (b) in FIG. 25. Thus, individual expressions 252 and expressions 254 are registered in the dictionary.

The information contents comprehension section 17 checks the contents of the disclosed information by referring to the tables as shown by FIG. 25A and 25B.

FIG. 26 shows a flow chart for the processing operation of the information contents comprehension section 27.

Firstly, it takes out the type of information from the disclosed information accumulation section 6 (Step S31). Types of information include documents containing personal knowledge and know hows and computer software. Documents are classified into a group of report papers including papers and reports and a group of know hows describing personal knowledge and information in a non-formatted manner.

Assume here that only knowhows are checked for the type of information. Knowhows refer to personal knowledge and information and include objective facts such as regulations of a company. Thus, it is checked if the disclosed information represents a "knowhow" or not (Step S32).

If it is determined that the disclosed information represents a know how, the contents of the disclosed information will be checked. In other words, it is checked if the expressions for describing the selected disclosed information are those for describing an objective fact or not by referring to the tables of the dictionary of terms of FIG. 25 (Step S33 through S34). More specifically, the disclosed information will be determined to represent an objective fact if it contains more terms for describing an objective fact as listed in the table of objective expressions than terms describing a subjective view as listed in the table of subjective expressions.

If the disclosed information more terms for describing an objective fact than terms describing a subjective view, the disclosed information is determined to represent an objective fact (Step S35). If not, it is determined to represent a subjective view (Step S36).

Note that the present invention is not limited to the above described first embodiment, which may be modified appropriately without departing from the scope of the invention.

The above described first embodiment provides the following effects.

Persons other than the information discloser can add more information to and/or modify the disclosed information in order to provide the users with information that is easy to understand.

While some information may represent universal truth, there are many pieces of information that become obsolete with time. It is not desirable to provide user with obsolete information and such information has to be updated by providing it with additional information before being presented to users.

In an information sharing support system, disclosure of information can be psychologically suppressed in fear of disclosing false information. If such a system is provided with a scheme for accepting additional information, any obsolete or incorrect piece of information may be updated or corrected without problem so that potential information disclosers may be encouraged to actively disclose information.

As the information discloser is notified of any requests for correction, modification and addition, the information discloser becomes more aware of the type of information that the user want to know so that consequently the quality of the shared information can be improved.

2nd Embodiment

The second through eighth embodiments as will be described hereinafter are obtained by modifying the evaluation information processing section 4 of the above described first embodiment.

Of these embodiments, the second embodiment is adapted to automatically detect the emotional aspects of each disclosed information referencer and exploit them for rating the disclosed information.

While the information sharing support system 1 of the second embodiment may have a configuration as illustrated in FIG. 1, it may alternatively have a configuration as illustrated in FIG. 27. Note that the components in FIG. 27 that are same as their counterparts of FIG. 1 are respectively denoted by the same reference symbols.

In this embodiment, the role of the evaluation input section 8 of the above embodiment is neglected in this embodiment and only the result obtained by the emotion recognizing section 10 will be used.

Referring to FIG. 27, the input/output section 25 receives inputs in the form of still picture, movie, speech and/or program by way of a network or directly from an input device such as keyboard, mouse, microphone and/or camera.

The information registration section 2 operates to accumulate pieces of information disclosed by information disclosers in the disclosed information accumulation section 6.

The information referencing section 3 operates to retrieve, reference and utilize information from the information accumulated in the disclosed information section 6.

The reference history accumulation section 7 accumulates identifiers of the pieces of information that have been retrieved and referenced and, if necessary, also information referencing records including the identifiers of information referencers and referenced dates.

The emotion recognizing section 10 operates to recognize the emotion of each information referencer to the disclosed information on the basis of the data input by the information referencer consciously or unconsciously by way of the information referencing section 3.

The emotion recognizing section 10 typically has a configuration as illustrated in FIG. 28. More specifically, it comprises a dictionary of emotional expressions 280, an emotional information extracting section 281 and an emotional state determining section 232.

With this arrangement, the emotional information extracting section 281 extracts emotional expressions contained in the text or the speech of the information referencer input by the latter from the dictionary of emotional expressions 280 and sends them to the emotional state determining section 282. The emotional state determining section 282 then recognizes the emotion of the information referencer on the basis of the extracted expressions.

The emotion recognizing section 10 may alternatively have a configuration as illustrated in FIG. 29.

With the arrangement, the emotional state recognizing section 282 determines the emotional state of the information referencer on the basis of both the outcome of the operation of the emotional information extracting section 281 and the data input by the information referencer by way of the information referencing section 3.

On the other hand, the evaluation section 9 of FIG. 27 operates to carry out computational operations on the personal evaluation values given to the disclosed information and the statistic figures of evaluation values, using the information reference records accumulated in the reference history accumulation section 7 and the outcome of emotion recognizing operations. The computed results of evaluations are then accumulated in the reference history accumulation section 7.

The evaluation result notifying section 11 operates to notify the authorized persons (including the information provider, the person referencing the information) of the obtained personal evaluation values.

