Organizational memories as electronic discussion by-products

An approach to develop organizational memory systems is presented. It is based on the re-use of computer-supported discussions held as meeting preparations. The discussions are rich in informal knowledge, which is basic for a good organizational memory. The presentation is illustrated with a brief introduction to OMUSISCO, a software system based on this approach. OMUSISCO uses SISCO meeting preparation discussions as its information source. A thesaurus is built to help users access knowledge. The system was tested with simple discussions, but it should scale up well in real situations.