TY - JOUR T1 - Collaborative support for informal information in collective memory systems JF - Information Systems Frontiers Y1 - 2000 A1 - Ackerman, Mark S A1 - Mcdonald, David W KW - CMC KW - collaborative help KW - community memory KW - computer-mediated communications KW - corporate memory KW - cscw KW - expertise sharing KW - group memory KW - help KW - incremental formalization KW - informal information KW - information access KW - information refining KW - information retrieval KW - information systems KW - knowledge shairng KW - organizational memory KW - system AB -

Informal information, such as the expertise of an organization or the workarounds practiced by a community, is a critical part of organizational or collective memory systems. From a user-centered perspective, a user merely wishes to get his work done, and to do this, he must solve his immediate problems. We have examined how to incorporate this problem solving into a collective memory, as well as how to incorporate the learning that accrues to it or from it. We report here on two systems, the Cafe ConstructionKit and the Collaborative Refinery, as well as an application, Answer Garden 2, built using these two systems. The Cafe ConstructionKit provides toolkit mechanisms for incorporating communication flows among people (as well as agents) into an organizational memory framework, and the Collaborative Refinery system provides mechanisms for distilling and refining the informal information obtained through these communication flows. The Answer Garden 2 application demonstrates the utility of these two underlying systems.

VL - 2 UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Memory in the small: Combining collective memory and task support for a scientific community JF - Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce Y1 - 1999 A1 - Ackerman, Mark S A1 - Mandel, Eric KW - astrophysics KW - collaborative memory KW - community memory KW - data analysis KW - organizational memory KW - science community KW - scientific memory KW - system KW - UI visualizations AB -

Many forms of memory exist embedded within the processes and tasks of an organization or community. Memory in the small, or memory utilized in the performance of an institutionally important task, serves as an effective task support mechanism. By basing memory on tasks (and basing task support on memory), memory systems can provide additional and necessary support services for organizations and communities. As an example of memory in the small, in this article we describe a software system, called the ASSIST, that combines memory with task performance for a scientific community. The ASSIST utilizes and stores the collective memory of astrophysicists about data analysis, and is used worldwide by astrophysicists. In this article, we also consider the architectural and theoretical issues involved when combining memory with task performance.

VL - 9 UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Augmenting Organizational Memory: A Field Study of Answer Garden JF - ACM Transactions on Information Ssystems Y1 - 1998 A1 - Ackerman, Mark S. KW - collective memory KW - community memory KW - field studies KW - group memory KW - organizational memory KW - system AB -

A growing concern for organizations and groups has been to augment their knowledge and expertise. One such augmentation is to provide an organizational memory, some record of the organization's knowledge. However, relatively little is known about how computer systems might enhance organizational, group, or community memory. This article presents Answer Garden, a system for growing organizational memory. The article describes the system and its underlying implementation. It then presents findings from a field study of Answer Garden. The article discusses the usage data and qualitative evaluations from the field study, and then draws a set of lessons for next-generation organizational memory systems.

VL - 16 UR - Complete ER -