All communities, however defined, are tied together by stories ? anecdotes, impressions, observations and narratives – which together map the shape and substance of their ?world?. In effect, a community is a diverse garden of connected stories; the more deeply one knows the stories, the more deeply one knows the community.

StoryGarden is a web-based tool for gathering and analyzing a large number of stories contributed by the public. The content of the stories, along with some associated survey questions, are processed in an automated semantic computing process for an immediate, interactive display for the lay public, and in a more thorough manual process for expert analysis.

The tool’s primary purpose is to help a community collect the myriad of anecdotes that its members hold, to make the stories available to the public as a ?living history?, and to provide both automated and manual ?knowledge management? processes for deriving meaningful qualitative and quantitative understanding of community issues and values embedded in the stories.

The stories collected in StoryGarden, along with some associated survey questions are processed in an automated semantic computing process for an immediate, interactive display for the lay public, and in a more thorough manual process for expert analysis.