Sarai Lastra Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [email protected]                            Abstract  This paper addresses some challenges that system designers may face when building a community information system for a Latino community. Particularly it examines: How can social network analysis, Latino studies and computer supported cooperative work help in understanding the community’s information needs? How can the design of an interface  enhance access to its networked resources? What are the challenges faced when designing a tool whose goal is to harvest community knowledge from a diasporic community? A scenario is included in order to analyze issues related to the design of community information systems, including social capital strategies for harvesting community knowledge.    1. Introduction Information infrastructure is a tricky thing to analyze. Good, usable systems disappear almost by definition. The easier they are to use, the harder they are to see. As well, most of the time, the bigger they are, the harder they are to see [7, p. 33].       A community information system has special characteristics. Similar to other information delivery systems, its networked capabilities may provide access to digital libraries, online public access catalogs, internet resources, collaboratories, distance education programs and local information resources. […] Read More