to remember

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

KM and LIS education/ Trish Milne

Knowledge Management and LIS Education
Associate Professor Trish Milne
Head, School Information Management and Tourism
This talk will reflect on …
Tertiary education and professional courses
Current professional environment
What we know about ourselves
What we need to change
LIS education
A bigger picture
Tertiary education & professional courses
As well as providing academic leadership (research) for the profession educators must
Keep in close touch with leading practitioners
Be aware of new directions
Develop curricula to reflect the changing needs of the profession
Understand and respond to the challenges in a dynamic environment when graduates are needed to ‘hit the ground running’
Factors impacting on curriculum development
Dynamic environment
Courses constantly updated - last 10 to 15 years
Advances in information and communications technology
Librarians were among first to see potential of WWW
Issues of access and equity to the fore
Employers emphasis on graduate attributes
Flexibility
Adaptability
Ability to be a team player
Ability to problem solve etc etc

In all of this …
Still feeling that librarians were doing what always done - only the tools had changed
Service
Remained core professional ethic
One of the first characteristics noted when discussing role of the librarian (Fleck and Bawden 1995)
New changes in the environment
Abell noted
IM key corporate resource
Its strategic management moving up corporate hierarchy
This is where information professional should be represented
It is where information professionals are able to increase their sphere of influence
Since mid-1990s
Organisational emphasis on KM rather than IM
KM has become part of a continuous process of organisational change (Abell 1999)
Do information professionals have a role? (Southern and Todd 1999)
If they do, what is it?
When we can say what it is, are they fulfilling it?
‘Librarians are the ultimate knowledge managers’ but does this cloud some important issues about their role?
Research has shown that …
Although increasing numbers of information professionals are moving into KM-related positions, few have yet gained senior KM positions.
Abell once asked…
Why, if knowledge management has become an accepted core function in organisations, are there so few librarians at its leading edge? (Abell 1999)
Is the service ethic a handicap?
Many would say ‘Yes!’
‘Yes’: because of the perception it has created
In the minds of information professionals themselves
In the minds of their clients
‘Yes’: because it limits the role that information professionals can play in their organisation
Abell’s research sought to …
Understand why information professionals were not playing a more active role in what seemed to be an area core to its expertise
Map the skills required in KM
Recommend ways in which these skills could be developed
Research was
Largely qualitative
Based on wide consultation with experts
Based on a series of case studies
Survey of organisations implementing KM
Key question: Why were information professionals playing such a small role in developing KM strategies
Additional research outcome
Identification of the key elements of a KM program and
Identification of the essential skills that were required
Fundamental concept …
KM is about a creative mix of skills
Not the prerogative of any one department or function
Forming hybrid teams at planning stage is a key feature
KM environment distinguished by …
Emphasis on interaction between people
People working in multi-disciplinary teams - virtual or actual
Sharing of knowledge and experience
Continual process of learning
Communities
Skills for the K environment
Core competencies
Professional/technical gained through education, training and development
Business sector experience (whatever the sector) (Abell 1998)
Survival skills
Embedded in the ability to
Communicate
Work in a team
Negotiate
Persuade
Facilitate
Coach
Mentor
Understand business processes
KM enabling skills
Skills that will enable the
Identification & analysis of business processes
Understanding of K processes processes
Understanding of the value, context and dynamics of K and information
Identification, creation, maintenance of K assets
Mapping of K flows
Management of change
Leveraging of information & communication technologies to create KM enablers
Support & facilitation of communities & teams
Management of projects
Structuring & architecture of information
Management of document & information workflow
Understanding of information management principles
What was lacking?
Skills
Written communication
Presentation skills
Experience
General management
Strategic planning
Lacking …
Attributes
Business focus
Team approach
Value ethos
Leadership
Ability to innovate
Ability to recognise opportunity
Lacking …
Behaviour
Confidence
Ability to influence
Willingness to share
Ability to take risks
Willingness to identify with the business
Abell answers her question …
Probably many reasons
KM processes and practices are organisation specific & implementation reflects culture of the organisation
BUT fundamental criteria that make it difficult for information professionals to play a major role (Abell 2001)
Poor visibility and definition of
Information profession
Information professionals
Profession still associated with the management of libraries
Critical point being that even virtual libraries are still seen as support rather than a core function
Degree in LIS is not seen by management as developing ‘high-flyers’
Perception of information professionals as providers of effective support services not key business players
This is reflected in the positions held - however well regarded or even rewarded seldom among most senior managers
Research from early 1990s …
Focussed on value placed by management on the corporate library
Reported views of management to whom librarians reported
Online searches most valuable service
Most companies had no process to evaluate
libraries or the
effectiveness, efficiency or productivity of what librarians do
While everyone liked libraries and librarians few thought of them as mission critical (Prusak and Matarazzo)
Two other studies found librarians were …
Highly regarded
Fulfilled service oriented and reactive function
Perceived as
Efficient
Intelligent
Helpful
Having specialised knowledge
BUT
Were also
Unambitious
Gained satisfaction from helping others achieve their ends
Authors concluded that there are problems for professionals working in a service function setting
BUT librarians must develop ways of showing that they are central to the business of the parent organisation (Fleck and Bawden, 1995).
KM culture
Frequently KM initiatives are begun at this senior level & strategy and planning teams reflecting their peer group
How soon information professionals are included depends on how soon they can influence their peer group
Are seen as having valuable skills but that they need to be directed by people who are core to the business - not seen as business managers
Attitudes of information professionals
Because of attitudes of management - many information professionals just do not expect to be involved
Many see KM as a new term for what they have always done - now being used by others to capitalise on the corporate interest in information
What more does this tell us?
Peer groups
KM driven from senior management
Seldom are information professionals part of this core group
Focus of KM approaches
Approaches to KM that involve cultural change, organisational learning etc rely on effective information management - but it is often viewed as a support activity, not a primary concern

Senior Management perceptions of IM professionals
Fundamentally associated with management of libraries
Support rather than strategic role
IM perceptions & expectations
Feel that KM is a new term for what they already do
Or it is a term used by those wanting to capitalise on the importance of information
Associate role with external information
Box themselves in

Mindset
St Onge suggested that the most important task for organisations developing KM is to change the mindset of its employees
Therefore information professionals need to think of themselves as part of the core business and not in a support/service role
Balancing this …
Knowledge managers, information specialists, chief answerists, K navigators - they are more commonly known as librarians. As corporations rely on information to keep ahead of the competition, demand for these professionals is escalating (Francois 1999)
Career paths are changing and opening new opportunities
In US 13% librarians don’t work in traditional library setting but functioning throughout business and commanding much higher salaries (Francois 1999)
Whichever part of society is focus, information professional has unprecedented opportunities - it is information that is underpinning current organisational success (Abell 1998)
LIS education
Needs to make clear the shift from information management to K management
It isn’t what librarians have always done
But it is our traditional skills that have made us so valuable - shouldn’t be ignored
Graduate attributes or generic skills are now more important than ever

Hand-in-hand with appropriate content, learning experiences must include creative assessment items that reflect the real world of work and provide the opportunity for the development of the skills, experience, attributes and behaviour that Abell found lacking (Abell 1997, Hall 1996, Milne 1996, Milne & Alderman 1996)
Picture is more than the tertiary course
Where does it begin?
Getting the students we need
Perception of the profession
Higher Education Sector
Courses have been discontinued
Others currently under threat
Move to distance or online delivery

Posted by: mary / 12:10 AM 11 comments

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Ferguson, S 2004, The knowledge management myth: will the real knowledge managers please step forward?, viewed 10/02 2005,

