Searching for expertise

ABSTRACT

It is well established that there is a need to find experts to get answers or advice. A variety of expertise locator tools have emerged to help locate the right person. But there is little systematic study on what people are really looking for when such systems are used and how external factors such as job role may shape that search. We conducted a study of 75 employees who were current users of an expertise locator system. An analysis of the reasons for their search revealed that people in client facing roles are primarily seeking to have a dialog with an expert, while others are just as likely to seek answers to technical questions. We also surveyed various tools for finding experts and found that corporate directories and personal networks were most often cited as alternatives to an expertise locator. We discuss the implications of these results for the design of tools for finding experts and expert knowledge.

REFERENCES

• 1: Stephen P. Borgatti , Rob Cross, A Relational View of Information Seeking and Learning in Social Networks, Management Science, v.49 n.4, p.432-445, April 2003 [doi>10.1287/mnsc.49.4.432.14428]
• 2: Constant, D., Sproull, L., and Kiesler, S. The kindness of strangers: The usefulness of electronic weak ties for Technical Advice. Organization Science, 7, 2 (1996), 119--135.
• 3: Ehrlich, K. Locating expertise: Design issues for an expertise locator system. In M. S. Ackerman, P. Volkmar and V. Wulf (eds.): Beyond Knowledge Management: Sharing Expertise. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (2003), 137--158.
• 4: Kate Ehrlich , Ching-Yung Lin , Vicky Griffiths-Fisher, Searching for experts in the enterprise: combining text and social network analysis, Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM conference on Supporting group work, November 04-07, 2007, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/1316624.1316642]
• 5: Farrell, S. and Lau, T. Fringe Contacts: People-Tagging for the Enterprise. In Proc. Workshop on Collaborative Web Tagging, (2006).
• 6: Lin, C.-Y., Griffiths-Fisher, V., Ehrlich, K., and Desforges, C. SmallBlue: People mining for expertise search and social network analysis. IEEE Multimedia Magazine, (2008).
• 7: David W. McDonald, Recommending collaboration with social networks: a comparative evaluation, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/642611.642714]
• 8: David W. McDonald , Mark S. Ackerman, Just talk to me: a field study of expertise location, Proceedings of the 1998 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.315-324, November 14-18, 1998, Seattle, Washington, United States [doi>10.1145/289444.289506]
• 9: David R. Millen , Jonathan Feinberg , Bernard Kerr, Dogear: Social bookmarking in the enterprise, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems, April 22-27, 2006, Montréal, Québec, Canada [doi>10.1145/1124772.1124792]
• 10: Nardi, B.A., Whittaker, S., and Schwarz, H. It's not what you know, it's who you know: Work in the information age. First Monday 2002
• 11: Justin D. Weisz , Thomas Erickson , Wendy A. Kellogg, Synchronous broadcast messaging: the use of ICT, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems, April 22-27, 2006, Montréal, Québec, Canada [doi>10.1145/1124772.1124967]
• 12: Yiman-Seid, D. and Kobsa, A. Expert-finding systems for organizations: Problem and domain analysis and the DEMOIR approach. In M. S. Ackerman, V. Pipek and V. Wulf (eds.): Sharing Expertise: Beyond Knowledge Management. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (2003), 328--358.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.0 General

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation

Keywords:
expertise locator tools, expertise search, personal networks