Who Can Claim Complete Abstinence from Peeking at Print Jobs?

While systems supporting communities of practice in work organizations have been shown to be desirable many, if not all, are decoupled from daily work practices and tools. This hinders a wide collection of data about their activities, because of the additional effort that is required from the users. Therefore a pre-requisite for a system aiming at making visible the community activity is the non-intrusive collection of data about the activities that are carried on in a workplace. We present a range of personal document management services that support the construction of a collective memory of user print activities. We have internally tested the system and verified that it successfully provided personal benefit, thereby ensuring that the system receives sufficient usage for the shared memory to be useful. The system also successfully addressed privacy concerns and effectively provided large data sets about document related activities. Finally it provided information able to trigger new or to reinforce existing informal exchanges in communities of practice at a convenient moment; the print action