Identifying expertise markers in routine work artifacts: exploring micronote taking behavior

Abstract

Identifying expertise within an organization is a critical component of any knowledge management effort. It is, however, an exceptionally resource intensive activity that is difficult to initiate and problematic to maintain. The development of experimental expertise recommender systems has prompted innovative research into the use of expertise markers found on routine information artifacts. Particular classes of information artifacts have been identified as rich possible sources for expertise markers. This paper hypothesizes about the potential for leveraging another class of artifacts, “micronotes”, which are our ubiquitous, personal jottings of notable information. Lacking usable digital support, these are currently opaque to organizational memory systems, but may be central to our natural expertise mapping abilities. A field study designed to explore natural micronote taking behaviors is described and early findings are discussed. Implications for improving the design of mobile computing support to integrate micronotes into expertise mapping activities are also presented.