From Dar

Hildreth, P., & Kimble, K. (2004). Knowledge networks: Innovation through communities of practice. Hershey, PA: Idea Group. In particular, chapters 1, 2, 17, 20, 21, 24.

Lesser, P., & Prusak, L. (2004). Creating value with knowledge. New York: Oxford University Press. In particular, chapters 7, 8, and 9.

Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice. In particular, chapters 3, 4, and 5.

For really practical hands-on suggestions: Leveraging Communities of Practice for Strategic Advantage by Hubert Saint-Onge and Debra Wallace.

A book which manages to describe an actual situation (work to develop a Community of Practice for independent insurance agents of Clarica Life Insurance) and draws pratical, easily-followed (with a lot of work!) steps from that experience for anyone to use. It's an invaluable resource for anyone working to foster, support, and encourage communities of practice.

Encyclopedia of Communities of Practice in Information and Knowledge Management Edited by: Elayne Coakes and Steve Clarke ISBN: 1-59140-556-4 EISBN: 1-59140-558-0 Copyright: 2006 Pages: 642

Encyclopedia of Virtual Communities and Technologies Edited by: Subhasish Dasgupta ISBN: 1-59140-563-7 EISBN: 1-59140-797-4 Copyright: 2006 Pages: 620

Contents 1 'Virtual' CoPs 2 Links to original articles 3 more links 3.1 Introductory links 3.2 Research papers 3.3 Some readings 3.4 Some related sites to Knowledge management in online communities 3.5 Tools and technologies 3.6 Essential readings 3.7 CoP groups 4 From dmoz

'Virtual' CoPs

'Communities of practice in virtual environments' a good selection of relevent papers collected by Martin Aspeli:

http://dissertation.martinaspeli.net/papers/communities-of-practice

in particular, "Survey of current research on online communities of practice" (2001), by C.M. Johnson. By examining the existing literature, Johnson differentiates CoPs from other learning situations, identifies theories, definitions, and related concepts, and contextualizes CoPs in the online environment.

from Rosanna Tarsiero:

I would point you to two main set of authors doing virtual CoPs:

• Dubé et al:

Bourhis, A., Dubé, L., & Jacob, R (2005). The success of virtual communities of practice: The leadership factor. The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, 3(1), 23-34. Dubé, L., Bourhis, A., & Jacob, R. (2005). The impact of structural characteristics on the launching of virtual communities of practice. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 18(2), 145 – 166. Dubé, L., Bourhis, A., & Jacob, R. (2003). Towards a typology of virtual communities of practice [online]. Cahiers du GReSI no 03-13. Montreal : HEC. Available from http://gresi.hec.ca/cahier.asp Dubé, L., Bourhis, A., & Jacob, R. (2004). “Structuring spontaneity”: The impact of management practices on the success of intentionally formed virtual communities of practice, [online], Cahiers du GReSI no 04-20, http://gresi.hec.ca/cahier.asp

• Tarmizi et al:

Tarmizi, H., de Vreede, G.-J-, & Zigurs, I. (2006). Identifying Challenges for Facilitation in Communities of Practice. hicss, p. 26a, Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'06) Track 1. Available here: http://csdl2.computer.org/comp/proceedings/hicss/2006/2507/01/250710026a.pdf

Tarmizi, H. & de Vreede, G.-J. (2005). A Facilitation Task Taxonomy for Communities of Practice, Proceedings of the Eleventh Americas Conference on Information Systems, Omaha, Nebraska.

Both of these strings of authors are *very* available for clarifications and informations.

Links to original articles

Kimble & Hildreth "Communities of Practice: Going One Step Too Far?" Aim04_Kimble_Hildreth.pdf

Community of Practice Glossary

Evolution of COP theory

Schwen and Hara (2003) - Community of Practice: A Metaphor for Online Design?

Lueg (2000) - Where is the Action in Virtual Communities of Practice?

Steve Denning: MyListservEntriesMar06-Part1.pdf MyListservEntriesMar06-Part2.pdf

more links

Introductory links

A very good reference site for Communities of Practice material from the Knowledge Garden http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/index.shtml

Another very good site with links to materials dealing with various aspects of Communities of Practice from Fred Nickols. http://home.att.net/~discon/KM/CoPs.htm

John Smith’s techniques for supporting CoP’s. http://www.learningalliances.net/CP_bib/how_support_CP.html

Links from TCM (Training and Development Community Centre) http://www.tcm.com/trdev/morecops.htm

DMOZ entries for Communities of Practice “DMOZ is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.” http://dmoz.org/Reference/Knowledge_Management/Knowledge_Flow/Communities_of_Practice

Research papers

Chris Kimble and Paul Hildreth at York University UK, have been publishing and researching in this are for a long time http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~kimble/research/publics.html http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~pmh/publics.html

IBM Watson Research Lab http://domino.watson.ibm.com/cambridge/research.nsf/pages/papers.html?Open&count=500

Some readings

An essay called "The New Conversations About Learning: Insights From Neuroscience and Anthropology, Cognitive Science and Work-Place Studies" by Theodore J. Marchese http://www.aahe.org/pubs/TM-essay.htm