PAPER PRESENTED AT
Introduction
Despite the theoretical problems associated with Knowledge
Management – problems that have provided no small amount of
material for conferences and the publishing industry – Knowledge
Management has survived for over ten years and continues to
attract considerable attention in conferences, on websites and
in the literature – not just the literature of library and information
management, but also the literature of business management.
Knowledge Management workshops and consultancies also
attract substantial fees, which might be regarded by some as
evidence of its value. Moreover there continue to be numerous
calls in the literature of library and information management
for information professionals to stake their claim as their
organisations’ best-qualifi ed knowledge managers. We are ideally
placed to take on this role, the argument goes, because we
have been managing knowledge from time immemorial (Butler
2000, p.40; Corrall 1999; Townley 2001, p.53). Patricia Milne’s
otherwise excellent paper (2000, p.149;) refers to librarians as
the ‘ultimate knowledge workers’, while, in the academic library
sector, Joseph Branin (2003, p.11) claims to have been asked
by senior university administrators: ‘If we had the experience and
expertise to manage published information, could we not extend
this expertise to all the intellectual assets of the University?’ At
this conference four years ago, Christine Johnston (2000) made
the bold claim that librarians were ‘in a position of strength’ and
that our ‘traditional skills … place us in an ideal position to play
a key role in an organisation’s knowledge initiatives’. The recent
IFLA collection, Knowledge Management: Libraries and Librarians
Taking up the Challenge, is littered with such comments, some
of them verging on the fanciful: for instance, Michael Koenig’s
suggestion that the ‘obvious’ solution to the failure of so many
knowledge management systems to match up to companies’
expectations is to import librarians to provide user education and
training (2004, 140). Hans-Christoph Hobohm (2004, p.7) begins
the collection with the claim that knowledge management is one
of those concepts that librarians take time to assimilate, only to
refl ect ultimately ‘on why other communities try to colonise our
domains’ – well, the title of the collection does refer to challenge.
Not all writers, in fairness, claim the Knowledge Management
domain as ours. Milne’s paper, for instance, refers to library and
information professionals forging partnerships with others in the
‘domain’, as distinct from ‘colonisation’, while, in a challenging
paper in last year’s Australian Library Journal, Cathie Koina
questions whether librarians are really ‘the ultimate knowledge
managers’ and points out that what librarians have done for
many years is Information Management, which, contrary to
what many librarians believe, is not the same as Knowledge
Management (2003, p.270). In this paper I take a similar line.
The claim that library and information professionals are ideally
suited to stake their claim as knowledge managers fl ies in the
face of much of the Knowledge Management literature, which is
at pains to distinguish Knowledge Management from Information
Management. While not necessarily agreeing with the notion
that Knowledge Management and Information Management
are completely distinct, I can see signifi cant differences in the
emphasis of each – differences that make the hyperbolic claims
about Knowledge Management being ‘souped-up’ Librarianship
highly questionable. That there are signifi cant differences
between the two is borne out, to a certain extent, by the number
of Knowledge Management courses that have emerged in the
past few years (Chaudhry & Higgins 2004).
My strategy in this paper is to attempt to establish the kinds
of tasks performed by a knowledge manager – if there is such
as thing – infer what a position description for a knowledge
manager might look like and then ask whether our profession
has the necessary skills and attributes. This seems to me a more
productive approach than becoming bogged down, as many
papers do, in an attempt to defi ne Knowledge Management and
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please
Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
Abstract
The library literature of the past few years has periodically exhorted librarians to market themselves as knowledge workers capable
of taking over the emerging ‘knowledge management’ function in their organisations. This paper challenges such a fanciful reengineering
of the librarian’s role and suggests that it is based on the misguided confl ation of knowledge management and information
management. It argues that the two are much more distinct than generally believed, and contrasts them by attempting to identify the
tasks of a knowledge manager, outlining appropriate ‘position descriptions’ for the Knowledge Management fi eld and examining the
professional background and organisational position required to fulfi ll these roles.
2
Information Management and then juxtaposing the two in one of
the ‘compare and contrast’ exercises that educators love to throw
at their long-suffering students.
Corporate knowledge
First, however, I would like to pose the question: which is the odd
one out of the following terms:
• information management
• knowledge management
• library science
• military intelligence?
The clue lies in the last term, because it is often used as an
example of oxymoron. Only one of the terms, Information
Management, is not an oxymoron and is therefore the odd one out
– librarianship is not a science and knowledge cannot be managed.
Having succeeded in antagonising everyone in the room, I would
like to emphasise that, while for many of us it is a philosophical
nonsense to suggest that knowledge can be managed, the
proponents of Knowledge Management insist that what they
are attempting to ‘manage’ for the sake of corporate benefi t
is the complete knowledge resource – not just the so-called
explicit knowledge used by an organisation, such as policy
documents, the contents of databases or corporate records
(in other words, what we would call information), but also the
knowledge locked away in people’s heads, a signifi cant portion
of which is what we call ‘know-how’. In a much quoted study,
Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak (2000, p.5) describe
organisational management as ‘a fl uid mix of framed experience,
values, contextual information, and expert insight’ that is typically
‘embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in
organisational routines, processes, practices, and norms.’ It is the
emphasis on this second type of knowledge – what the rest of us,
by and large, understand as knowledge (rather than information)
– that distinguishes Knowledge Management from Information
Management. On a more pragmatic level, if someone is asked
whether her organisation has any Knowledge Management
problems, the chances are that the fi rst example that springs to
mind is the issue of people leaving the organisation with heaps of
‘know-how’ that is thus lost to the organisation.
There is little point, especially in a paper this length, of becoming
sidetracked by the semantic debate that accompanies much
of our discourse about Knowledge Management, although a
degree of semantic argument is inevitable, given the subject and
its defi nitional problems. There have been numerous attempts
to provide a theoretical basis for Knowledge Management: for
instance Davenport & Prusak (2000), Srikanntaiah & Koenig
(2000) and Mac Morrow (2001), not to mention studies of
organisational knowledge: most notably, Nonaka & Takeuchi
(1995). It is worth noting that a 2002 review by Hlupik et al,
identifi ed eighteen distinct defi nitions of Knowledge Management
(Bouthillier & Shearer 2002). Tom Wilson, a vocal critic of
Knowledge Management, which he sees as typically repackaged
Information Management, takes Nonaka and Takeuchi to task
for what he sees as their misuse of Michael Polanyi’s term, ‘tacit
knowledge’. That term, he suggests, refers to hidden processes
of comprehension that cannot be expressed and that therefore
cannot be ‘managed’ by the zealous Knowledge Manager (Wilson
2002). One can always change the term, however, and some
writers have done so, substituting ‘implicit knowledge’, which has
the merit of sounding like the antonym of explicit knowledge. In
fact, Ikujiro Nonaka, in a paper co-authored with Noburu Konno,
refers to technical and cognitive dimensions to what he calls tacit
knowledge. The cognitive dimension constitutes aspects such
as ‘schemata and mental models’, which, the authors admit, are
‘deeply ingrained in us’ and ‘diffi cult to articulate’. The technical,
on the other hand, ‘encompasses the kind of informal personal
skills or crafts often referred to as ‘know-how’ (1998, p.42), and
is much easier to articulate and therefore convert to explicit
knowledge or, what we call, information.
Many of the proponents of Knowledge Management use the
term for want of a better one – and because it is still a term that
sells consultancies – but actually talk about the development of
strategies and processes to encourage the sharing of knowledge
or, more typically, the leverage of knowledge – the creation of an
organisational culture and the development of a technological
infrastructure that encourage the sharing of knowledge and
foster the development of a learning organisation. It is frequently
claimed that Knowledge Management is wider than Information
Management, and even subsumes it. In her well-known paper in
Australian Library Journal, Marianne Broadbent, who has been
one of the most infl uential proponents of Knowledge Management
in the Australian library and information sector, suggests (1997,
pp.8-9) that, integral to the implementation of knowledge
management, ‘is understanding the organisation’s information
fl ows and implementing organisational learning practices which
make explicit key aspects of its knowledge base.’ Knowledge
management, she insists, ‘is about enhancing the use of
organisational knowledge through sound practices of information
management and organisational learning.’
Part of the occasionally infl ated claim for Knowledge Management
is that it is an integrated approach to leveraging an organisation’s
intellectual capital. ‘Leveraging’ suggests to me the bizarre image
of the Knowledge Manager sawing open the poor employee’s head
and leveraging out bits of brain, all for the corporate good. We are
assured, however, that ‘leveraging’ knowledge refers to establishing
the value of knowledge at each stage of knowledge creation and
transfer, and ensuring that the full value is realised. And of course
it is an integrated approach. It is basically a management paradigm
and as such can be expected to take an integrated approach. No
management consultant worth his or her salt is going to say: ‘We
can tell you how to leverage some of your intellectual capital – if
you want the other stuff, fi nd another consultant.’
The corporate knowledge that knowledge managers are meant
to be leveraging includes the following categories, according to
Karl Wiig (1993, p.156), one of the most infl uential and most often
cited writers on Knowledge Management in the business sector:
• Tacit Knowledge, such as the kind found in skills and habits or
in non-associative learning;
• Explicit Knowledge, which might be held in a person’s mind
(for instance, procedural knowledge) or in written materials
(for example, production knowledge)
• Implicit Knowledge, which might be held in historic records of
past decisions or in R&D reports
• Combined Explicit and Implicit Knowledge: for instance,
‘lessons-learned’ reports
• Procedural Knowledge, typically present in computer
programs
• Anecdotal Knowledge, such as memory of a particular ‘case’
in someone’s mind; and
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
3
• Embedded Knowledge, in other words, knowledge embedded
in organisational structures, systems and procedures, and in
technology.
One might disagree with parts of Wiig’s taxonomy, such as the
notion that explicit knowledge can be held in a person’s mind,
but it demonstrates the scope of corporate knowledge that
Knowledge Management is intended to address. It is much
broader than the explicit knowledge handled by our profession,
which consists largely of published information.
David Skyrme, another much quoted commentator on Knowledge
Management, suggests (1999) that most KM programs focus on
the following seven ‘strategic levers’:
• Customer Knowledge – the most vital knowledge in most
organizations
• Knowledge in Processes – applying the best know-how while
performing core tasks
• Knowledge in Products (and Services) – smarter solutions,
customized to users’ needs
• Knowledge in People – nurturing and harnessing brainpower,
your most precious asset
• Organizational Memory – drawing on lessons from the past or
elsewhere in the organization
• Knowledge in Relationships – deep personal knowledge that
underpins successful collaboration
• Knowledge Assets – measuring and managing your
intellectual capital.
Tasks of the knowledge manager
Turning to the ‘tasks’ that might be the responsibility of a
knowledge manager, France Bouthillier and Kathleen Shearer
(2002) conducted an empirical study of twelve organisations – six
from the private and six from the public sectors – which identifi es
what they called Knowledge Management ‘methodologies’, which
they categorised as follows:
• focus on communication, namely, Communities of Practice
and Question and Answer forums
• focus on storage and retrieval, namely, Knowledge Mapping,
Expert Databases and Knowledge Databases
• focus on selected dissemination, namely, News Information
Alerts and Organisational Learning
• focus on action, namely, virtual collaboration.
This is by no means a comprehensive or rigorous typology but,
again, it demonstrates the range of the Knowledge Management
domain. It also highlights both the overlap between Knowledge
Management and Information Management, and the distance
between the two in terms of focus.
Compare these ‘methodologies’ with the tasks of an information
manager, as outlined in a well-known book published by the
British Government (Central Computer and Telecommunications
Agency 1990, p.15) over a decade ago:
What are the organisation’s business aims and objectives?
What information is needed to support those aims?
What information is available in the organisation?
Are there differences between needs and provision?
What has to be done to match needs and provision?
Is further exploitation of information viable?
Some of the methodologies employed to effect these Information
Management tasks resemble those listed by Bouthillier and
Shearer: for instance, one establishes the match, or absence
of match, between information and needs by conducting an
information audit, which in many essentials resembles ‘knowledge
mapping’. Once again, however, it is worth noting that the
methodologies listed in the Knowledge Management study are
overwhelmingly designed to provide and facilitate the sharing of
so-called tacit or implicit knowledge.
Position descriptions
The sheer range of the Knowledge Management domain makes
the construction of a hypothetical position description for a
knowledge manager diffi cult, if not impossible. There is likely to
be a whole range of positions, each responsible for a reasonably
well-defi ned area in the domain of corporate knowledge and its
creation, codifi cation and storage (where feasible), exchange
and exploitation. A couple of years ago, Standards Australia
published some ‘sample job descriptions’, compiled by Karen
Bishop. Based on her expertise as a recruitment consultant,
these are constructed around more specifi c sets of tasks than the
‘methodologies’ just listed. Positions covered include: ‘Competitive
Intelligence Leader’, ‘Knowledge and Information Manager’,
‘Information Literacy Manager’, ‘Intranet Content Manager’ and
‘Knowledge Coordinator’. Interestingly, two of these positions
relate to what we do in the library and information profession.
The specifi c ‘knowledge-enabling’ tasks performed by these
knowledge managers include the following:
• knowledge strategies – to develop/improve the knowledge
processes that support organisational development and
performance;
• knowledge auditing – to develop maps of organisational
knowledge, identify gaps in knowledge and barriers to
knowledge discovery/exchange/development;
• ‘information literacy’ training programs for improved use of
information and knowledge resources;
• facilitation skills for improved group dynamics, and coaching
programs for improved communication skills to help with
collaboration and innovation;
• designing systems and procedures to enable effective
creation of, and access to, recorded knowledge; and
• managing changes in organisational behaviour in line with
knowledge-focused organisational strategy (2002, p.12).
In areas such as information literacy and provision of access to
recorded knowledge, library and information professionals clearly
have some expertise, but the other tasks take them well outside
the comfort zones populated by most of the profession – not that
we shouldn’t consider venturing out of these zones.
The IFLA collection, mentioned earlier, also demonstrates a
wide range of Knowledge Management positions. In it, Anne
Morris reports on another empirical study, this time in Britain, that
collected, analysed and, where necessary, followed up on job
advertisements in the Knowledge Management sector over the
six-month period, October 2000 until March 2001. The information
collected was used to categorise roles as follows:
• Chief Knowledge Offi cer – a senior person, responsible for
the initial development of Knowledge Management strategy,
leadership and coordination
• Chief Knowledge Team Manager – also a senior person,
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
4
responsible for ‘KM development and training, strategy, IT
infrastructure, business processes, change management and
so on’
