Information curators in an enterprise file-sharing service

Abstract

We report on a social-software file-sharing service within a large company. User-created collections of files were associated with increased usage of the uploaded files, especially the sharing of files from one employee to another. Employees innovated in the use of the collections features as "information curators," an emergent lead-user role in which one employee creates named, described collections of resource for use by other employees. This role suggests new work practices and new features.