Knowledge Communities

The issue of how to support the re-use of knowledge — under rubrics such as organizational memory, knowledge management and expertise management — has received increasing attention over the last decade. In this chapter we take a strongly social approach to the issue, arguing that knowledge (and expertise) is created, used, and disseminated in ways that are inextricably entwined with the social milieu, and therefore that systems which attempt to support these processes must take social factors into account. Our approach to managing knowledge or expertise is to do it on-line, via multiuser networked environments that support group communication and collaboration. That is, we are interested in designing on-line environments within which users can engage socially with one another, and, in the process, discover, develop, evolve,