• Implementation Manager – part of a team responsible for
‘KM implementation and monitoring and overseeing the
development of processes, infrastructure and information
resources’
• Knowledge Centre-Based Employee – with responsibility for
‘facilitating acquisition, dissemination and access to internal
and external information and knowledge sources’
• Knowledge Networker – with responsibility for ‘facilitating KM
activities within a specifi c network and community’
• Business Unit-Based Employee – with responsibility for
‘facilitating the development and implementation of KM
activities with the help of the implementation team in their unit’
(2004, pp.118-9).
Some of the positions categorised here are senior ones that
require considerable knowledge of the core business of the
organisation and the authority on a strategic level to effect
changes in areas such as IT infrastructure and organisational
culture. At the other end of the spectrum are employees based
in specifi c units who work in teams as knowledge ‘facilitators’
– many of these will be people who have the required business
or subject expertise, but some may have an information and/or
knowledge management background. Somewhere between the
two extremes is a Knowledge Centre that requires knowledge and
skills that look rather like those of an information professional.
Discussion
Two main points strike me about the kinds of positions associated
with the Knowledge Management domain. The fi rst, to which I
have already alluded, is the sheer range.
This is hardly surprising, given the range of information
professionals working under the somewhat more ‘traditional’
Information Management umbrella. While there are continuities of
practice within the Information Management sector – represented
by works such as the British Government one mentioned earlier
– there are also many applications, ranging from the ‘traditional’
document-orientated professions, such as librarianship and
records management (both quite separate professions with
their own, typically distinct, position descriptions), to the ‘hybrid’
information managers who form a ‘bridge’ between those
senior managers responsible for conducting an organisation’s
primary business and those people who design and implement
the supporting systems and technologies. Of course there are
important continuities of practice, such as information analysis,
but there are also signifi cant differences. Librarians and systems
people may both talk about information analysis, but the
processes and outcomes are quite distinct.
Position descriptions for the various information professions vary
enormously, and it is not surprising that it is similar in the area
of Knowledge Management, which is claimed to be wider than
Information Management. In one of the more balanced papers in
the IFLA collection, Liz Davenport (2004, p.82) quotes a previous
paper she co-authored with Blaise Cronin in 2000, which is worth
repeating here: ‘knowledge management is a form of distributed
cognition, a multifaceted domain where professionals of different
provenance must recognize each other’s roles.’ In other words,
it is not a question of ‘them’ trying to muscle in on our traditional
‘territory’ or of our attempting to colonise theirs.
The second point that I would like to highlight is the fact that in
terms of information politics, it is unlikely that many librarians
are in any position to bring about the level of knowledge
leverage required if their organisations are to become learning
organisations. The more senior ‘knowledge-enabling’ tasks
outlined by writers such as Bishop and Morris require a level of
leverage that very few librarians enjoy, although many may aspire
to it. Some include a strategic information management role that
includes development of an organisation’s IT infrastructure, and
we all know that in the Information Management domain –
notwithstanding some notable exceptions in the tertiary education
sector – our Information Systems and Technology colleagues
tend to occupy a higher position in the corporate pecking order
than most librarians. More important, is the level of organisational
development required. Knowledge leverage needs to take place in
parts of the organisation never reached by librarians.
It seems to me, therefore, that many of the knowledge-enabling
tasks are best effected by the Human Resources division in
an organisation. We are talking about signifi cant evolutionary
developments in organisational culture – if not, on occasion,
revolutionary developments. Here is what David Snowden (1999)
said a few years ago. Knowledge Management:
is a new way of thinking about the organisation and society.
It challenges the dominant mechanical metaphor of scientifi c
management, in thinking of the organisation as a complex,
self-structuring ecology in which the secret is to achieve
minimal intervention for maximum benefi cial effect. It is
about creating adaptive systems that learn, in preference to
systems that are optimal within a specifi c context.
This, it seems to me, sums up the challenge involved in
establishing learning organisations. While librarians have a role to
play, Human Resources departments tend to be in a much stronger
position to bring about the required cultural changes. It is worth
noting here Michael Middleton’s paper a few years ago, which
described Knowledge Management (1999, p.2) as ‘a combination
of information management (IM) for managing the documentary
form, and HRM for managing the expression of knowledge.’
The position description for the corporate Knowledge Manager, at
the senior end of the spectrum, should look something like this:
Director, Knowledge Management
The Director, Knowledge Management, is accountable to the
Executive Director, Human Resources, for promoting a culture of
effective knowledge sharing and for planning and implementing
organisational knowledge and information planning in alignment
with the strategic plan of the organisation. This includes
coordination of the delivery of an integrated organisation-wide
program for staff development, communities of practice and
provision of executive management development.
The Director is supported by a team of professional staff with
specialist managers in knowledge centre management, records
management, information systems and networks management,
team leadership, and staff development and training.
The Director, as part of the senior human resources management
team, will play an integral role in supporting the achievement of
organisational objectives through:
• contributing to the strategic directions of the organisation by
promoting an integrated Knowledge Management philosophy;
• linking knowledge and information management policies and
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
5
practices with organisational objectives, including provision of
information to support decision making;
• facilitating staff understanding of, and engagement with, the
strategic direction of the organisation;
• creating an innovative and adaptive culture for change by
promoting an understanding of Knowledge Management
among executives, managers, supervisors and staff;
• assisting the organisation’s executives and managers to
incorporate knowledge management strategies at all levels of
planning and performance management;
• coordinating the delivery of an integrated professional
development program in collaboration with other staff
development providers;
• identifying appropriate best practice primarily in the areas of
knowledge and information management;
• developing and managing all Knowledge Management
projects, including planning, resourcing and communication
strategies
• assisting the human resources management team to review
and evaluate knowledge management policies, procedures
and systems to ensure they refl ect best practice and continue
to meet the organisation’s strategic objectives; and
• providing organisational development support for the
implementation of knowledge management initiatives.
There may be much in this illustration of a Knowledge Manager
to criticise, but it does suggest a plausible paradigm. When I read
references in the literature to the need for librarians to stake, or
even re-stake, their claim to be their organisation’s Knowledge
Manager, it strikes me that most librarians are still too close to the
periphery of their organisation’s core business to provide the kind
of leadership required in the Knowledge Management environment.
This is not to belittle the success of those innovative librarians
who have made some contribution to their organisations’
knowledge leverage, especially, but not exclusively, in the
areas of health and law. Some may recall, for instance, Grace
Cheng’s paper in the February 2000 issue of Australian Library
Journal on the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, which outlined
how librarians (no longer termed that of course) developed an
electronic forum on which clinicians and managers discuss
and exchange opinions on the application of evidence in local
clinical practice, and supported the electronic publication of the
Newsletter of best evidence (2000, pp. 22-23). Consider too
a law fi rm, such as Allen Arthur Robinson, which has brought
together knowledge managers and librarians to handle the large
number of precedents required in legal practice. The knowledge
managers in this case have legal qualifi cations and considerable
subject expertise in the area of precedents, but the point is
that the librarians bring their own information management
expertise to the collaboration and, by working with the subject
specialists, fi nd themselves more closely aligned with areas of
practice (C Thomas, C Machin & J Guerrato 2003, pers. comm.
9 Oct.). Information knowledge is not a substitute for subject
knowledge or knowledge of business processes, but information
professionals can on occasion work more closely with those who
have that knowledge.
Conclusions
Librarians do belong in the Knowledge Management domain
and have a contribution to make. Instead of making motherhood
statements about what good knowledge managers we make, or
could make if we just had the chance, we should be exchanging
success stories – case studies that will assist others to see what
is possible. It is important, nonetheless, that we see ourselves
as merely part of the so-called Knowledge Management solution
and familiarise ourselves with the other players, and potential
collaborators, whether they be other Information Management
professionals or come from other backgrounds such as business
or human resource management. It is also important that there
is informed debate within the profession. There is a considerable
literature within ALIA on professional roles for librarians, going
back to the 1980s and including, most recently Sue Myburgh’s
paper in ALJ on educational directions (2003). For purposes
of education, training and CPD, we need information on the
changing job market at the interface of information and knowledge
management; perhaps along the lines of the studies, mentioned
earlier, by Bouthillier and Shearer and by Morris. If librarians are
to make a grab for Knowledge Management, it needs to be a wellinformed
one.
Besides the issue of what library and information professionals
have to contribute to the Knowledge Management domain,
however, there is another reason for interesting ourselves in the
subject. We are used to thinking of Knowledge Management
in the special libraries sector, in which our more proactive
colleagues have already repositioned themselves in their
organisations as Information Managers – and may be in the
course of staking their claims to the Knowledge Management
turf – but it is worth remembering that other types of library often
constitute substantial organisations in their own right: what the
cataloguers in our midst call subordinate bodies. We should
be asking whether the Knowledge Management principles that
some see as integral to librarianship are actually practiced in
our libraries. I would maintain – and I am very much open to
contradiction – that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that
library managers practice better Knowledge Management than
any other type of manager. Indeed, I am sure we can all think of
library managers whose ability to leverage the intellectual capital
of their libraries leaves considerable ‘room for improvement’.
Like many educators, I continue to attempt to impart some basic
Knowledge Management principles to my students, not just
to prepare them for the turf wars ahead, but also because an
understanding of Knowledge Management and the need to create
Learning Organisations should be an integral part of the wider
HRM environment. However, I also continue to look, without much
success, for evidence, fi rst, of real engagement in the Knowledge
Management domain by library and information professionals
and, second, of an ability to practice what we preach in terms of
‘leveraging’ knowledge in our own libraries. I am sceptical, therefore
when I ask an ALIA conference audience ‘Will the Real Knowledge
Managers Please Step Forward?’ I don’t expect to be fl attened in
the stampede, but I would be happy to be proved wrong.
Keywords
Knowledge management; Knowledge managers; Leveraging
knowledge; Learning organisations; Corporate knowledge;
Information management.
References
Bishop, K (2002) New roles, skills and capabilities for the
knowledge-focused organisation, Business Excellence Australia,
Sydney.
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
6
Bouthillier, F & Shearer, K (2002) ‘Understanding knowledge
management and information management: The need for an
empirical perspective,’ Information Research, 8, 1, viewed 16 Oct.
2004, .
Branin, JJ (2003) ‘Knowledge management in academic libraries:
Building the knowledge bank at the Ohio State University’,
viewed 26 Mar. 2004, Kmacadlib.pdf>.
Broadbent, M (1997) ‘The emerging phenomenon of knowledge
management’, Australian Library Journal, vol. 46, pp.6-24.
Butler, Y (2000) ‘Knowledge management: If only you knew what
you knew’, Australian Library Journal, vol. 49, pp.31-42.
Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (1990)
Managing information as a resource, HMSO, London.
Chaudhry, AS & Higgins, S (2004) ‘Education for knowledge
management: A spectrum approach’, in Knowledge management:
Libraries and librarians taking up the challenge, H Hobohm (ed.),
IFLA publications, no. 108, Saur, Munich, pp.127-136.
Cheng, G (2000) ‘The shifting information landscape: Re-inventing
the wheel or a whole new frontier for librarians’, Australian Library
Journal, vol. 49, pp.17-26.
Corrall, S (1999) ‘Knowledge management: Are we in the
knowledge management business?’ Ariadne, 18, viewed 26 Mar.
2004, .
Davenport, E (2004) ‘Organizations, knowledge management
and libraries: Issues, opportunities and challenges’, in Knowledge
management: Libraries and librarians taking up the challenge, H
Hobohm (ed.), IFLA publications, no. 108, Saur, Munich, pp.81-
89.
Davenport, T & Prusak, L (2000) Working knowledge: How
organizations manage what they know, 2nd ed., Harvard
Business School Press, Cambridge, MA.
Hobohm H (ed) (2004) Knowledge management: Libraries and
librarians taking up the challenge, IFLA publications, no. 108,
Saur, Munich.
Johnston, C (2000) ‘The business of knowledge management in
the knowledge-aware organisation’, Capitalising on knowledge:
The information profession in the 21st century: ALIA biennial
conference, 24-26 October, viewed 16 October 2003, //www.alia.org.au/conferences/alia2000/proceedings/christine.joh
nston.html>.
Koenig, MED (2004) ‘Knowledge management, user education,
and librarianship’, in Knowledge management: Libraries and
librarians taking up the challenge, H Hobohm (ed.), IFLA
publications, no. 108, Saur, Munich, pp.137-150.
Koina, C (2003) ‘Librarians are the ultimate knowledge
managers?’, Australian Library Journal, 52, pp.269-272.
Mac Morrow, N (2001) ‘Knowledge management: An introduction’,
in Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, ME
Williams (ed.), Information Today, Medford, NJ, pp.381-422.
Middleton, M (1999) ‘From information management to knowledge
management: Some perspectives on development’, English
language version (written prior to translation into Spanish) of
‘De la gestión de la información a la gestión del conocimiento’,
El Profesional de la Información, vol. 8, no. 5, pp.10-17, viewed
26 Mar. 2004, IM_KM_Eng.doc>.
Milne, P (2000) ‘Information professionals and the knowledgeaware,
intelligent organisation: Skills for the future’, Australian
Library Journal, 49, pp.139-150.
Morris, A (2004) ‘Knowledge management: Employment
opportunities for IS graduates’, in Knowledge management:
Libraries and librarians taking up the challenge, H Hobohm (ed.),
IFLA publications, no. 108, Saur, Munich, pp.115-125.
Myburgh, S 2003, ‘Education directions for new information
professionals’, Australian Library Journal, 52, pp.213-227.
Nonaka, I & Konno, N (1998) ‘The concept of ‘Ba’: Building a
foundation for knowledge creation’, California Management
Review, 40, 3, pp.40-54.
Nonaka, I & Takeuchi, H (1995) The knowledge creating
company, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Skyrme, D (1999) KM basics, Knowledge Connections,
David Skyrme Associates, viewed 24 Mar. 2004 www.skyrme.com/resource/kmbasics.htm>.
Snowden, D (1999) Grappling with knowledge and realising
what you’ve got - ‘I only know what I know when I need to know
it ...’. In Knowledge management: The information management
event, Olympia Conference and Exhibition Centre, London,
UK 24-25 March 1999, p.5; cited in Milne, P (2000) Information
professionals and the knowledge-aware, intelligent organisation:
Skills for the future. Australian Library Journal, 49, p.141.
Townley, C (2001) ‘Knowledge management and academic
libraries’, College and Research Libraries, vol. 62, no. 1, pp.44-55.
Wiig, KM (1993) Knowledge management foundations, Schema
Press, Arlington, TX.
Wilson, TD (2002) ‘The nonsense of ‘knowledge management’’,
Information Research, 8, 1, viewed 16 Oct. 2002, InformationR.net/ir/8-144.html>.
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University

