BASIC SUPPORT FOR COOPERATIVE WORK ON THE WORLD-WIDE-WEB

The emergence and widespread adoption of the World Wide Web offers a g reat deal of potential in supporting cross-platform cooperative work w ithin widely dispersed working groups. The Basic Support for Cooperati ve Work (BSCW) project at GMD is attempting to realize this potential through development of web-based tools which provide cross-platform co llaboration services to groups using existing web technologies. This p aper describes one of these tools, the BSCW Shared Workspace system - a centralized cooperative application integrated with an unmodified we b server and accessible from standard web browsers. The BSCW system su pports cooperation through ''shared workspaces''; small repositories i n which users can upload documents, hold threaded discussions and obta in information on the previous activities of other users to coordinate their own work. The current version of the system is described in det ail, including design choices resulting from use of the web as a coope ration platform and feedback from users following the release of a pre vious version of BSCW to the public domain. (C) 1997 Academic Press Li mited.