Nonetheless, several important research issues remain if expertise networks are to be useful. It is often difficult to find the right person to answer a question, and thus, we need systems to find people with specific expertise. Furthermore, one would like to save some of the knowledge that is created through informal exchanges in the expertise network. To construct these systems, we will need to better understand how people find and use others' expertise now in their work practices, as well as why people chose to create knowledge artifacts as a result of their social exchanges.

Approach. To create a useful and usable system for augmenting expertise networks, the challenge is combine system design with a nuanced understanding of the social interactions involved. The approach taken by this proposal is to consider expertise networks from the viewpoint of the Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) field. Specifically, this proposal has a dual attack. The proposed research undertakes case studies of expertise use in current organizational settings in order to more fully understand the social requirements in augmenting an expertise network. The proposed research also designs, implements, and evaluates mechanisms for finding and storing expertise. A result of this research will be the Ad-Hoc Memory System (AHome), designed to provide a range of services to augment expertise networks. This system includes distributed CSCW components, such as information distilleries to create expertise artifacts from informal interactions, expertise beacons to signal the location of expertise, agents to locate expertise, and user interface mechanisms to handle the increase in queries. The emphasis is on finding new ways to augment people's expertise, rather than automating, and in providing usability through examining social requirements.