Posted by: mary / 10:56 PM 0 comments

Ferguson, S 2004, The knowledge management myth: will the real knowledge managers please step forward?, viewed 10/02 2005,

PAPER PRESENTED AT
Introduction
Despite the theoretical problems associated with Knowledge
Management – problems that have provided no small amount of
material for conferences and the publishing industry – Knowledge
Management has survived for over ten years and continues to
attract considerable attention in conferences, on websites and
in the literature – not just the literature of library and information
management, but also the literature of business management.
Knowledge Management workshops and consultancies also
attract substantial fees, which might be regarded by some as
evidence of its value. Moreover there continue to be numerous
calls in the literature of library and information management
for information professionals to stake their claim as their
organisations’ best-qualifi ed knowledge managers. We are ideally
placed to take on this role, the argument goes, because we
have been managing knowledge from time immemorial (Butler
2000, p.40; Corrall 1999; Townley 2001, p.53). Patricia Milne’s
otherwise excellent paper (2000, p.149;) refers to librarians as
the ‘ultimate knowledge workers’, while, in the academic library
sector, Joseph Branin (2003, p.11) claims to have been asked
by senior university administrators: ‘If we had the experience and
expertise to manage published information, could we not extend
this expertise to all the intellectual assets of the University?’ At
this conference four years ago, Christine Johnston (2000) made
the bold claim that librarians were ‘in a position of strength’ and
that our ‘traditional skills … place us in an ideal position to play
a key role in an organisation’s knowledge initiatives’. The recent
IFLA collection, Knowledge Management: Libraries and Librarians
Taking up the Challenge, is littered with such comments, some
of them verging on the fanciful: for instance, Michael Koenig’s
suggestion that the ‘obvious’ solution to the failure of so many
knowledge management systems to match up to companies’
expectations is to import librarians to provide user education and
training (2004, 140). Hans-Christoph Hobohm (2004, p.7) begins
the collection with the claim that knowledge management is one
of those concepts that librarians take time to assimilate, only to
refl ect ultimately ‘on why other communities try to colonise our
domains’ – well, the title of the collection does refer to challenge.
Not all writers, in fairness, claim the Knowledge Management
domain as ours. Milne’s paper, for instance, refers to library and
information professionals forging partnerships with others in the
‘domain’, as distinct from ‘colonisation’, while, in a challenging
paper in last year’s Australian Library Journal, Cathie Koina
questions whether librarians are really ‘the ultimate knowledge
managers’ and points out that what librarians have done for
many years is Information Management, which, contrary to
what many librarians believe, is not the same as Knowledge
Management (2003, p.270). In this paper I take a similar line.
The claim that library and information professionals are ideally
suited to stake their claim as knowledge managers fl ies in the
face of much of the Knowledge Management literature, which is
at pains to distinguish Knowledge Management from Information
Management. While not necessarily agreeing with the notion
that Knowledge Management and Information Management
are completely distinct, I can see signifi cant differences in the
emphasis of each – differences that make the hyperbolic claims
about Knowledge Management being ‘souped-up’ Librarianship
highly questionable. That there are signifi cant differences
between the two is borne out, to a certain extent, by the number
of Knowledge Management courses that have emerged in the
past few years (Chaudhry & Higgins 2004).
My strategy in this paper is to attempt to establish the kinds
of tasks performed by a knowledge manager – if there is such
as thing – infer what a position description for a knowledge
manager might look like and then ask whether our profession
has the necessary skills and attributes. This seems to me a more
productive approach than becoming bogged down, as many
papers do, in an attempt to defi ne Knowledge Management and
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please
Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
Abstract
The library literature of the past few years has periodically exhorted librarians to market themselves as knowledge workers capable
of taking over the emerging ‘knowledge management’ function in their organisations. This paper challenges such a fanciful reengineering
of the librarian’s role and suggests that it is based on the misguided confl ation of knowledge management and information
management. It argues that the two are much more distinct than generally believed, and contrasts them by attempting to identify the
tasks of a knowledge manager, outlining appropriate ‘position descriptions’ for the Knowledge Management fi eld and examining the
professional background and organisational position required to fulfi ll these roles.
2
Information Management and then juxtaposing the two in one of
the ‘compare and contrast’ exercises that educators love to throw
at their long-suffering students.
Corporate knowledge
First, however, I would like to pose the question: which is the odd
one out of the following terms:
• information management
• knowledge management
• library science
• military intelligence?
The clue lies in the last term, because it is often used as an
example of oxymoron. Only one of the terms, Information
Management, is not an oxymoron and is therefore the odd one out
– librarianship is not a science and knowledge cannot be managed.
Having succeeded in antagonising everyone in the room, I would
like to emphasise that, while for many of us it is a philosophical
nonsense to suggest that knowledge can be managed, the
proponents of Knowledge Management insist that what they
are attempting to ‘manage’ for the sake of corporate benefi t
is the complete knowledge resource – not just the so-called
explicit knowledge used by an organisation, such as policy
documents, the contents of databases or corporate records
(in other words, what we would call information), but also the
knowledge locked away in people’s heads, a signifi cant portion
of which is what we call ‘know-how’. In a much quoted study,
Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak (2000, p.5) describe
organisational management as ‘a fl uid mix of framed experience,
values, contextual information, and expert insight’ that is typically
‘embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in
organisational routines, processes, practices, and norms.’ It is the
emphasis on this second type of knowledge – what the rest of us,
by and large, understand as knowledge (rather than information)
– that distinguishes Knowledge Management from Information
Management. On a more pragmatic level, if someone is asked
whether her organisation has any Knowledge Management
problems, the chances are that the fi rst example that springs to
mind is the issue of people leaving the organisation with heaps of
‘know-how’ that is thus lost to the organisation.
There is little point, especially in a paper this length, of becoming
sidetracked by the semantic debate that accompanies much
of our discourse about Knowledge Management, although a
degree of semantic argument is inevitable, given the subject and
its defi nitional problems. There have been numerous attempts
to provide a theoretical basis for Knowledge Management: for
instance Davenport & Prusak (2000), Srikanntaiah & Koenig
(2000) and Mac Morrow (2001), not to mention studies of
organisational knowledge: most notably, Nonaka & Takeuchi
(1995). It is worth noting that a 2002 review by Hlupik et al,
identifi ed eighteen distinct defi nitions of Knowledge Management
(Bouthillier & Shearer 2002). Tom Wilson, a vocal critic of
Knowledge Management, which he sees as typically repackaged
Information Management, takes Nonaka and Takeuchi to task
for what he sees as their misuse of Michael Polanyi’s term, ‘tacit
knowledge’. That term, he suggests, refers to hidden processes
of comprehension that cannot be expressed and that therefore
cannot be ‘managed’ by the zealous Knowledge Manager (Wilson
2002). One can always change the term, however, and some
writers have done so, substituting ‘implicit knowledge’, which has
the merit of sounding like the antonym of explicit knowledge. In
fact, Ikujiro Nonaka, in a paper co-authored with Noburu Konno,
refers to technical and cognitive dimensions to what he calls tacit
knowledge. The cognitive dimension constitutes aspects such
as ‘schemata and mental models’, which, the authors admit, are
‘deeply ingrained in us’ and ‘diffi cult to articulate’. The technical,
on the other hand, ‘encompasses the kind of informal personal
skills or crafts often referred to as ‘know-how’ (1998, p.42), and
is much easier to articulate and therefore convert to explicit
knowledge or, what we call, information.
Many of the proponents of Knowledge Management use the
term for want of a better one – and because it is still a term that
sells consultancies – but actually talk about the development of
strategies and processes to encourage the sharing of knowledge
or, more typically, the leverage of knowledge – the creation of an
organisational culture and the development of a technological
infrastructure that encourage the sharing of knowledge and
foster the development of a learning organisation. It is frequently
claimed that Knowledge Management is wider than Information
Management, and even subsumes it. In her well-known paper in
Australian Library Journal, Marianne Broadbent, who has been
one of the most infl uential proponents of Knowledge Management
in the Australian library and information sector, suggests (1997,
pp.8-9) that, integral to the implementation of knowledge
management, ‘is understanding the organisation’s information
fl ows and implementing organisational learning practices which
make explicit key aspects of its knowledge base.’ Knowledge
management, she insists, ‘is about enhancing the use of
organisational knowledge through sound practices of information
management and organisational learning.’
Part of the occasionally infl ated claim for Knowledge Management
is that it is an integrated approach to leveraging an organisation’s
intellectual capital. ‘Leveraging’ suggests to me the bizarre image
of the Knowledge Manager sawing open the poor employee’s head
and leveraging out bits of brain, all for the corporate good. We are
assured, however, that ‘leveraging’ knowledge refers to establishing
the value of knowledge at each stage of knowledge creation and
transfer, and ensuring that the full value is realised. And of course
it is an integrated approach. It is basically a management paradigm
and as such can be expected to take an integrated approach. No
management consultant worth his or her salt is going to say: ‘We
can tell you how to leverage some of your intellectual capital – if
you want the other stuff, fi nd another consultant.’
The corporate knowledge that knowledge managers are meant
to be leveraging includes the following categories, according to
Karl Wiig (1993, p.156), one of the most infl uential and most often
cited writers on Knowledge Management in the business sector:
• Tacit Knowledge, such as the kind found in skills and habits or
in non-associative learning;
• Explicit Knowledge, which might be held in a person’s mind
(for instance, procedural knowledge) or in written materials
(for example, production knowledge)
• Implicit Knowledge, which might be held in historic records of
past decisions or in R&D reports
• Combined Explicit and Implicit Knowledge: for instance,
‘lessons-learned’ reports
• Procedural Knowledge, typically present in computer
programs
• Anecdotal Knowledge, such as memory of a particular ‘case’
in someone’s mind; and
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
3
• Embedded Knowledge, in other words, knowledge embedded
in organisational structures, systems and procedures, and in
technology.
One might disagree with parts of Wiig’s taxonomy, such as the
notion that explicit knowledge can be held in a person’s mind,
but it demonstrates the scope of corporate knowledge that
Knowledge Management is intended to address. It is much
broader than the explicit knowledge handled by our profession,
which consists largely of published information.
David Skyrme, another much quoted commentator on Knowledge
Management, suggests (1999) that most KM programs focus on
the following seven ‘strategic levers’:
• Customer Knowledge – the most vital knowledge in most
organizations
• Knowledge in Processes – applying the best know-how while
performing core tasks
• Knowledge in Products (and Services) – smarter solutions,
customized to users’ needs
• Knowledge in People – nurturing and harnessing brainpower,
your most precious asset
• Organizational Memory – drawing on lessons from the past or
elsewhere in the organization
• Knowledge in Relationships – deep personal knowledge that
underpins successful collaboration
• Knowledge Assets – measuring and managing your
intellectual capital.
Tasks of the knowledge manager
Turning to the ‘tasks’ that might be the responsibility of a
knowledge manager, France Bouthillier and Kathleen Shearer
(2002) conducted an empirical study of twelve organisations – six
from the private and six from the public sectors – which identifi es
what they called Knowledge Management ‘methodologies’, which
they categorised as follows:
• focus on communication, namely, Communities of Practice
and Question and Answer forums
• focus on storage and retrieval, namely, Knowledge Mapping,
Expert Databases and Knowledge Databases
• focus on selected dissemination, namely, News Information
Alerts and Organisational Learning
• focus on action, namely, virtual collaboration.
This is by no means a comprehensive or rigorous typology but,
again, it demonstrates the range of the Knowledge Management
domain. It also highlights both the overlap between Knowledge
Management and Information Management, and the distance
between the two in terms of focus.
Compare these ‘methodologies’ with the tasks of an information
manager, as outlined in a well-known book published by the
British Government (Central Computer and Telecommunications
Agency 1990, p.15) over a decade ago:
What are the organisation’s business aims and objectives?
What information is needed to support those aims?
What information is available in the organisation?
Are there differences between needs and provision?
What has to be done to match needs and provision?
Is further exploitation of information viable?
Some of the methodologies employed to effect these Information
Management tasks resemble those listed by Bouthillier and
Shearer: for instance, one establishes the match, or absence
of match, between information and needs by conducting an
information audit, which in many essentials resembles ‘knowledge
mapping’. Once again, however, it is worth noting that the
methodologies listed in the Knowledge Management study are
overwhelmingly designed to provide and facilitate the sharing of
so-called tacit or implicit knowledge.
Position descriptions
The sheer range of the Knowledge Management domain makes
the construction of a hypothetical position description for a
knowledge manager diffi cult, if not impossible. There is likely to
be a whole range of positions, each responsible for a reasonably
well-defi ned area in the domain of corporate knowledge and its
creation, codifi cation and storage (where feasible), exchange
and exploitation. A couple of years ago, Standards Australia
published some ‘sample job descriptions’, compiled by Karen
Bishop. Based on her expertise as a recruitment consultant,
these are constructed around more specifi c sets of tasks than the
‘methodologies’ just listed. Positions covered include: ‘Competitive
Intelligence Leader’, ‘Knowledge and Information Manager’,
‘Information Literacy Manager’, ‘Intranet Content Manager’ and
‘Knowledge Coordinator’. Interestingly, two of these positions
relate to what we do in the library and information profession.
The specifi c ‘knowledge-enabling’ tasks performed by these
knowledge managers include the following:
• knowledge strategies – to develop/improve the knowledge
processes that support organisational development and
performance;
• knowledge auditing – to develop maps of organisational
knowledge, identify gaps in knowledge and barriers to
knowledge discovery/exchange/development;
• ‘information literacy’ training programs for improved use of
information and knowledge resources;
• facilitation skills for improved group dynamics, and coaching
programs for improved communication skills to help with
collaboration and innovation;
• designing systems and procedures to enable effective
creation of, and access to, recorded knowledge; and
• managing changes in organisational behaviour in line with
knowledge-focused organisational strategy (2002, p.12).
In areas such as information literacy and provision of access to
recorded knowledge, library and information professionals clearly
have some expertise, but the other tasks take them well outside
the comfort zones populated by most of the profession – not that
we shouldn’t consider venturing out of these zones.
The IFLA collection, mentioned earlier, also demonstrates a
wide range of Knowledge Management positions. In it, Anne
Morris reports on another empirical study, this time in Britain, that
collected, analysed and, where necessary, followed up on job
advertisements in the Knowledge Management sector over the
six-month period, October 2000 until March 2001. The information
collected was used to categorise roles as follows:
• Chief Knowledge Offi cer – a senior person, responsible for
the initial development of Knowledge Management strategy,
leadership and coordination
• Chief Knowledge Team Manager – also a senior person,
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
4
responsible for ‘KM development and training, strategy, IT
