Combining Information Systems and Computer Science Approaches to Identifying Sources of Expertise

Knowledge is largely contained in the expertise of an organisation’s workers. Expertise Location is emerging as an important component of an overall knowledge management strategy for many knowledge intensive organisations. Taking an Information Systems approach to expertise, we see knowledge as embodied in people but to some extent the knowledge can be transferred to others, reused and sometimes codified. Taking a Computer Science viewpoint, we believe we can use approaches such as data-mining of artefacts, such as web pages and documents, containing data about people, projects and product documents to identify who has the needed expertise. In this way we are not focused on capturing what people know but on capturing and reusing information about who knows what