A user-based document management system has been developed for small communities on the Web. The system is based on the free annotation of documents by users. A number of annotation support tools are used to suggest possible annotations, including suggesting terms from external ontologies. This paper outlines some evaluation data on how users actually interact with the system in annotating their document especially on the use of standard ontologies. Results indicate that although an established external taxonomy can be useful in proposing annotation terms, users appear to be very selective in their use of the terms proposed and to have little interest in adhering to the particular hierarchical structure provided. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Ripple-Down Rules (RDR) is an approach to building knowledge-based systems (KBS) incrementally, while the KBS is in routine use. Domain experts build rules as a minor extension to their normal duties, and are able to keep refining rules as KBS requirements evolve. Commercial RDR systems are now used routinely in some Chemical Pathology laboratories to provide interpretative comments to assist clinicians make the best use of laboratory reports. This paper presents usage data from one laboratory where, over a 29 month period, over 16,000 rules were added and 6,000,000 cases interpreted. The clearest evidence that this facility is highly valuable to the laboratory is the on-going addition of new knowledge bases and refinement of existing knowledge bases by the chemical pathologists. � 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.