infrastructure, business processes, change management and
so on’
• Implementation Manager – part of a team responsible for
‘KM implementation and monitoring and overseeing the
development of processes, infrastructure and information
resources’
• Knowledge Centre-Based Employee – with responsibility for
‘facilitating acquisition, dissemination and access to internal
and external information and knowledge sources’
• Knowledge Networker – with responsibility for ‘facilitating KM
activities within a specifi c network and community’
• Business Unit-Based Employee – with responsibility for
‘facilitating the development and implementation of KM
activities with the help of the implementation team in their unit’
(2004, pp.118-9).
Some of the positions categorised here are senior ones that
require considerable knowledge of the core business of the
organisation and the authority on a strategic level to effect
changes in areas such as IT infrastructure and organisational
culture. At the other end of the spectrum are employees based
in specifi c units who work in teams as knowledge ‘facilitators’
– many of these will be people who have the required business
or subject expertise, but some may have an information and/or
knowledge management background. Somewhere between the
two extremes is a Knowledge Centre that requires knowledge and
skills that look rather like those of an information professional.
Discussion
Two main points strike me about the kinds of positions associated
with the Knowledge Management domain. The fi rst, to which I
have already alluded, is the sheer range.
This is hardly surprising, given the range of information
professionals working under the somewhat more ‘traditional’
Information Management umbrella. While there are continuities of
practice within the Information Management sector – represented
by works such as the British Government one mentioned earlier
– there are also many applications, ranging from the ‘traditional’
document-orientated professions, such as librarianship and
records management (both quite separate professions with
their own, typically distinct, position descriptions), to the ‘hybrid’
information managers who form a ‘bridge’ between those
senior managers responsible for conducting an organisation’s
primary business and those people who design and implement
the supporting systems and technologies. Of course there are
important continuities of practice, such as information analysis,
but there are also signifi cant differences. Librarians and systems
people may both talk about information analysis, but the
processes and outcomes are quite distinct.
Position descriptions for the various information professions vary
enormously, and it is not surprising that it is similar in the area
of Knowledge Management, which is claimed to be wider than
Information Management. In one of the more balanced papers in
the IFLA collection, Liz Davenport (2004, p.82) quotes a previous
paper she co-authored with Blaise Cronin in 2000, which is worth
repeating here: ‘knowledge management is a form of distributed
cognition, a multifaceted domain where professionals of different
provenance must recognize each other’s roles.’ In other words,
it is not a question of ‘them’ trying to muscle in on our traditional
‘territory’ or of our attempting to colonise theirs.
The second point that I would like to highlight is the fact that in
terms of information politics, it is unlikely that many librarians
are in any position to bring about the level of knowledge
leverage required if their organisations are to become learning
organisations. The more senior ‘knowledge-enabling’ tasks
outlined by writers such as Bishop and Morris require a level of
leverage that very few librarians enjoy, although many may aspire
to it. Some include a strategic information management role that
includes development of an organisation’s IT infrastructure, and
we all know that in the Information Management domain –
notwithstanding some notable exceptions in the tertiary education
sector – our Information Systems and Technology colleagues
tend to occupy a higher position in the corporate pecking order
than most librarians. More important, is the level of organisational
development required. Knowledge leverage needs to take place in
parts of the organisation never reached by librarians.
It seems to me, therefore, that many of the knowledge-enabling
tasks are best effected by the Human Resources division in
an organisation. We are talking about signifi cant evolutionary
developments in organisational culture – if not, on occasion,
revolutionary developments. Here is what David Snowden (1999)
said a few years ago. Knowledge Management:
is a new way of thinking about the organisation and society.
It challenges the dominant mechanical metaphor of scientifi c
management, in thinking of the organisation as a complex,
self-structuring ecology in which the secret is to achieve
minimal intervention for maximum benefi cial effect. It is
about creating adaptive systems that learn, in preference to
systems that are optimal within a specifi c context.
This, it seems to me, sums up the challenge involved in
establishing learning organisations. While librarians have a role to
play, Human Resources departments tend to be in a much stronger
position to bring about the required cultural changes. It is worth
noting here Michael Middleton’s paper a few years ago, which
described Knowledge Management (1999, p.2) as ‘a combination
of information management (IM) for managing the documentary
form, and HRM for managing the expression of knowledge.’
The position description for the corporate Knowledge Manager, at
the senior end of the spectrum, should look something like this:
Director, Knowledge Management
The Director, Knowledge Management, is accountable to the
Executive Director, Human Resources, for promoting a culture of
effective knowledge sharing and for planning and implementing
organisational knowledge and information planning in alignment
with the strategic plan of the organisation. This includes
coordination of the delivery of an integrated organisation-wide
program for staff development, communities of practice and
provision of executive management development.
The Director is supported by a team of professional staff with
specialist managers in knowledge centre management, records
management, information systems and networks management,
team leadership, and staff development and training.
The Director, as part of the senior human resources management
team, will play an integral role in supporting the achievement of
organisational objectives through:
• contributing to the strategic directions of the organisation by
promoting an integrated Knowledge Management philosophy;
• linking knowledge and information management policies and
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
5
practices with organisational objectives, including provision of
information to support decision making;
• facilitating staff understanding of, and engagement with, the
strategic direction of the organisation;
• creating an innovative and adaptive culture for change by
promoting an understanding of Knowledge Management
among executives, managers, supervisors and staff;
• assisting the organisation’s executives and managers to
incorporate knowledge management strategies at all levels of
planning and performance management;
• coordinating the delivery of an integrated professional
development program in collaboration with other staff
development providers;
• identifying appropriate best practice primarily in the areas of
knowledge and information management;
• developing and managing all Knowledge Management
projects, including planning, resourcing and communication
strategies
• assisting the human resources management team to review
and evaluate knowledge management policies, procedures
and systems to ensure they refl ect best practice and continue
to meet the organisation’s strategic objectives; and
• providing organisational development support for the
implementation of knowledge management initiatives.
There may be much in this illustration of a Knowledge Manager
to criticise, but it does suggest a plausible paradigm. When I read
references in the literature to the need for librarians to stake, or
even re-stake, their claim to be their organisation’s Knowledge
Manager, it strikes me that most librarians are still too close to the
periphery of their organisation’s core business to provide the kind
of leadership required in the Knowledge Management environment.
This is not to belittle the success of those innovative librarians
who have made some contribution to their organisations’
knowledge leverage, especially, but not exclusively, in the
areas of health and law. Some may recall, for instance, Grace
Cheng’s paper in the February 2000 issue of Australian Library
Journal on the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, which outlined
how librarians (no longer termed that of course) developed an
electronic forum on which clinicians and managers discuss
and exchange opinions on the application of evidence in local
clinical practice, and supported the electronic publication of the
Newsletter of best evidence (2000, pp. 22-23). Consider too
a law fi rm, such as Allen Arthur Robinson, which has brought
together knowledge managers and librarians to handle the large
number of precedents required in legal practice. The knowledge
managers in this case have legal qualifi cations and considerable
subject expertise in the area of precedents, but the point is
that the librarians bring their own information management
expertise to the collaboration and, by working with the subject
specialists, fi nd themselves more closely aligned with areas of
practice (C Thomas, C Machin & J Guerrato 2003, pers. comm.
9 Oct.). Information knowledge is not a substitute for subject
knowledge or knowledge of business processes, but information
professionals can on occasion work more closely with those who
have that knowledge.
Conclusions
Librarians do belong in the Knowledge Management domain
and have a contribution to make. Instead of making motherhood
statements about what good knowledge managers we make, or
could make if we just had the chance, we should be exchanging
success stories – case studies that will assist others to see what
is possible. It is important, nonetheless, that we see ourselves
as merely part of the so-called Knowledge Management solution
and familiarise ourselves with the other players, and potential
collaborators, whether they be other Information Management
professionals or come from other backgrounds such as business
or human resource management. It is also important that there
is informed debate within the profession. There is a considerable
literature within ALIA on professional roles for librarians, going
back to the 1980s and including, most recently Sue Myburgh’s
paper in ALJ on educational directions (2003). For purposes
of education, training and CPD, we need information on the
changing job market at the interface of information and knowledge
management; perhaps along the lines of the studies, mentioned
earlier, by Bouthillier and Shearer and by Morris. If librarians are
to make a grab for Knowledge Management, it needs to be a wellinformed
one.
Besides the issue of what library and information professionals
have to contribute to the Knowledge Management domain,
however, there is another reason for interesting ourselves in the
subject. We are used to thinking of Knowledge Management
in the special libraries sector, in which our more proactive
colleagues have already repositioned themselves in their
organisations as Information Managers – and may be in the
course of staking their claims to the Knowledge Management
turf – but it is worth remembering that other types of library often
constitute substantial organisations in their own right: what the
cataloguers in our midst call subordinate bodies. We should
be asking whether the Knowledge Management principles that
some see as integral to librarianship are actually practiced in
our libraries. I would maintain – and I am very much open to
contradiction – that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that
library managers practice better Knowledge Management than
any other type of manager. Indeed, I am sure we can all think of
library managers whose ability to leverage the intellectual capital
of their libraries leaves considerable ‘room for improvement’.
Like many educators, I continue to attempt to impart some basic
Knowledge Management principles to my students, not just
to prepare them for the turf wars ahead, but also because an
understanding of Knowledge Management and the need to create
Learning Organisations should be an integral part of the wider
HRM environment. However, I also continue to look, without much
success, for evidence, fi rst, of real engagement in the Knowledge
Management domain by library and information professionals
and, second, of an ability to practice what we preach in terms of
‘leveraging’ knowledge in our own libraries. I am sceptical, therefore
when I ask an ALIA conference audience ‘Will the Real Knowledge
Managers Please Step Forward?’ I don’t expect to be fl attened in
the stampede, but I would be happy to be proved wrong.
Keywords
Knowledge management; Knowledge managers; Leveraging
knowledge; Learning organisations; Corporate knowledge;
Information management.
References
Bishop, K (2002) New roles, skills and capabilities for the
knowledge-focused organisation, Business Excellence Australia,
Sydney.
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
6
Bouthillier, F & Shearer, K (2002) ‘Understanding knowledge
management and information management: The need for an
empirical perspective,’ Information Research, 8, 1, viewed 16 Oct.
2004, .
Branin, JJ (2003) ‘Knowledge management in academic libraries:
Building the knowledge bank at the Ohio State University’,
viewed 26 Mar. 2004, Kmacadlib.pdf>.
Broadbent, M (1997) ‘The emerging phenomenon of knowledge
management’, Australian Library Journal, vol. 46, pp.6-24.
Butler, Y (2000) ‘Knowledge management: If only you knew what
you knew’, Australian Library Journal, vol. 49, pp.31-42.
Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (1990)
Managing information as a resource, HMSO, London.
Chaudhry, AS & Higgins, S (2004) ‘Education for knowledge
management: A spectrum approach’, in Knowledge management:
Libraries and librarians taking up the challenge, H Hobohm (ed.),
IFLA publications, no. 108, Saur, Munich, pp.127-136.
Cheng, G (2000) ‘The shifting information landscape: Re-inventing
the wheel or a whole new frontier for librarians’, Australian Library
Journal, vol. 49, pp.17-26.
Corrall, S (1999) ‘Knowledge management: Are we in the
knowledge management business?’ Ariadne, 18, viewed 26 Mar.
2004, .
Davenport, E (2004) ‘Organizations, knowledge management
and libraries: Issues, opportunities and challenges’, in Knowledge
management: Libraries and librarians taking up the challenge, H
Hobohm (ed.), IFLA publications, no. 108, Saur, Munich, pp.81-
89.
Davenport, T & Prusak, L (2000) Working knowledge: How
organizations manage what they know, 2nd ed., Harvard
Business School Press, Cambridge, MA.
Hobohm H (ed) (2004) Knowledge management: Libraries and
librarians taking up the challenge, IFLA publications, no. 108,
Saur, Munich.
Johnston, C (2000) ‘The business of knowledge management in
the knowledge-aware organisation’, Capitalising on knowledge:
The information profession in the 21st century: ALIA biennial
conference, 24-26 October, viewed 16 October 2003, //www.alia.org.au/conferences/alia2000/proceedings/christine.joh
nston.html>.
Koenig, MED (2004) ‘Knowledge management, user education,
and librarianship’, in Knowledge management: Libraries and
librarians taking up the challenge, H Hobohm (ed.), IFLA
publications, no. 108, Saur, Munich, pp.137-150.
Koina, C (2003) ‘Librarians are the ultimate knowledge
managers?’, Australian Library Journal, 52, pp.269-272.
Mac Morrow, N (2001) ‘Knowledge management: An introduction’,
in Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, ME
Williams (ed.), Information Today, Medford, NJ, pp.381-422.
Middleton, M (1999) ‘From information management to knowledge
management: Some perspectives on development’, English
language version (written prior to translation into Spanish) of
‘De la gestión de la información a la gestión del conocimiento’,
El Profesional de la Información, vol. 8, no. 5, pp.10-17, viewed
26 Mar. 2004, IM_KM_Eng.doc>.
Milne, P (2000) ‘Information professionals and the knowledgeaware,
intelligent organisation: Skills for the future’, Australian
Library Journal, 49, pp.139-150.
Morris, A (2004) ‘Knowledge management: Employment
opportunities for IS graduates’, in Knowledge management:
Libraries and librarians taking up the challenge, H Hobohm (ed.),
IFLA publications, no. 108, Saur, Munich, pp.115-125.
Myburgh, S 2003, ‘Education directions for new information
professionals’, Australian Library Journal, 52, pp.213-227.
Nonaka, I & Konno, N (1998) ‘The concept of ‘Ba’: Building a
foundation for knowledge creation’, California Management
Review, 40, 3, pp.40-54.
Nonaka, I & Takeuchi, H (1995) The knowledge creating
company, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Skyrme, D (1999) KM basics, Knowledge Connections,
David Skyrme Associates, viewed 24 Mar. 2004 www.skyrme.com/resource/kmbasics.htm>.
Snowden, D (1999) Grappling with knowledge and realising
what you’ve got - ‘I only know what I know when I need to know
it ...’. In Knowledge management: The information management
event, Olympia Conference and Exhibition Centre, London,
UK 24-25 March 1999, p.5; cited in Milne, P (2000) Information
professionals and the knowledge-aware, intelligent organisation:
Skills for the future. Australian Library Journal, 49, p.141.
Townley, C (2001) ‘Knowledge management and academic
libraries’, College and Research Libraries, vol. 62, no. 1, pp.44-55.
Wiig, KM (1993) Knowledge management foundations, Schema
Press, Arlington, TX.
Wilson, TD (2002) ‘The nonsense of ‘knowledge management’’,
Information Research, 8, 1, viewed 16 Oct. 2002, InformationR.net/ir/8-144.html>.
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University

