Collaborative on-line digital data tool for creating living narratives in organizational knowledge systems

Organizations, in addressing the need to keep knowledgeable of the many dispersed histories and cultures that emerge within their communities, have used various information technologies (IT) as tools to capture, preserve, sort, and interpret organizational memory (OM). Unfortunately the paradigm for OM tools has followed a transfer model-how to transfer specific content or stories to others using the most efficient tools possible. The technology acts as a corridor through which the message travels. A constructionist paradigm strongly counters this approach. Technologies are used as memory makers; these knowledge building tools help cultures grow, lessening the geographical distance that separates organizational members by enabling them to contribute to what Goldman-Segall calls living narratives, digital documents of various media forms that change over time and in various spaces. Geographically dispersed organizations particularly need networked digital construction tools (1) to encourage users to understand each other's ever-changing contextual knowledge and (2) to foster collaboration while capturing, sorting, representing and, most important, interpreting the histories and the memories of their organizations. Web Constellations has been designed as an on-line analysis tool that encourages dispersed users to work on shared digital video datasets and build patterns or layers of interpretations leading to a greater level of understanding for those who were unable to participate in a given event or a series of events. In this article, we explain the need for these collaborative on-line tools that build multiple meanings, and then we discuss how Web Constellations can be used as a tool for organizational memory system (OMS) and organizational knowledge systems (OKS).