When users are confronted with hard copy documents or unorganized digital documents, they look at main topic headers, skim the contents and so forth. The problem of how this can be done more effectively in an on-line environment is the main topic of this minitrack. Accordingly, this minitrack proposal aims to bring together the multiplicity of research in various fields on how organizations, groups and individual users seek to understand and navigate through document collections and individual documents.

This minitrack is open to papers on software, human-computer interactions, knowledge managment, information retrieval and studies of how users grasp the contents of digital documents. It encompasses, but is not limited to, summarization, categorization, and key-phrase extraction and clustering, user interfaces for understanding documents, and studies of how users access information about documents and intuit their contents without actually reading them. Papers from areas of computer science, information retrieval, psychology and sociology are all encouraged. The goal of this minitrack is a fruitful cross pollination among researchers in disparate areas and the stimulation of new collaborative project ideas that such discussions may generate.

Minitrack Chair

Genres of Digital Documents

Genres have been described traditionally by form and content and users have certain expectations on encountering a member of a genre. In a digital environment, documents have functionality as well as form and content. As such, genres provide a certain fixity in communication and become increasingly important in providing users a resource for the interpretation of the content, role, and function of a digital document. Therefore, authors of digital documents should be aware of the notions of genre and the evolution of genres.

Topics the minitrack will address include, but are not restricted to,

• Genres in non-text digital documents
• Issues in the transformation of print genres to digital form
• Genres in digital search and classification
• Genre theory and its application to digital documents
• Investigations of genre in use
• Analyses of particular document genres
• Designing in support of genre
• Evolution of genres of digital documents
• Emergent genres
• Genres for Electronic Commerce

Minitrack Chairs

Knowledge Ecologies

The focus of this mini-track is two-fold. On the one hand, we elicit papers that address the modeling of phenomena exhibited by knowledge ecologies, such as the mapping and mining of the interrelationships embedded in the vast set of documents circulating in an organization, and patterns of their use. On the other hand, we are interested in work that addresses socio-technical design of technologies and service components in support of knowledge processes.

Possible topics include:

• modeling of knowledge ecologies
• case studies of knowledge tools in practice
• ethnographic studies that inform the design of knowledge tools
• innovative technologies intended to support knowledge processes, such as:
  • knowledge capture,
  • access,
  • sharing,
  • combination,
  • recommendation
  • representation
  • transformation,
  • visualization
  • presentation

Minitrack Chairs

Knowledge Management, Organizational Memory, and Organizational Learning

Knowledge Management (KM) addresses the process of acquiring, creating, distributing and using knowledge in organizations. Organizational Memory (OM) can be defined as the way an organization stores organizational knowledge and applies it to present activities. Organizational Learning (OL) is the development of shared meanings and intrepretations of those meanings.

Possible Paper Topics:

• Relationships among data, information, and knowledge
• Exploring relationships among knowledge management, organizational memory, and organizational learning
• Integrating organizational knowledge within the organization and across the organization's value chain
• Developing processes and systems for transferring, storing, and integrating knowledge
• Using digital documents to implement knowledge management and organizational memory systems
• Developing processes and systems for facilitating organizational learning
• Describing case studies of knowledge management and organizational memory systems

Minitrack Chairs

Persistent Conversation

The particular aim of the minitrack is to bring together researchers who analyze existing computer-mediated conversational practices and sites, with designers who propose, implement, or deploy new types of conversational systems. By bringing together participants from such diverse areas as anthropology, computer-mediated communication, HCI, interaction design, linguistics, psychology, rhetoric, sociology, and the like, we hope that the work of each may inform the others, suggesting new questions, methods, perspectives, and design approaches.

We are seeking papers that address issues such as the following:

Understanding Practice.

The burgeoning popularity of the internet (and intranets) provides an opportunity to study and characterize new forms of conversational practice. Questions of interest range from how various features of conversations (e.g., turn-taking, topic organization, expression of paralinguistic information) have adapted in response to the digital medium, to new roles played by persistent conversation in domains such as education, business, and entertainment.

Analytical Tools.

The effort to understand practice can benefit from an array of analytical tools and methods. One goal of this mini-track is to bring together researchers from a variety of disciplines, so as to gain a fuller understanding of the kinds of insights different approaches can reveal to analyzing persistent conversation.

Design.

Digital systems do not support conversation well: it is difficult to converse with grace, clarity, depth and coherence over networks. But this need not remain the case. To this end, we welcome analyses of existing systems as well as designs for new systems which better support conversation. Of equal interest are inquiries into how participants design their own conversations within the digital medium -- that is, how they make use of system features to create, structure, and regulate their discourse.

Social Implications.

Even as the persistence of digital conversation suggests intriguing new applications, it also raises troubling issues of privacy, authenticity, and authority. At the same time, it has beneficial effects ranging from making a community's discourse more accessible to non-native speakers, to laying the foundations for mutual support and community in distributed groups. Authors are encouraged to reflect on the social implications of their observations, analyses, and designs.

Historical Parallels.

From the constructed dialogs of Plato to the epistolary exchanges of the eighteenth century literati, persistent conversation is not without precedent. How might earlier practices help us understand the new practices evolving in the digital medium? How might they help us design new systems? What perspectives do they offer on the social impacts (present and future) of persistent conversation?

Minitrack Chairs

Searching Multi-lingual and Multimedia Digital Documents

Minitrack Chairs

Roles and Issues of Computational Media in Learning Communities

Roles of digital media include (but are not limited to) support for:

• development of reasoning skills
• development of cooperative learning skills and processes
• students with varied learning styles
• communication within a learning community
• communication between the learning community and other communities

• Introducing digital media into the learning community
• Impact of digital tool design on cognitive and social activities in learning communities
• Implications of digital media for various sectors of a learning community
• New directions for digital media in learning communities

Minitrack Chairs

Video Use in the Office and Education

This minitrack will address issues regarding the use of video in the office and classroom. Specific topics involving this application of video include but are not restricted to:

• Video content analysis
• Video summarization
• Authoring
• Video browsing
• User interfaces
• Content-based retrieval
• Audio analysis
• Applications
• User studies

Minitrack Chairs