Posted by: mary / 10:56 PM 0 comments

Thursday, February 17, 2005

The knowledge management myth/stuart Ferguson

Introduction
Despite the theoretical problems associated with Knowledge Management – problems that have provided no small amount of material for conferences and the publishing industry – Knowledge Management has survived for over ten years and continues to attract considerable attention in conferences, on websites and in the literature – not just the literature of library and information management, but also the literature of business management. Knowledge Management workshops and consultancies also attract substantial fees, which might be regarded by some as evidence of its value. Moreover there continue to be numerous calls in the literature of library and information management for information professionals to stake their claim as their organisations’ best-qualifi ed knowledge managers. We are ideally placed to take on this role, the argument goes, because we have been managing knowledge from time immemorial (Butler 2000, p.40; Corrall 1999; Townley 2001, p.53). Patricia Milne’s otherwise excellent paper (2000, p.149;) refers to librarians as the ‘ultimate knowledge workers’, while, in the academic library sector, Joseph Branin (2003, p.11) claims to have been asked by senior university administrators: ‘If we had the experience and expertise to manage published information, could we not extend this expertise to all the intellectual assets of the University?’ At this conference four years ago, Christine Johnston (2000) made the bold claim that librarians were ‘in a position of strength’ and that our ‘traditional skills … place us in an ideal position to play a key role in an organisation’s knowledge initiatives’. The recent IFLA collection, Knowledge Management: Libraries and Librarians Taking up the Challenge, is littered with such comments, some of them verging on the fanciful: for instance, Michael Koenig’s suggestion that the ‘obvious’ solution to the failure of so many knowledge management systems to match up to companies’ expectations is to import librarians to provide user education and training (2004, 140). Hans-Christoph Hobohm (2004, p.7) begins the collection with the claim that knowledge management is one of those concepts that librarians take time to assimilate, only to refl ect ultimately ‘on why other communities try to colonise our domains’ – well, the title of the collection does refer to challenge. Not all writers, in fairness, claim the Knowledge Management domain as ours. Milne’s paper, for instance, refers to library and information professionals forging partnerships with others in the ‘domain’, as distinct from ‘colonisation’, while, in a challenging paper in last year’s Australian Library Journal, Cathie Koina questions whether librarians are really ‘the ultimate knowledge managers’ and points out that what librarians have done for many years is Information Management, which, contrary to what many librarians believe, is not the same as Knowledge Management (2003, p.270). In this paper I take a similar line. The claim that library and information professionals are ideally suited to stake their claim as knowledge managers fl ies in the face of much of the Knowledge Management literature, which is at pains to distinguish Knowledge Management from Information Management. While not necessarily agreeing with the notion that Knowledge Management and Information Management are completely distinct, I can see signifi cant differences in the emphasis of each – differences that make the hyperbolic claims about Knowledge Management being ‘souped-up’ Librarianship highly questionable. That there are signifi cant differences between the two is borne out, to a certain extent, by the number of Knowledge Management courses that have emerged in the past few years (Chaudhry & Higgins 2004). My strategy in this paper is to attempt to establish the kinds of tasks performed by a knowledge manager – if there is such as thing – infer what a position description for a knowledge manager might look like and then ask whether our profession has the necessary skills and attributes. This seems to me a more productive approach than becoming bogged down, as many papers do, in an attempt to defi ne Knowledge Management and The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward? Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University Abstract The library literature of the past few years has periodically exhorted librarians to market themselves as knowledge workers capable of taking over the emerging ‘knowledge management’ function in their organisations. This paper challenges such a fanciful reengineering of the librarian’s role and suggests that it is based on the misguided confl ation of knowledge management and information management. It argues that the two are much more distinct than generally believed, and contrasts them by attempting to identify the tasks of a knowledge manager, outlining appropriate ‘position descriptions’ for the Knowledge Management fi eld and examining the professional background and organisational position required to fulfi ll these roles.
2 Information Management and then juxtaposing the two in one of the ‘compare and contrast’ exercises that educators love to throw at their long-suffering students. Corporate knowledge First, however, I would like to pose the question: which is the odd one out of the following terms: . information management . knowledge management . library science . military intelligence? The clue lies in the last term, because it is often used as an example of oxymoron. Only one of the terms, Information Management, is not an oxymoron and is therefore the odd one out – librarianship is not a science and knowledge cannot be managed. Having succeeded in antagonising everyone in the room, I would like to emphasise that, while for many of us it is a philosophical nonsense to suggest that knowledge can be managed, the proponents of Knowledge Management insist that what they are attempting to ‘manage’ for the sake of corporate benefi t is the complete knowledge resource – not just the so-called explicit knowledge used by an organisation, such as policy documents, the contents of databases or corporate records (in other words, what we would call information), but also the knowledge locked away in people’s heads, a signifi cant portion of which is what we call ‘know-how’. In a much quoted study, Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak (2000, p.5) describe organisational management as ‘a fl uid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight’ that is typically ‘embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organisational routines, processes, practices, and norms.’ It is the emphasis on this second type of knowledge – what the rest of us, by and large, understand as knowledge (rather than information) – that distinguishes Knowledge Management from Information Management. On a more pragmatic level, if someone is asked whether her organisation has any Knowledge Management problems, the chances are that the fi rst example that springs to mind is the issue of people leaving the organisation with heaps of ‘know-how’ that is thus lost to the organisation. There is little point, especially in a paper this length, of becoming sidetracked by the semantic debate that accompanies much of our discourse about Knowledge Management, although a degree of semantic argument is inevitable, given the subject and its defi nitional problems. There have been numerous attempts to provide a theoretical basis for Knowledge Management: for instance Davenport & Prusak (2000), Srikanntaiah & Koenig (2000) and Mac Morrow (2001), not to mention studies of organisational knowledge: most notably, Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995). It is worth noting that a 2002 review by Hlupik et al, identifi ed eighteen distinct defi nitions of Knowledge Management (Bouthillier & Shearer 2002). Tom Wilson, a vocal critic of Knowledge Management, which he sees as typically repackaged Information Management, takes Nonaka and Takeuchi to task for what he sees as their misuse of Michael Polanyi’s term, ‘tacit knowledge’. That term, he suggests, refers to hidden processes of comprehension that cannot be expressed and that therefore cannot be ‘managed’ by the zealous Knowledge Manager (Wilson 2002). One can always change the term, however, and some writers have done so, substituting ‘implicit knowledge’, which has the merit of sounding like the antonym of explicit knowledge. In fact, Ikujiro Nonaka, in a paper co-authored with Noburu Konno, refers to technical and cognitive dimensions to what he calls tacit knowledge. The cognitive dimension constitutes aspects such as ‘schemata and mental models’, which, the authors admit, are ‘deeply ingrained in us’ and ‘diffi cult to articulate’. The technical, on the other hand, ‘encompasses the kind of informal personal skills or crafts often referred to as ‘know-how’ (1998, p.42), and is much easier to articulate and therefore convert to explicit knowledge or, what we call, information. Many of the proponents of Knowledge Management use the term for want of a better one – and because it is still a term that sells consultancies – but actually talk about the development of strategies and processes to encourage the sharing of knowledge or, more typically, the leverage of knowledge – the creation of an organisational culture and the development of a technological infrastructure that encourage the sharing of knowledge and foster the development of a learning organisation. It is frequently claimed that Knowledge Management is wider than Information Management, and even subsumes it. In her well-known paper in Australian Library Journal, Marianne Broadbent, who has been one of the most infl uential proponents of Knowledge Management in the Australian library and information sector, suggests (1997, pp.8-9) that, integral to the implementation of knowledge management, ‘is understanding the organisation’s information fl ows and implementing organisational learning practices which make explicit key aspects of its knowledge base.’ Knowledge management, she insists, ‘is about enhancing the use of organisational knowledge through sound practices of information management and organisational learning.’ Part of the occasionally infl ated claim for Knowledge Management is that it is an integrated approach to leveraging an organisation’s intellectual capital. ‘Leveraging’ suggests to me the bizarre image of the Knowledge Manager sawing open the poor employee’s head and leveraging out bits of brain, all for the corporate good. We are assured, however, that ‘leveraging’ knowledge refers to establishing the value of knowledge at each stage of knowledge creation and transfer, and ensuring that the full value is realised. And of course it is an integrated approach. It is basically a management paradigm and as such can be expected to take an integrated approach. No management consultant worth his or her salt is going to say: ‘We can tell you how to leverage some of your intellectual capital – if you want the other stuff, fi nd another consultant.’ The corporate knowledge that knowledge managers are meant to be leveraging includes the following categories, according to Karl Wiig (1993, p.156), one of the most infl uential and most often cited writers on Knowledge Management in the business sector: . Tacit Knowledge, such as the kind found in skills and habits or in non-associative learning; . Explicit Knowledge, which might be held in a person’s mind (for instance, procedural knowledge) or in written materials (for example, production knowledge) . Implicit Knowledge, which might be held in historic records of past decisions or in R&D reports . Combined Explicit and Implicit Knowledge: for instance, ‘lessons-learned’ reports . Procedural Knowledge, typically present in computer programs . Anecdotal Knowledge, such as memory of a particular ‘case’ in someone’s mind; and The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward? Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
3 . Embedded Knowledge, in other words, knowledge embedded in organisational structures, systems and procedures, and in technology. One might disagree with parts of Wiig’s taxonomy, such as the notion that explicit knowledge can be held in a person’s mind, but it demonstrates the scope of corporate knowledge that Knowledge Management is intended to address. It is much broader than the explicit knowledge handled by our profession, which consists largely of published information. David Skyrme, another much quoted commentator on Knowledge Management, suggests (1999) that most KM programs focus on the following seven ‘strategic levers’: . Customer Knowledge – the most vital knowledge in most organizations . Knowledge in Processes – applying the best know-how while performing core tasks . Knowledge in Products (and Services) – smarter solutions, customized to users’ needs . Knowledge in People – nurturing and harnessing brainpower, your most precious asset . Organizational Memory – drawing on lessons from the past or elsewhere in the organization . Knowledge in Relationships – deep personal knowledge that underpins successful collaboration . Knowledge Assets – measuring and managing your intellectual capital. Tasks of the knowledge manager Turning to the ‘tasks’ that might be the responsibility of a knowledge manager, France Bouthillier and Kathleen Shearer (2002) conducted an empirical study of twelve organisations – six from the private and six from the public sectors – which identifi es what they called Knowledge Management ‘methodologies’, which they categorised as follows: . focus on communication, namely, Communities of Practice and Question and Answer forums . focus on storage and retrieval, namely, Knowledge Mapping, Expert Databases and Knowledge Databases . focus on selected dissemination, namely, News Information Alerts and Organisational Learning . focus on action, namely, virtual collaboration. This is by no means a comprehensive or rigorous typology but, again, it demonstrates the range of the Knowledge Management domain. It also highlights both the overlap between Knowledge Management and Information Management, and the distance between the two in terms of focus. Compare these ‘methodologies’ with the tasks of an information manager, as outlined in a well-known book published by the British Government (Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency 1990, p.15) over a decade ago: What are the organisation’s business aims and objectives? What information is needed to support those aims? What information is available in the organisation? Are there differences between needs and provision? What has to be done to match needs and provision? Is further exploitation of information viable? Some of the methodologies employed to effect these Information Management tasks resemble those listed by Bouthillier and Shearer: for instance, one establishes the match, or absence of match, between information and needs by conducting an information audit, which in many essentials resembles ‘knowledge mapping’. Once again, however, it is worth noting that the methodologies listed in the Knowledge Management study are overwhelmingly designed to provide and facilitate the sharing of so-called tacit or implicit knowledge. Position descriptions The sheer range of the Knowledge Management domain makes the construction of a hypothetical position description for a knowledge manager diffi cult, if not impossible. There is likely to be a whole range of positions, each responsible for a reasonably well-defi ned area in the domain of corporate knowledge and its creation, codifi cation and storage (where feasible), exchange and exploitation. A couple of years ago, Standards Australia published some ‘sample job descriptions’, compiled by Karen Bishop. Based on her expertise as a recruitment consultant, these are constructed around more specifi c sets of tasks than the ‘methodologies’ just listed. Positions covered include: ‘Competitive Intelligence Leader’, ‘Knowledge and Information Manager’, ‘Information Literacy Manager’, ‘Intranet Content Manager’ and ‘Knowledge Coordinator’. Interestingly, two of these positions relate to what we do in the library and information profession. The specifi c ‘knowledge-enabling’ tasks performed by these knowledge managers include the following: . knowledge strategies – to develop/improve the knowledge processes that support organisational development and performance; . knowledge auditing – to develop maps of organisational knowledge, identify gaps in knowledge and barriers to knowledge discovery/exchange/development; . ‘information literacy’ training programs for improved use of information and knowledge resources; . facilitation skills for improved group dynamics, and coaching programs for improved communication skills to help with collaboration and innovation; . designing systems and procedures to enable effective creation of, and access to, recorded knowledge; and . managing changes in organisational behaviour in line with knowledge-focused organisational strategy (2002, p.12). In areas such as information literacy and provision of access to recorded knowledge, library and information professionals clearly have some expertise, but the other tasks take them well outside the comfort zones populated by most of the profession – not that we shouldn’t consider venturing out of these zones. The IFLA collection, mentioned earlier, also demonstrates a wide range of Knowledge Management positions. In it, Anne Morris reports on another empirical study, this time in Britain, that collected, analysed and, where necessary, followed up on job advertisements in the Knowledge Management sector over the six-month period, October 2000 until March 2001. The information collected was used to categorise roles as follows: . Chief Knowledge Offi cer – a senior person, responsible for the initial development of Knowledge Management strategy, leadership and coordination . Chief Knowledge Team Manager – also a senior person, The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward? Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
4 responsible for ‘KM development and training, strategy, IT infrastructure, business processes, change management and so on’ . Implementation Manager – part of a team responsible for ‘KM implementation and monitoring and overseeing the development of processes, infrastructure and information resources’ . Knowledge Centre-Based Employee – with responsibility for ‘facilitating acquisition, dissemination and access to internal and external information and knowledge sources’ . Knowledge Networker – with responsibility for ‘facilitating KM activities within a specifi c network and community’ . Business Unit-Based Employee – with responsibility for ‘facilitating the development and implementation of KM activities with the help of the implementation team in their unit’ (2004, pp.118-9). Some of the positions categorised here are senior ones that require considerable knowledge of the core business of the organisation and the authority on a strategic level to effect changes in areas such as IT infrastructure and organisational culture. At the other end of the spectrum are employees based in specifi c units who work in teams as knowledge ‘facilitators’ – many of these will be people who have the required business or subject expertise, but some may have an information and/or knowledge management background. Somewhere between the two extremes is a Knowledge Centre that requires knowledge and skills that look rather like those of an information professional. Discussion Two main points strike me about the kinds of positions associated with the Knowledge Management domain. The fi rst, to which I have already alluded, is the sheer range. This is hardly surprising, given the range of information professionals working under the somewhat more ‘traditional’ Information Management umbrella. While there are continuities of practice within the Information Management sector – represented by works such as the British Government one mentioned earlier – there are also many applications, ranging from the ‘traditional’ document-orientated professions, such as librarianship and records management (both quite separate professions with their own, typically distinct, position descriptions), to the ‘hybrid’ information managers who form a ‘bridge’ between those senior managers responsible for conducting an organisation’s primary business and those people who design and implement the supporting systems and technologies. Of course there are important continuities of practice, such as information analysis, but there are also signifi cant differences. Librarians and systems people may both talk about information analysis, but the processes and outcomes are quite distinct. Position descriptions for the various information professions vary enormously, and it is not surprising that it is similar in the area of Knowledge Management, which is claimed to be wider than Information Management. In one of the more balanced papers in the IFLA collection, Liz Davenport (2004, p.82) quotes a previous paper she co-authored with Blaise Cronin in 2000, which is worth repeating here: ‘knowledge management is a form of distributed cognition, a multifaceted domain where professionals of different provenance must recognize each other’s roles.’ In other words, it is not a question of ‘them’ trying to muscle in on our traditional ‘territory’ or of our attempting to colonise theirs. The second point that I would like to highlight is the fact that in terms of information politics, it is unlikely that many librarians are in any position to bring about the level of knowledge leverage required if their organisations are to become learning organisations. The more senior ‘knowledge-enabling’ tasks outlined by writers such as Bishop and Morris require a level of leverage that very few librarians enjoy, although many may aspire to it. Some include a strategic information management role that includes development of an organisation’s IT infrastructure, and we all know that in the Information Management domain – notwithstanding some notable exceptions in the tertiary education sector – our Information Systems and Technology colleagues tend to occupy a higher position in the corporate pecking order than most librarians. More important, is the level of organisational development required. Knowledge leverage needs to take place in parts of the organisation never reached by librarians. It seems to me, therefore, that many of the knowledge-enabling tasks are best effected by the Human Resources division in an organisation. We are talking about signifi cant evolutionary developments in organisational culture – if not, on occasion, revolutionary developments. Here is what David Snowden (1999) said a few years ago. Knowledge Management: is a new way of thinking about the organisation and society. It challenges the dominant mechanical metaphor of scientifi c management, in thinking of the organisation as a complex, self-structuring ecology in which the secret is to achieve minimal intervention for maximum benefi cial effect. It is about creating adaptive systems that learn, in preference to systems that are optimal within a specifi c context. This, it seems to me, sums up the challenge involved in establishing learning organisations. While librarians have a role to play, Human Resources departments tend to be in a much stronger position to bring about the required cultural changes. It is worth noting here Michael Middleton’s paper a few years ago, which described Knowledge Management (1999, p.2) as ‘a combination of information management (IM) for managing the documentary form, and HRM for managing the expression of knowledge.’ The position description for the corporate Knowledge Manager, at the senior end of the spectrum, should look something like this: Director, Knowledge Management The Director, Knowledge Management, is accountable to the Executive Director, Human Resources, for promoting a culture of effective knowledge sharing and for planning and implementing organisational knowledge and information planning in alignment with the strategic plan of the organisation. This includes coordination of the delivery of an integrated organisation-wide program for staff development, communities of practice and provision of executive management development. The Director is supported by a team of professional staff with specialist managers in knowledge centre management, records management, information systems and networks management, team leadership, and staff development and training. The Director, as part of the senior human resources management team, will play an integral role in supporting the achievement of organisational objectives through: . contributing to the strategic directions of the organisation by promoting an integrated Knowledge Management philosophy; . linking knowledge and information management policies and The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward? Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
5 practices with organisational objectives, including provision of information to support decision making; . facilitating staff understanding of, and engagement with, the strategic direction of the organisation; . creating an innovative and adaptive culture for change by promoting an understanding of Knowledge Management among executives, managers, supervisors and staff; . assisting the organisation’s executives and managers to incorporate knowledge management strategies at all levels of planning and performance management; . coordinating the delivery of an integrated professional development program in collaboration with other staff development providers; . identifying appropriate best practice primarily in the areas of knowledge and information management; . developing and managing all Knowledge Management projects, including planning, resourcing and communication strategies . assisting the human resources management team to review and evaluate knowledge management policies, procedures and systems to ensure they refl ect best practice and continue to meet the organisation’s strategic objectives; and . providing organisational development support for the implementation of knowledge management initiatives. There may be much in this illustration of a Knowledge Manager to criticise, but it does suggest a plausible paradigm. When I read references in the literature to the need for librarians to stake, or even re-stake, their claim to be their organisation’s Knowledge Manager, it strikes me that most librarians are still too close to the periphery of their organisation’s core business to provide the kind of leadership required in the Knowledge Management environment. This is not to belittle the success of those innovative librarians who have made some contribution to their organisations’ knowledge leverage, especially, but not exclusively, in the areas of health and law. Some may recall, for instance, Grace Cheng’s paper in the February 2000 issue of Australian Library Journal on the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, which outlined how librarians (no longer termed that of course) developed an electronic forum on which clinicians and managers discuss and exchange opinions on the application of evidence in local clinical practice, and supported the electronic publication of the Newsletter of best evidence (2000, pp. 22-23). Consider too a law fi rm, such as Allen Arthur Robinson, which has brought together knowledge managers and librarians to handle the large number of precedents required in legal practice. The knowledge managers in this case have legal qualifi cations and considerable subject expertise in the area of precedents, but the point is that the librarians bring their own information management expertise to the collaboration and, by working with the subject specialists, fi nd themselves more closely aligned with areas of practice (C Thomas, C Machin & J Guerrato 2003, pers. comm. 9 Oct.). Information knowledge is not a substitute for subject knowledge or knowledge of business processes, but information professionals can on occasion work more closely with those who have that knowledge. Conclusions Librarians do belong in the Knowledge Management domain and have a contribution to make. Instead of making motherhood statements about what good knowledge managers we make, or could make if we just had the chance, we should be exchanging success stories – case studies that will assist others to see what is possible. It is important, nonetheless, that we see ourselves as merely part of the so-called Knowledge Management solution and familiarise ourselves with the other players, and potential collaborators, whether they be other Information Management professionals or come from other backgrounds such as business or human resource management. It is also important that there is informed debate within the profession. There is a considerable literature within ALIA on professional roles for librarians, going back to the 1980s and including, most recently Sue Myburgh’s paper in ALJ on educational directions (2003). For purposes of education, training and CPD, we need information on the changing job market at the interface of information and knowledge management; perhaps along the lines of the studies, mentioned earlier, by Bouthillier and Shearer and by Morris. If librarians are to make a grab for Knowledge Management, it needs to be a wellinformed one. Besides the issue of what library and information professionals have to contribute to the Knowledge Management domain, however, there is another reason for interesting ourselves in the subject. We are used to thinking of Knowledge Management in the special libraries sector, in which our more proactive colleagues have already repositioned themselves in their organisations as Information Managers – and may be in the course of staking their claims to the Knowledge Management turf – but it is worth remembering that other types of library often constitute substantial organisations in their own right: what the cataloguers in our midst call subordinate bodies. We should be asking whether the Knowledge Management principles that some see as integral to librarianship are actually practiced in our libraries. I would maintain – and I am very much open to contradiction – that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that library managers practice better Knowledge Management than any other type of manager. Indeed, I am sure we can all think of library managers whose ability to leverage the intellectual capital of their libraries leaves considerable ‘room for improvement’. Like many educators, I continue to attempt to impart some basic Knowledge Management principles to my students, not just to prepare them for the turf wars ahead, but also because an understanding of Knowledge Management and the need to create Learning Organisations should be an integral part of the wider HRM environment. However, I also continue to look, without much success, for evidence, fi rst, of real engagement in the Knowledge Management domain by library and information professionals and, second, of an ability to practice what we preach in terms of ‘leveraging’ knowledge in our own libraries. I am sceptical, therefore when I ask an ALIA conference audience ‘Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?’ I don’t expect to be fl attened in the stampede, but I would be happy to be proved wrong. Keywords Knowledge management; Knowledge managers; Leveraging knowledge; Learning organisations; Corporate knowledge; Information management.

