Building an electronic scientific community

The Community Systems project is building an electronic scientific community, by collecting 'all' the knowledge of a scientific community into a digital library and developing the systems technology to transparently manipulate this library over nationwide networks. The community members are scientists studying the nematode worm C. elegans, a model organism in molecular biology. The community system will encode their knowledge into an information space, with the goal of supporting retrieval and annotation of formal and informal data and information for any biologist with a personal computer and a NREN connection. The paper introduces community systems, the worm community and its knowledge, technology and sociology solutions, and an evolving prototype with plans for its propagation.<>