An article by Etienne Wenger and Bill Snyder in LineZine, an online article dedicated to “learning in the new economy” http://www.linezine.com/1/features/ewwslc.htm

An interview with Micahael Schrage, also from LineZine http://www.linezine.com/3.1/features/msmcosp.htm

Some related sites to Knowledge management in online communities

A collection of knowledge mapping tools started by Denham Grey http://www.voght.com/cgi-bin/pywiki?KmMapTools

Also started by Denham Grey – a collection of knowledge practices http://www.voght.com/cgi-bin/pywiki?KnowledgePractices

Tools and technologies

Collaborative tools started by Denham Grey http://www.voght.com/cgi-bin/pywiki?CollabTools

Supporting Communities of Practice: a survey of community oriented technologies, by Etienne Wenger and downloadable for a nominal fee http://www.ewenger.com/tech/

Essential readings

Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation (1991) John Seely Brown & Paul Duguid http://www2.parc.com/ops/members/brown/papers/orglearning.html

Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (1991) Jean Lave & Etienne Wenger, Cambridge University Press

Communities of Practice, Learning Meaning and Identity (1998) Etienne Wenger, Cambridge University Press

The Social Life of Information (2000) John Seely Brown, Paul Duguid, Harvard Busines School Press

Cultivating Communities of Practice (2002) Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, William Snyder, Harvard Business Press

CoP groups

Electronic Discussion group: “This site provides an online space for conversations on how to build and support Communities of Practice (CoPs)”, hosted by John Smith. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/com-prac/

CPSquare: the community of practice on communities of practice http://www.cpsquare.com/index.htm

From dmoz

• Communities of Practice: a social aspect to virtual worlds? - The term CoP is used to describe many groups. Here the CoP is discussed as a means of providing the missing social dimension to the virtual world.
• Communities of practice and organizational performance - Lesser and Storck of the IBM Institute for Knowledge Management argue that the social capital in communities, which may be virtual or co-located, lead to changes that positively influence business performance.
• Communities of Practice (CoPs) - At the simplest level, they are a small group of people who have worked together over a period of time.

• Communities of Practice Discussion Forum - Group that discusses technology, theory and developmental practices. Features a glossary and links to related sites.
• Communities of Practice News Weblog - GuerrillaKM.org - A weblog about communities of practice and online community. Members receive regular newsletters. Includes a large library, events listing, case studies, photo gallery, and directory of thought leaders.
• Community in the Workplace - Describes an anthology of essays about community building in the workplace, written by a virtual community of community-builders.
• Cpsquare - Resources and information for individuals and organizations who are developing expertise in the cultivation of communities of practice. Features educational resources, publications and contact details.
• Efios knowledge management - Knowledge management consultants for building and supporting communities of practice, virtual teams and communities in the enterprise organisation.
• Etienne Wenger - Homepage of the Community of Practice researcher and consultant who coined the term along with Jean Lave. Features links to his widely-read publications on the field, including an exhaustive survey of technologies that can be used to support Communities of Practice.

• Global Gateways - Global Gateways is currently facilitating Communities of Practice (CoPs) for Chief Information Officers (CIOs). We are also forming Communities for other management groups.
• Human Interface - Lecture notes from a course taught by Chris Kimble at York University. Provides links to sources of information on knowledge management and communities of practice.
• IBM Global Services experience evolving Communities of Practice - Overview of the lessons IBM Global Services have learned since 1995 implementing Communities of Practice. Focuses on people and organization behavior, supporting processes, and enabling technology factors.
• The Invisible Key to Success - Shadowy groups called communities of practice are where learning and growth happen.
• Knowledge Management for Development - A website by Bellanet on leveraging Knowledge Management and Communities of Practice for the international development sector.
• Knowledge Management Research at the University of York - Chris Kimble's research in CSCW and Knowledge Management, in particular, the representation and dissemination of knowledge in virtual team and in virtual environments. He is interested in the problems associated with cross-cultural or trans-national team and knowledge work in an international context.

• Knowledge Networks: Innovation through Communities of Practice - Introduction, historical view and chapter abstracts of book by Pete Bradshaw, Stephen Powell and Dr. Ian Terrell. Features annotated references.
• KnowNet - Researchs and develops new architectures, ideas and internet software for collaborative knowledge development and learning. Features overviews, portals and contact information.
• McDermott Consulting - Communities of Practice researcher Richard McDermott's consulting firm.
• The Meta Network - Helps groups and organizations build virtual teams and learning communities through organization development consulting, web-based conferencing, and facilitation services.
• Where is the Action in Virtual Communities of Practice? - Paper argues that the transfer of a concept that is deeply rooted in the lived-in world to the virtual involves significant conceptual problems. By Christopher Lueg. [PDF]

• Seven Principles for Cultivating Communities of Practice - Although communities of practice develop organically, a carefully crafted design can drive their evolution. By Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William M. Snyder; published in Harvard Business School's "Working Knowledge." (March 25, 2002)

• Communities of Practice and Pattern Language - James B. Smethurst. For any member of a Community of Practice, there comes a time to interface with individuals and organizations which do not form part of the Community. The difficulty of this situation is the issue of language. Every Community of Practice has its own pattern language, its own way of expressing and discussing the unique qualities of its chosen art. (September 24, 1997)