Posted by: mary / 7:37 PM 1 comments

Blair, DC 2002, 'Knowledge management: hype, hope or help?' Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, vol. 53, no. 12, p

This article examines the nature of Knowledge Management - how it differs from Data Management and Information Management, and its relationship to the development of Expert Systems and Decision Support Systems. It also examines the importance of Communities of Practice and Tacit Knowledge for Knowledge Management. The discussion is organized around five explicit questions. One: What is knowledge ? Two: Why are people, especially managers, thinking about Knowledge Management? Three: What are the enabling technologies for Knowledge Management? Four: What are the prerequisites for Knowledge Management? Five: What are the major challenges for Knowledge Management?


Introduction


Knowledge Management has been a phrase in the vocabulary of management for some time now. There are articles written on Knowledge Management, Knowledge Management journals, Knowledge Management conferences - both practical and academic - -and to the ranks of DBAs (Data Base Administrators) and CIOs (Chief Information Officers) we have now added the CKO - the Chief Knowledge Officer. The idea of knowledge has always had an appealing cachet to it, although its saliency has been long associated more with universities and higher education than with the day-to-day toil of industry or the practice of management. Yet despite the persistence of the phrase Knowledge Management and the genuine feeling that Knowledge Management does refer to a new and legitimate practice, there is some ambiguity about what it really means, and little consensus about how to do it. The purpose of this discussion is to look at Knowledge Management carefully and try to understand what it is, or at least what it could be. The discussion will be organized around several questions: (1) What is knowledge ? (2) Why are people, especially managers, thinking about Knowledge Management now? (3) What are the enabling technologies for Knowledge Management? (4) What are the prerequisites for Knowledge Management? (5) What are the major challenges for Knowledge Management?
This is an ambitious agenda, but even tentative answers to these questions may go a long way towards helping us to understand whether Knowledge Management really is something we should pay attention to. In particular, is Knowledge Management really a legitimate and useful practice - is it something we can learn or teach, and, even more importantly, is it something that does any good to practice - does it make things better?
What is Knowledge ?


Because we are already familiar with the practices of Data Management and Information Management, it makes sense to ask whether we would we be doing anything differently if we did Knowledge Management ? Whatever differences there may be in these practices must be due, at least in part, to the differences between Data, Information and Knowledge, so we will begin here. Data are clearly the easiest things to describe; they are simply facts and figures that are meaningful in some way. Typical items of data are account balances, demographic statistics, or names and addresses. Our daily newspapers are filled with data, from stock quotes to baseball statistics. There should be little disagreement about this category, even among individuals who do not deal with data on a regular basis. Information, though a more complex notion than data, is not too problematic either. Peter Drucker's definition of information as data that has been organized for a particular purpose (Drucker, [1998]) seems to capture the essential difference between data and information. Consider, for example, a list of the names and addresses of a company's customers. This is a collection of data, but because it is not organized for a particular purpose or use, we would probably not call it information. To turn it into information we have to identify a particular use for it, and structure it so that it can be used as easily as possible. The names and addresses of customers have a number of uses, but salespeople use them primarily to contact current customers of a particular type. To this end, we might include in a customer list only those customers who have ordered something from the manufacturer within the last 6 months - in other words, they are active customers. Further, we might include data on what product or products they ordered within the last 6 months, to give salespeople some idea about individual customer's preferences. Data might also be included about how much total business they have done with the manufacturer, to give salespeople some idea about who the best of the active customers are. Finally, the customer list might be organized by sales region, so that salespeople can see more easily which customers are physically close to each other, or which are within a particular salesperson's exclusive region. It is just this organization of data for a particular use that turns it into information.
Although data and information are not difficult to define, knowledge is a more elusive concept. The antecedents of knowledge come from our intellectual history. The most unequivocal example of knowledge is probably philosophical knowledge. Philosophers from the ancient Socrates to today's Fred Dretske have tried to describe what knowledge is (Dretske, [1981]). The accepted philosophical definition of 'knowledge is justified, true belief. Although such a definition is useful to philosophers, it has somewhat less utility for the knowledge manager, although the idea of knowledge as something whose truth you can justify or substantiate, does give us some separation from data and information. That is, I can have data or information without having the ability to justify it myself - I simply accept it on good authority. To be knowledgeable, though, often implies that an individual can justify or substantiate what he or she knows. But clearly knowledge in the organizational sense, which we are considering here, as something different from data and information, is something more than simply justified, true belief. But how can we bring this difference out? We can take a lesson from another philosopher who was often concerned about language and what we mean by certain words or phrases - Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein admonished us that if we really wanted to understand the meaning of a word or phrase, we shouldn't ask for the definition we should look at how it is actually used. We should let the use teach [us] the meaning (Wittgenstein, [1953]). In other words, if we look at enough actual uses of a word, we will begin to see what it means (Blair, [1990]; Blair, [in progress]).
The first thing that we might look at is whether knowledge is the same kind of thing that data and information are. Following Wittgenstein's example, we might hypothesize that if data, information, and knowledge are the same kind of things we could use the words interchangeably in specific phrases or sentences. For example, we might say:
Put the data on the desk.
or,
Put the information on the desk.
But would we ever say,
Put the knowledge on the desk ?
The first two sentences are acceptable, but the third one seems quite odd. To bring this out more strongly we can use this substitution method in the following sentences:
Get the data and fax it to New York.
Get the information and fax it to New York.
But would we ever say,
Get the knowledge and fax it to New York ?
Again, the first two sentences are fine, but the third one seems to be clearly unacceptable.
Often we speak of having data or information:
Bill has the data you need.
Mary has the information the CEO wants.
But what about,
Chris has a knowledge of chemistry ?
Unlike the first two examples, here knowledge seems to fit the same pattern of usage as data and information. So we can say that we have knowledge in much the way that we can have data and information. But let's change the examples a little:
Bill had the data, but he lost it.
Mary had the information, but she misplaced it.
Chris had the knowledge yesterday, but lost it.
Again, the third sentence will strike most readers as being unacceptable. Here we can see that although we can have knowledge it does not appear to be something that we can have in the same way that we have data or information. Knowledge is not something tangible that we can possess, exchange, or lose the way that we can with data or information. But what of the following sentence:
I used to know how to tune an automobile engine, but I don't know how to do it any more.
This particular use of know seems OK, so there is something about knowledge that we can lose - that is, we can know something, and then some time later come to not know it. This brings out an essential difference between data, information, and knowledge, namely, that when we lose data or information, we often lose something that we can physically possess, something tangible. But when we lose knowledge, what we lose is an ability to do something. Abilities are not things that we can lose suddenly like data or information; we lose an ability more gradually over time as it falls into disuse. Philosophers bring out this difference by distinguishing between knowing how to do something, and knowing that something is the case. To know that something is the case is to possess data or information of a certain specific kind ('I know that the capital of California is Sacramento. ). But to know how to do something is to possess an ability - to exercise a kind of expertise. We say that someone knows how to speak German or knows how to pick stocks that are good investments. Of course, to exercise an expertise, you often need data or information - for example, to pick good stocks you have to have current data or information about stock prices and their recent trends. But the data or information that enables a knowledgeable person to exercise some expertise is not sufficient by itself to enable someone else to exercise that expertise. That is, even if you have all the current information about stock prices and recent trends, it doesn't mean that you will now be able to pick good stocks for investment. Data and information may be necessary for the exercise of expertise but they are not sufficient for it. Knowledge Management, it seems, has two parts: first, there is the management of supporting data and information, and second, there is the management of a particular expertise, that is, the management of individuals with specific abilities.
From this discussion it should be clear that knowledge really is different from data or information. We can say:
A computer can have data (e.g., facts and figures stored in a data base).
A report can have information; that is, a report can be informative.
But only a person can be knowledgeable, that is, only a person can have and exercise knowledge.
Context





Another important distinction between data, information, and knowledge concerns context. Data is relatively context free. For example, a name-and-address is a name and address no matter where it appears - in a memo, a report, a news article, or on the wall of a public phone booth. The context doesn't affect whether it is a name-and-address or not. But a name-and-address can be transformed into information by providing it with an interpretive context. For example, a name-and-address in a report listing active customers is not just a name-and-address, it is a name-and-address of an active customer. The report provides a meaningful context for the name-and-address and gives some indication about how it can be used. But what about knowledge or expertise, how does that fit in here? First of all, we can say that it takes knowledge to turn data into information. Here, to come up with a report listing active customers, you would have to know how to determine whether a particular name-and-address is that of an active customer. This might involve examining orders that have been placed recently with the company, and then talking to salespeople to find customers who are considered active but have not ordered anything recently. In doing this, the knowledgeable person will have to draw on his or her experience to make judgments as to whether each name-and-address is that of an active customer or not. This is a process that relies less on specific quantifiable rules than it does on the individual's ability to make these judgments, and the ability to make these judgments relies, in turn, on an understanding of how the names and addresses of active customers are used.
But knowledge is often much more complex than simply determining which names and addresses are of active customers. Consider what it takes to know how to be a good salesperson. Salesmanship is a kind of expertise, and some individuals make better salespeople than others - some people know how to sell things better than others do. A knowledgeable salesperson possesses not only data and information, such as a list of active customers, but also has the experience to infer relevant things about customers that may not be immediately obvious to someone without that experience. For example, a knowledgeable salesperson might look at the address of an active customer and infer that because the address indicates that they live in a certain part of town, they are likely to be in a specific socio-economic class and thereby more willing to buy certain kinds of products rather than others. They might match a listing of the addresses of recently purchased homes with the list of customer addresses to find customers who have recently moved into a new home. With this information, they might infer that customers in new homes may be more interested in buying furniture and interior decorating supplies than other customers might be. Again, this is only an inference that a salesperson with relevant experience can make. Davenport's and Prusak's ([1998]) definition of knowledge captures this complexity:
Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. It originates and is applied in the minds of knowers. In organizations, it often becomes embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organizational routines, processes, practices, and norms.
Why Are People, Especially Managers, Thinking About Knowledge Management Now?


There are several factors that have turned managers' attention to Knowledge Management. First of all, there is a realization that when an organization's employees have knowledge that is useful to the enterprise they possess something in addition to the data and information stored in the organization's information systems. It is this additional something that can leave the organization if the employee departs. Documentum's CEO Jeffrey Miller (Miller, [1998]) expressed it well when he said:
Every afternoon our corporate knowledge walks out the door and I hope to God they'll be back tomorrow.
Although most employees who leave at night will come back, it is a fact of business in the United States that employees change jobs frequently, and, it is rare that a worker will spend his or her entire career with one organization. Americans are a very mobile society, and have had a history of being willing to move to take advantage of better prospects - the vast majority of Americans are descended from immigrants who did precisely that. But there is another, more recent, dynamic that has increased this mobility. As analytical skills become more valuable for organizations, the relatively stable layers and skills of middle management are being replaced by more autonomous managers with strong analytical skills. These workers are often more loyal to their skills or expertise than to the organizations for which they work (Stewart, [1997]). This means that they are more attracted to opportunities to use their skills than they are to working for a single organization. This is a phenomenon that has characterized the more technical vocations such as computer programming, data base management, and telecommunications, whose practitioners have always been highly mobile. The difference today is that strong analytical skills are being required of all workers and managers, not just those in the more technical areas or industries. Economist and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has written convincingly of the reasons for this change (Reich, [1991]). In short, U.S. industries that had competed by producing high volumes of products at low cost can no longer compete in this way against the rising industrialization of Third-World countries that have vastly cheaper work forces. Now that much current manufacturing technology is widely available, Third World countries can easily produce products more cheaply than we can. Reich insists that the only kind of competition that the United States can successfully sustain is to produce products or services that are either innovative or tailor made for individual customers. This kind of competition requires a highly educated workforce with strong analytical skills. As the value of an employee becomes more dependent on his or her analytical skills and expertise, and less dependent on longevity with one company, employees will naturally move to the organizations that offer them the best opportunity to use and develop their expertise. Because skill acquisition and maintenance are ongoing processes, it stands to reason that as an employee's expertise gets better he/she may need to change organizations to find opportunities to utilize or improve those skills.
Knowledge Management is not so much the management of tangible assets such as data or information, but the active management and support of expertise. This is not to say that there are no tangible assets that need to be managed in Knowledge Management, but to say that access to these assets alone is not sufficient to guarantee successful execution of expertise.
Knowledge Management and Communities of Practice


