Communities Of Practice: Increasing Social Capital Through The Integration Of Digital Libraries, Filtering, Ontologies And Social Networking

This paper discusses the integration of technologies and mechanisms that would support the work of communities of practice. It is hypothesized that socialware technologies, digital libraries, ontologies and information filtering when integrated in a system, would result in an increment of social capital, that is, the benefit gained by individuals through social interaction. Socialware would support information exchange; digital libraries would maintain organized repositories of resources; ontologies would capture the semantic network of concepts and language used by the community; information filtering would create personalized profiles and would guide members to resources and discussions relevant to them. Two independent projects developed by different research groups, in two different domains (social development and tourism) are described. Both have a common goal: to support information exchange and knowledge creation in community/communities of practices. Although each project started from opposite ends, – one aimed at a digital library, the other aimed at a social network –enhancements proposed to each one of them which will lead them to a common integrated model. Proposed enhancements to the Online Network of Latin American and Caribbean Social Institutions (RISALC) include support for community of practices/communities of practice, ontologies and filtering. TRINET has experience as a virtual community of practice and it is considering adding value to their members with the provision of interactive modules of digital library and filtering, supported by ontologies.