Using Intranet Agents to Capture Tacit Knowledge

People can easily determine whether or not a given document is interesting just by glancing through it. However, when asked to explicitly list the rules upon which such a decision is based, they are unable to do so. This is because our personal interests are examples of tacit knowledge. I have implemented a prototype agent-based retrieval system, capable of finding web documents matching a user's interests and connecting users with similar profiles. Based on empirical findings from this prototype I claim that agent-based retrieval systems may be used to capture our professional interests, thus making otherwise elusive tacit knowledge tangible. By using agent-based retrieval systems two otherwise troublesome obstacles are avoided: interests may be defined by examples instead of specific keywords, and there now exists a natural incentive for creating and maintaining a search profile.