The processing operation of the second embodiment of information sharing support system will be described by referring to the flow chart of FIG. 30.

FIGS. 31A and 31B show exemplary images on the interface screen of the embodiment.

Upon comprehending the input of the input of the information referencer, the information referencing section 3 retrieves one or more than one pieces of information that meet the demand of the information referencer from the disclosed information accumulation section 6 and presents the retrieved information to the information referencer (Steps A1 through A4 in FIG. 30). The operation of retrieving data and preparing response sentences in a natural language may be carried out by a method described, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 7-86266 or No. 7-235805.

The information referencing section 3 may alternatively be so arranged as to comprehend the input and prepare a response sentence not by solely relying on texts but by using menus or voice recognition and voice synthesis or a combination thereof. The use of voice may be made according to a method disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 5-216618.

When, for example, the information referencer input a command, an image as shown in FIG. 31A may be displayed on the input/output interface screen. The upper half of the input/output interface screen is a graphic or text window for displaying the retrieved data and the lower half of the interface screen is a text window for receiving a retrieval instruction and displaying a response to the instruction.

For example, the lower text window may display a message "What can I do for you?". If the information referencer inputs a retrieving sentence such as "I want to read the report on the visit to the business show", the result of the subsequent retrieval operation will be displayed on the upper window, saying "We have 13 reports. Which one would you like?". If the information referencer selects the document of "Planning--Shimada" by section of a pointing device such as a mouse, the selected document will be displayed as shown in FIG. 31B.

The window shows a sentence of "Do you want to see some other reports?" and the information referencer may answer "No, that's OK. Thank you".

Now, the operation proceeds to Step A5 in FIG. 30 to recognize the emotion of the information referencer. Roughly speaking, there are three ways for recognizing emotion. Firstly, expressions that may represent the emotion of the information referencer may be recognized by extracting emotional expressions from the conscious or unconscious behaviors (input sentences, speeches, gestures, countenance, etc.) on the part of the information referencer. Secondly, the emotional state of the information referencer may be recognized by analyzing the current psychological conditions of the information referencer. Finally, the preceeding two techniques may be combined. Techniques for recognizing the countenance include the one described by Morishima et al. (NICOGRAPH: Papers, pp. 17-25, 1993), whereas those for recognizing the emotion from nonverbal information such as rhythmic information include the one reported by Kanazawa et al. (The Electronic Information Communication Society: Papers, D-II, Vol. J77-D-II, No. 8, pp. 1512-1521).

Voice recognition for emotional expressions containing verbal information other than rhythmic information is described by researchers including Takebayashi et al. (The Electronic Information Communication Society: Papers, D-II, Vol. J77-D-II, No. 8, pp. 1417-1428). Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 7-86266 describes a method of recognizing emotion by section of voice recognition using both verbal information and nonverbal information.

Known methods of understanding the emotion from the circumstances include these proposed by Lehnert et al. (Cognition and Emtion, pp. 199-322, 1987) and Dyer (Emotions and their Computations: Three Computer Models", 1987), who tried to understand the emotions of the characters in stories. Shibazaki et al. proposed a technique that combines these methods (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 7-235805).

If the above described first technique is used in the emotion recognizing section 10, a dictionary of additional expressions 280 as illustrated in FIGS. 32A and 32B will be used so that emotional expressions contained in the input of the information referencer may be extracted therefrom.

The emotional information extracting section 281 refers to the dictionary of emotional expressions 280 as partly shown in FIGS. 32A and 32B and extracts "that's OK.fwdarw.medial satisfaction" and "Thank you.fwdarw.medial satisfaction" from the user input of "No, that's OK. Thank you.".

The emotional state determining section 232 determines the emotional state of the user to be "emotion: satisfied, degree: medial" typically by calculating an average value for the emotional information.

Emotion may be described not only in terms of satisfaction and dissatisfaction but also in terms of surprise, distrust, sorrow and dullness to expand the scope of emotion. Additionally, monologues such as "Jesus" and nonverbal expressions such as nodding and smile may be used as items that can be extracted from the dictionary along with texts.

The evaluation section 9 determines an evaluation value from the above described emotional state of the user. For example, a positive value will be given to an expression of satisfaction and the value may be +2 for medial satisfaction, which will then be accumulated in the reference history accumulation section 7 (Step A6). The evaluation values of different users stored in the reference history accumulation section 7 may be used to calculate averages and determine a relative evaluation value for a specific piece of information as compared with the remaining pieces of information.

The above retrieving steps will be repeated if required by the user (Step A7). If the disclosed information requested by the information referencer is not retrieved in Step A3, the operation also proceeds to Step A7.

The obtained evaluation values, average values and relative evaluation values may be displayed when the information referencer retrieves information. Referring to FIG. 33A, for example, if the information referencer uses a retrieving sentence of "Which one do you think is most readable?", retrievable pieces of information are presented with values determined in terms of "recommendable" and "hard to read".

If the information referencer inputs "Which one is most popular?" as shown in FIG. 33B, the most popular piece of information will be presented.

