The XMCA archive as an organizational memory

Timothy Koschmann (tdk who-is-at cs.colorado.edu)
Thu, 26 Feb 1998 17:47:47 -0700

There is a research group here in Boulder with a focus on organization
memory and organizational learning (http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~l3d/omol/).
Today I described the XMCA list to this group and made the argument that
the XMCA archive served as a form of organization memory for a particular
community. A number of interesting questions came up that I thought I
might pose to the distribution list to get a better understanding of how
people actually manage their interaction with the list.

First, do you actually make use of the archives? How frequently do you do
so? What was the last situation in which you had occasion to utilize the
archives? How do you go about actually finding something that you need
there?

Second, do you maintain a personal backlog of messages from the
distribution list? How is it structured and what tools do you have for
finding things within it? Would you feel the need to maintain a personal
backlog of messages if there were more powerful tools available for
searching the shared archive?

Please send your responses directly to me rather than clogging up the
distribution list. I will summarize the findings and report back to the
list later. ---Tim

_________________________________________________________________
Timothy Koschmann
Temporary Address (9/1/97-5/31/98)
Dept. of Computer Science
Campus Box 430, ECOT 734
University of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder, CO 80309
+1-303-492-2233 (voice)
+1-303-492-2844 (fax)

webpage: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~tdk
__________________________________________________________________