Bridging the Gulf between Large-Scale Information Resources and Communities of Practice

Community memory can provide the crucial bridge between large-scale information bases like digital libraries and the day-to-day activities of a community’s members. Just as a digital library is based on a general structure and conventional means of access to diverse collections of materials, a community memory culls and shapes the structure of this collection to meet more particular needs; it provides a unique perspective on a larger, more general collection. Useful and usable community memories require support for: (1) the acquisition and evolution of content and structure; (2) the identification of relevant materials and community members; and (3) the maintenance of mutually intelligible organizations. In this paper, we explore issues related to these three requirements based on our experiences with the development and use of shared hypermedia information resources.