If the information referencer inputs an evaluation value and, at the same time, the emotional perception of the information referencer is detected, the evaluation section 9 determines by calculation an evaluation value for the retrieved information from the both sources of evaluation as shown in the flow chart of FIG. 34 (Steps A9 and A10).

Alternatively, as shown in the flow chart of FIG. 35, the evaluation value determined in Step A10 is presented to the information referencer (Step A11) so that the value may be modified by the information referencer (Steps A12 and A13).

The emotion recognizing section 10 may have an alternative configuration as shown in FIG. 36. With this arrangement, the evaluation data obtained from the input of the information referencer is used to determine the emotional state of the information referencer.

For example, after the information referencing section 3 presents a piece of information to the information referencer as shown in FIG. 33A, the evaluation input section 8 prompts the user to input his or her evaluation by asking "What do you think?" or "Do you find it interesting?". Then, the user input such as "Not bad" will be analyzed to determine the evaluation value on the part of the user. At the same time, the emotion recognizing section 10 may obtain emotional information such as "emotion: satisfaction, degree: low". Then, the evaluation section 9 determines an evaluation value from the both sources of evaluation.

FIG. 37 shows an exemplary list of referenced histories accumulated in the reference history accumulation section 7 of this embodiment of information sharing support system. The reference records of a specific piece of information are accumulated in the form of table along with the referencers and the evaluation items. Reference numeral 371 denotes the items of the table and numeral 372 denotes the values given to the items.

In FIG. 37, the column of log # is for the ID numbers of the reference records, user ID is for the ID numbers of the referencers, evaluation A is for the evaluations input by way of 63 of the screen of FIG. 6A and the evaluation input section 8, where (3), (2) and (1) represent "good", "medial" and "bad" respectively, and evaluation B is for the evaluations obtained by way of the emotion recognizing section 10, where (3), (2) and (1) represent "satisfied", "not very satisfied" and "dissatisfied" respectively. The effectiveness, reusability and recommendability are rated for each log by the evaluation section 9 on the basis of the inputs entered by way of the evaluation input section 8 and the emotion recognizing section 10. In the column of comment, the file names storing the comments entered by way of the screen of FIG. 6B are listed.

The referenced time is expressed in terms of the number of seconds during which each listed piece of information is referenced. The column of copy yes/no is for indicating if each listed piece of information has been down-loaded or not. The referenced time and the copying record can be used when objectively evaluating the information.

With the above described arrangement, the emotional state of the information referencer is automatically determined each time when a piece of disclosed information is referenced and evaluated by an information referencer to reduce the effort for evaluating each piece of disclosed information and promote the utilization of the information sharing support system. Additionally, this arrangement can reliably obtain each information referencer's evaluation.

3rd Embodiment

Now, the third embodiment of the invention will be described. In this embodiment, the information referencing section 3 calculates the effectiveness of each piece of disclosed information in terms of an expectancy value on the basis of the evaluations given to it and presents it to the user.

FIG. 38 shows an exemplary image displayed on the interface screen for retrieving and referencing information by way of the information referencing section 3. Note that the expectancy value 381 of each piece of disclosed information is added to the image of the user interface screen of FIG. 5. Also note that the listed pieces of disclosed information are arranged in the descending order of their expectancy values.

The expectancy value of each piece of disclosed information in FIG. 38 represents the average of the total points listed in the evaluations display window of FIG. 10. The expectancy value can be used as a cue for the information referencer to select highly effective information from a large stock of information. Conventional information retrieval is based solely on if a selected piece of information meets the requirements of retrieval or not. To the contrary, with this embodiment, each piece of disclosed information is provided with an additional index of effectiveness.

The expectancy value of each piece of information can be determined in several different ways.

For example, the persons authorized to access the stored information may be weighted so that the expectancy value is determined by averaging weighted points. A list of weights may be used for such a weighting system, where a specific weight may be assigned to each post in the company. Then, the expectancy value may reflect the experience and the history of each information referencer.

Alternatively, the expectancy value may be determined so as to reflect the date when each piece of information is disclosed. For example, a value of 10/years may be subtracted from the expectancy value, where years represent the number of years that have elapsed since the disclosure of the information.

Or, the expectancy value may be determined as a function of the expectancy values of related information. For example, the expectancy value may represent the average of the proper expectancy value and those of the related information to reflect the effectiveness of the related information.

With this arrangement, each piece of information may be evaluated more appropriately to improve the utilization of the information sharing support system.

4th Embodiment

Now, the fourth embodiment of the invention will be described.

While all the pieces of disclosed information stored in the system can be listed on the retrieval window of FIG. 5A of the first embodiment, such a unitary listing system or a unitary management system can produce difficulties on the part of the system user in specifying the right classification and selecting the right keywords particularly when there are a large number of pieces of registered and disclosed information so that eventually the user may end up without finding the information exactly he or she wants in a reasonably short period of time and the disclosed information may be hindered from convenient utilization.

Therefore, a distributed information management system may be a choice that surpasses the unitary or centralized information management system of the first embodiment from the viewpoint of the efficiency of information retrieval. With such a distributed system, each member of a group that share information is charged with a specific assignment