Luhmann's Slip Box -- What can we Learn from the Device for Knowledge Representation in Requirements Engineering?

This paper is a thought experiment in finding struc tures for the elicitation of requirements on top of struc tures for retrieving requirements. We transfer from structures used by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, who applied a wooden slip box to collect notes on processed literature. Each slip contains bib liographic information and Luhmann's thoughts to the referenced content. In this paper we propose to use Luhmann's slip box approach for requirements engi neering, by enhancing it to a multi user suited to sort requirements in a requirements repository.