Institutional memory

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Institutional memory is a collective of facts, concepts, experiences and know-how held by a group of people. As it transcends the individual, it requires the ongoing transmission of these memories between members of this group. Elements of institutional memory may be found in corporations, professional groups, government bodies, religious groups, academic collaborations and by extension in entire cultures.

Institutional memory may be encouraged to preserve a group's ideology or way of work. Conversely, institutional memory may be ingrained to the point that it becomes hard to challenge if new information becomes available.

Contents 1 Institutional knowledge 2 Literature and documents 3 Personal reminiscences 4 Is institutional memory fading? 5 See also 6 External links

[edit] Institutional knowledge

Institutional knowledge is gained by organizations translating historical data into useful knowledge and wisdom. Memory depends upon the preservation of data and also the analytical skills necessary for its effective use within the organization.

Religion is one of the significant institutional forces acting on humanity's collective memory. Alternatively, the evolution of ideas in Marxist theory, is that the mechanism whereby knowledge and wisdom are passed down through the generations is subject to economic determinism. In all instances social systems, cultures and organizations have an interest in controlling and using institutional memories.

Organizational structure determines the training requirements and expectations of behaviour associated with various roles. This is part of the implicit institutional knowledge. Progress to higher echelons requires assimilation of this, and when outsiders enter at a high level if they do not appreciate this morale and effectiveness tends to deteriorate.

[edit] Literature and documents

Publishing has changed greatly in its organization, financing, distribution, and bottom line emphasis. The dissemination of knowledge in printed media has been consolidated under the control of a relatively few corporate publishers, many with ties to mass entertainment multi-national conglomerates.

[edit] Personal reminiscences

Memories were shared and sustained across generations before writing appeared. Some of the oral tradition can be traced, distantly, back to the dawn of civilization, but not all past societies have left any mark on the present.

[edit] Is institutional memory fading?

Various types of organizational education systems exist, many threatened in the information age by newer technologies. It is appropriate to maintain electronic access to significant historical archives, in repositories such as the Wikisource database or Project Gutenberg. Increasing archival activity in recent years, spurred by increasing use of electronic data retrieval systems, has necessitated enhancement of certain document repositories, while actually improving accessibility. The teaching of mathematics, for instance, has been fundamentally altered by the algorithmic shortcuts enabled by calculators.

[edit] See also

• Corporate culture
• Corporate memory
• History of Science and Technology
• Information Awareness Office
• Industrial and organizational psychology
• Internet Archive
• Library and Information Science
• Memoir
• Memory hole
• B'nai B'rith
• Patriot Act
• Tribal knowledge

[edit] External links

• AARE.edu.au - 'Is Organisational Memory a Useful Construct in Understanding Learning Organisations'
• Archipeligo.org - 'Reminiscence: Lee Goerner Editor and Publisher (1947-1995),' Katherine McNamara
• Archive.org - 'Million Book Project'
• Archives.gov. - 'Presidential Libraries' (US government archives)
• CNYC.com - 'Institutional Memory', Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums' (Autumn, 2002)
• Gutenberg.nl - 'PG-EU' (Project Gutenberg in European Union member states)
• UTexas.edu - 'The Digital Gutenberg Project'
• ISCAR.org - 'Institutional Memory: ideas originating from psychologists and linguists in Moscow, Saint Petersburg|Leningrad, Kharkov, Berlin during the 1920s and 1930s'
• Silk-Road.com - 'Printing'

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Memory
Types of memory
Auditory memory | Autobiographical memory | Collective memory | Early memories | Echoic Memory | Eidetic memory | Episodic memory | Explicit memory  |Exosomatic memory | False memory |Flashbulb memory | Iconic memory | Implicit memory | Institutional memory | Long term memory | Procedural memory | Prospective memory | Repressed memory | Retrospective memory | Semantic memory | Sensory memory | Short term memory | Spatial memory | State-dependent memory | Tonal memory | Transactive memory  | Verbal memory  | Visual memory  | Visuospatial memory  | Working memory  |
Aspects of memory
Childhood amnesia | Cryptomnesia |Cued recall | Eye-witness testimony | Memory and emotion | Forgetting |Forgetting curve | Free recall | Levels-of-processing effect | Memory consolidation |Memory decay | Memory distrust syndrome |Memory inhibition | Memory and smell | Memory loss | Memory optimization | Memory trace | Mnemonic | Memory biases  | Tip of the tongue | Lethologica | Priming | Primacy effect | Reconstruction | Proactive interference | Prompting | Recency effect | Recall (learning) | Recognition (learning) | Reminiscence | Retention | Retroactive interference | Serial position effect | Serial recall | Source amnesia |
Memory theory
Memory encoding | Baddeley | Memory-prediction framework | Memory consolidation | Forgetting | Recall | Recognition | Atkinson-Shiffrin | Interference theory | Memory-prediction framework | Dual-coding theory |Decay theory |
Mnemonics
Method of loci | Mnemonic room system | Mnemonic dominic system | Mnemonic link system |Mnemonic major system | Mnemonic peg system | [[]] | [[]] | [[]] |[[]] |
Neuroanatomy of memory
Amygdala | Hippocampus | prefrontal cortex  | Neurobiology of working memory | Neurophysiology of memory | Rhinal cortex | [[]] |[[]] |
Neurochemistry of memory
Glutamatergic system  | of short term memory | [[]] |[[]] | [[]] | [[]] | [[]] | [[]] |[[]] |
Memory in clinical settings
Alcohol amnestic disorder | Amnesia | Dissociative fugue | False memory syndrome | False memory | Hyperthymesia | Memory and aging | Memory disorders | Repressed memory | Traumatic memory |
Assessment of memory
Benton | CAMPROMPT  MAS | MERMER | Rey-15 | Rivermead | TOMM | Wechsler | WMT |
Treating memory problems
CBT | EMDR | Psychotherapy | Recovered memory therapy |Reminiscence therapy | Memory clinic | Memory training | Rewind technique |
Prominant workers in memory|-
Baddeley | Broadbent |Ebbinghaus  | Kandel |McGaugh | Schacter  | Treisman | Tulving  |
Philosophy and historical views of memory
Aristotle | [[]] |[[]] |[[]] |[[]] | [[]] | [[]] | [[]] |
Miscellaneous
Journals | Learning, Memory, and Cognition |Journal of Memory and Language |Memory |Memory and Cognition | [[]] | [[]] | [[]] |

sk:Inštitucionálna pamäť

This page uses content from the English-language version of Wikipedia. The original article was at Institutional memory. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Psychology Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.