In criminal justice systems, incompatible content and information formats often create barriers to data accessand utilization that make knowledgemanagement a complex and daunting process. To address these problems, the authors undertook the Coplink project,which bridges the gap between conducting technology research and helping police officers fight crime.University of Arizona researchers originally generated the concept space approach to facilitate semantic retrieval of information. Although Coplink's current incarnation demonstrates its potential as a tool for enhancing the effectiveness of law enforcement, new technologies will provide opportunities for making the system even more useful.Meanwhile, several user studies have shown that this system also improves searching and browsing in the engineering and biomedicine domains.