DOI:
Abstract:
We propose an agent-based framework for assisting and simplifying person-to-person communication for information gathering tasks. As an example, we focus on expertise location within a large organization. In our approach, the informal person-to-person networks that exist within an organization are used to "referral chain" requests for expertise. User-agents are employed to automate the referral chaining process. We also present simulation results demonstrating the effectiveness of our approach.