Now if Knowledge Management is largely the management and support of expertise, then, unlike data and information management, it is primarily the management of individuals with specific abilities, rather than the management of repositories of data and information. This has some interesting consequences for management. In the first place, the knowledge that is managed is not easily separable from the individuals who exercise it - the practitioners themselves become the repositories for knowledge. How, then, do you pass knowledge from those who have it to those who do not? Because Knowledge is not something that can usually be written down, knowledgeable individuals must be encouraged to pass their expertise to others through personal contact. This is a very interactive process, and often takes the form of a kind of apprenticeship with novices interacting closely with experts to learn their trade. This means that Knowledge Management must in large part be concerned with establishing, maintaining, and facilitating communication between both experts and novices (experts to experts, experts to novices, and novices to novices). This is where the notion of a Community of Practice arises (Davenport & Prusak, [1998]). Again, there may be some ordinary data or information management needed to support this process, but neither data nor information management by itself is sufficient to enable individuals to exercise some expertise.
One of the interesting consequences of establishing and maintaining communities of practice is that it requires one major commitment on the part of its members - the experts and novices must be willing to share what they know with others. This requirement, though, can pose problems in many of today's organizations. Specifically, if an employee becomes valuable to the organization because of certain specific skills and abilities that he or she can exercise, then there is often a powerful incentive for that employee not to pass that expertise on to others. That is, by helping other employees to become more expert in a particular area, an expert loses the exclusivity of his or her expertise. A prominent consulting company came face to face with this problem: when they found that their senior consultants were not talking to or interacting with their junior or entry-level consultants, they offered bonuses to the senior consultants as an incentive to interact with the junior consultants. This had little effect. The company then had to threaten the senior consultants with the loss of earned bonuses if they did not increase their communication with junior consultants. Of course, this raises a lot of management issues, not the least of which is how do you determine whether the communication between senior and junior practitioners really does help the junior practitioners to get better, that is, to become more knowledgeable? Some companies have begun monitoring e-mail and phone calls to determine how much communication is taking place between those who have an important expertise and those who do not. But a hundred e-mail messages may be less helpful than the tip an expert might give a novice when they meet at the water cooler and discuss their work informally.
Shell Oil Company considers its paleontologists to be some of their most valuable experts, and has introduced a formal system to encourage the meaningful exchange of knowledge between their senior and junior paleontologists (McDermott, [1998]). Shell paleontologists are required to meet regularly, and to present the details of whatever project they are working on to the other paleontologists. This allows the novice paleontologists to see how the expert paleontologists approach a problem, and, when the novices present their work, it enables them to get feedback on what they are doing from those more expert than they are.
Unless novices can get all of their expertise out of book (and this is not likely to be the case in most areas of expertise), they will have to develop their abilities through the interaction with experts in their area. Organizations, like Shell Oil Company in the above example, can do some things to facilitate the sharing of expertise between experts and novices. But there must, as we said, be a willingness on the part of the experts to pass their expertise - their knowledge - to those who are less expert than they are. It is well known among organizational theorists that organizations have a kind of character or ambience about them, what is usually called their culture. Schienstock gives us a more precise definition: [organizational culture is] . a network of interlocking rituals, norms, assumptions, and values that have developed out of continuous interactions among the members of an organization (quoted in Cronin, [2001]). The kind of culture of an organization can be an important factor influencing whether it encourages the sharing of knowledge between employees or inhibits it. Organizations that have a culture of being very competitive internally, with employees competing against each other for customers and projects, will have a great deal of trouble convincing expert employees to pass their expertise/knowledge on to those who are less knowledgeable. Unfortunately, it may be very difficult for an organization whose culture is not conducive to sharing to transform itself into an organization that encourages sharing. Organizational theorists are pretty much in agreement that one of the hardest things to change about an organization is its culture (Trice & Beyer, [1993]).
The Diminishing Returns of Information/Data Management

A number of other factors have contributed to the emergence of Knowledge Management. First of all, Knowledge Management must be seen, not as a phenomenon without precedent, but as a process that has been heavily influenced by the growth and application of computer technology to data and information management. The earliest applications of computer technology in business were the automation of what before were manual processes: payroll, inventory control, ordering, billing, etc. These were not only the first applications, they were the most clearly successful, from a financial point of view. By automating manual information processes, organizations were able to gain a clear return on their investment in computer technology: the cost of buying, installing and maintaining computers could be compared to the explicit savings gotten by laying off the salaried employees who carried out these tasks. These early business applications of computers came to be called 'transaction processing systems (TPSs) because they managed the transactions of the organization. Early TPSs were conceptually simple and limited in the kind of information they provided, primarily lists or summaries of transactions. This changed with the development and introduction of data base management technology in the 1970s and 80s. Data base management systems, especially ones based on the relational model, allowed the users of TPSs to arrange, quickly and easily, the data/information provided by these systems in new and creative ways. This flexibility in arranging and presenting data and information enabled the users of these systems to discover correlations in the data that they had not seen before (e.g., finding that the sales of a particular product are strongly correlated to specific times of the year, specific geographical regions, or the sales of other products). But as computer technology became ubiquitous, all but the smallest organizations automated their fundamental transaction processes, and as data base management systems became cheaper and widely available the advantages of flexible data and information management also became widespread throughout industry. Naturally, as computer technology spread, the advantage of having automated transaction processing systems and data base management systems spread to the point where the technology conferred no real advantage to its users, it was simply a cost of doing business.
Naturally, there have been continuing attempts to leverage further advantage out of computerized TPSs, in particular, by making them the foundation for higher level systems such as decision-support sytems and expert systems. But although the advantage conferred by automating transaction processing systems was clear and unequivocal, neither decision-support systems (DSSs) nor expert systems (ESs) have provided a clear positive return on investment (there are, of course, some successful DSSs and ESs, but they are rare and the overall success of DSSs and ESs pales in comparison to the successful application of earlier computer technologies such as data base management, telecommunications, and the automation of transaction processing). Some analysts have declared DSSs a resounding failure (Kelly, [1996]), and others have offered convincing arguments for the impossibility of any widespread ES development (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, [1986]). Even history offers an apropos analogy. In the California Gold Rush of 1849, vanishingly few individuals struck it rich, and the only individuals sure of profiting from the quest for gold were those who sold the equipment that the miners used. Likewise, the only individuals to profit consistently from the rush to build Expert Systems in the late 1980s and 1990s were companies like Symbolics, who sold the software and hardware to build Expert Systems (Blair, [1985]). Like the number of gold miners who struck it rich in California, the number of commercially successful ESs is vanishingly small. The specific reasons for the failure of DSSs and ESs to attain any general level of success are beyond the scope of this article, but one reason deserves mentioning. Decision Support Systems and Expert Systems attempt to improve human decision making (DSSs) or replace it entirely (ESs). But human decision making is a kind of expertise, it is the activity of knowledgeable individuals, and this expertise is not something that, in general, can be easily supplemented or replaced by computer technology, as DSSs and ESs tried to do. In contrast, Knowledge Management does not try to actively supplement or replace human expertise, it simply tries to encourage and facilitate it. For DSSs and ESs, the expert was external to the system, but for Knowledge Management, the expert is an essential part of the system.
Other, more recent efforts to leverage further advantage from Transaction Processing Systems are Data Warehousing, Data Mining, and Enterprise Resource Planning. There have been successes in these areas, but, again, nothing of the scale of success enjoyed by the earlier applications of data base management, telecommunications, and the automation of TPSs, and, most importantly, many successful businesses continue to do well without any efforts in these areas. In contrast, few sizable businesses could exist without automated TPSs, telecommunications facilities, and data base management systems. The continuing attempts to leverage further advantage from TPSs stem from the belief that there is more information in them than what has been delivered so far.
The emergence of Knowledge Management is, in some sense, the consequence of, first, the realization that there is something more to be extracted from current information/data systems than what is actually stored on them, and, second, the poor record of DSSs and ESs in supporting, capturing or utilizing this additional information.
In particular, ES development comes in large part from the attempt to capture in an information system something that cannot be captured by it - knowledge.
The Hope and Promise of Automation

There is no doubt that the progress we have made in automating the storage and transmission of written information has been remarkable. We can make multiple copies of the longest document and e-mail it to myriad addressees with a few keystrokes. We can store the contents of 50 filing cabinets in a laptop computer or on a removable hard disk that can fit in our pocket. But this rapid development of storage technology has not come without consequences. When information is put on a computer it is usually removed from the informal social networks of the employees who use and produce it. Removing information from these pragmatic contexts is OK for relatively context-free data, and low-context information, but it can be harmful to remove the more context-dependent information that experts often use in the execution of their expertise. Seen this way, the emergence of Knowledge Management is, in part, a consequence of the increasingly pervasive automation of an organization's information. Documents, which are often described as an important component in Knowledge Management, are a good example. When documents exist only as paper, they tend to be physically managed by individuals who understand them and have some use for them. These individuals provide a number of important functions for this information: first, they can serve as gatekeepers for the documents they possess; that is, they can direct inquiring individuals to the documents that they are most likely to need. Because the gatekeepers are usually individuals who use, or have used, the information that they possess, they are also usually able to interpret or explain the meaning of that information, that is, how it is used by the organization. Second, if they do not have the documents an inquirer wants they can often direct him/her to another gatekeeper who is more likely to have them. Finally, because the storage of paper documents has an explicit cost, the gatekeepers will be selective about what they keep, and will often weed out and discard documents that are no longer useful. This makes it more likely that social information networks will provide access to information that is useful for the purposes of the organization. Although these social information networks are informal in nature, they can be quite efficient in providing precise access to a large body of information.
Paper-based documents are frequently associated with messy offices populated by desks and tables piled with stacks of papers. As humorous as this image is, there is a hidden efficiency in it. Surprisingly, studies have shown that messy offices can be surprisingly efficient mechanisms for arranging information (The Economist, [1992]; Landale & Edmonds, [1992]; Lansdale, Young, & Bass, [1989]).The piles of documents can be moved easily, and the documents themselves can be grouped and regrouped to facilitate different conceptual arrangements of the information. The spatial arrangement tends to be implicitly value-based also, with the importance of the documents decreasing in direct proportion to their distance from the part of the office where most of the work gets done, usually the desk. This sort of easy grouping, regrouping, and value-based arrangement of documents is very difficult to duplicate in an computerized retrieval system, and virtually impossible in systems that simply list files sequentially with only a brief description of their contents.
If we could capture knowledge in its entirety in some kind of tangible form, Knowledge Management would be far more straightforward - we would simply store knowledge and manage it much like we manage information and data. One of the assumptions of the Fifth-Generation project in Artificial intelligence (the attempt to commercialize advances in AI) was that any human skill or expertise that could be performed consistently could ultimately be completely described by a set of rules or procedures (Feigenbaum & McCorduck, [1983], [1988]). As attractive as this assumption is, there is much evidence that in most areas of expertise, it does not hold. As philosopher of science Hilary Putnam put it, it is a mistake to think that merely because one practices an activity one can give a theory of it (Magee, [1997], p. 235). The assumption that human expertise can be completely described by rules, procedures, and relevant facts, has been an implicit assumption behind much of the work in Expert Systems. But in their critique of Expert Systems development, Dreyfus and Dreyfus ([1986]) showed that for most areas of expertise, rules, procedures, and facts can, at best, only capture rudimentary levels of expert behavior - what they call competence. Competence is only the third stage, out of seven, in the acquisition of expertise. As Dreyfus puts it, expert systems following rules and procedures would at best be competent (Dreyfus, [2001], p. 48). But most organizations cannot be built on just competence. It is a fact of life that for an organization, especially a business, to survive it must bring the highest levels of expertise to bear on the activities and practices in which it is engaged. Expert Systems that modeled only competent behavior have little chance of commercial success.
Another difficulty with the Artificial Intelligence model of expert behavior is that it assumes that the controller of the behavior is a single, centralized entity like the mind. But some workers in Robotics and Neuroscience have called this assumption into question. As Clark ([1997]) puts it:
The New Robotics revolution rejects a fundamental part of the classical image of mind. It rejects the image of a central planner that is privy to all the information available anywhere in the system and dedicated to the discovery of possible behavioral sequences that will satisfy particular goals. The trouble with the central planner is that it is profoundly impractical. It introduces what Rodney Brooks aptly termed a representational bottleneck blocking fast, real-time response. The reason is that the incoming sensory information must be converted into a single symbolic code so that such a planner can deal with it. And the planners' output will itself have to be converted from its proprietary code into the various formats needed to control various types of motor response. These steps of translation are time-consuming and expensive.
The inability of Expert System development to model, in most cases, more than basic competence has been one of the major factors in the failure of this application of technology. The importance of this for Knowledge Management is clear: if knowledge is primarily expertise, and expertise is not something that we can model and separate from those who practice it, then Knowledge Management cannot operate apart from the experts who practice a particular expertise.
The Question of Tacit Knowledge

One issue that arises frequently in Knowledge Management is the notion of tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is assumed to be what the practicing expert knows - it is what enables him or her to do what they do. There are two kinds of tacit knowledge, though: that which has not been expressed but is potentially expressible, and that which is not expressible. As an example of the first type, consider a construction engineer putting a particular kind of brace into the structure supporting the roof of a building she is erecting. Although she has selected a particular kind of brace based on her experience doing this sort of thing many times, it may be possible to write down a rule or procedure that could be used by a novice engineer, or an engineering student, to select the proper kind of brace for this job. As an example of the second type of tacit knowledge consider what the wine connoisseur knows. In this case, what the wine connoisseur knows when he selects the best available wine is not reducible to a rule or set of rules - he simply knows the difference between good and not-so-good wine, and would be at a loss if required to state the precise reasons one wine is better than another. This kind of tacit knowledge is only expressible by demonstration - the wine connoisseur can show you a good and a not-so-good wine without being able to describe why one is good and the other is not, except in the vaguest possible ways - ways that could only be understood by other wine connoisseurs. This is why aspiring wine connoisseurs do not read books about their craft, they attend wine-tasting parties hosted by experts. Even Mark Twain ([1965]) saw the tacit dimension of expertise. Consider the following passage from his semi-autobiographical Life on the Mississippi, where he describes a critical event in his training as a river pilot (in this passage, the pilot has just ordered Twain, the apprentice pilot, to steer the boat over what Twain thinks is a deadly reef which will sink the boat):
[Twain] [we] made a straight break for the reef. As it disappeared under our bows I held my breath: but we slid over it like oil.
[Pilot] Now don't you see the difference? it wasn't anything but a wind reef. The wind does that.
[Twain] So I see. But it is exactly like a [real] reef. How am I ever going to tell them apart?
[Pilot] I can't tell you. It's an instinct. By and by you will just naturally know one from the other, but you never will be able to explain why or how you know them apart.
It turned out to be true. The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book - -a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.
What Dreyfus and Dreyfus' work ([1986]) has shown is that most expertise is of the latter kind, it is, in whole or in part, inexpressible, and even the expressible tacit knowledge, such as that possessed by the engineer, when it is written down only expresses at best a merely competent level of expertise. But the experienced engineer is not just competent, she is able to select the correct brace to use in all the ordinary construction situations - the textbook cases - but can also select the right brace in situations that are unusual or unique, situations in which the novice engineer with just the rules will be at a loss.
Dreyfus and Dreyfus ([1986]) do not say that there is nothing tacit involved in expertise. They are only saying that the assumption that every expert has some tacit set of rules that completely describes his or her expertise is erroneous. Instead of rules, experts often have heuristics - rules of thumb - that they find useful in the exercise of their abilities. Such heuristics, although not completely describing the execution of an expertise, are often useful to other experts or to novice experts. Capturing such heuristics, when available, can be a useful part of Knowledge Management.
If most expertise cannot be reduced to a set of rules that completely defines it, then the best source of information about what experts do are the descriptions of the actual cases in which those experts utilize their expertise. These case descriptions would include a statement of the problem being solved, the circumstances that are relevant to the case, the steps the expert goes through in the solution of the problem, the specification of useful data or information relevant to the expertise, and the outcome. The cases that have been executed most successfully can form the foundation for the establishment of a set of best practices. Best practices can serve a number of purposes: they can be used to form a benchmark for the level of quality expected of practicing experts; they can also be arranged in order of increasing complexity or difficulty to form a set of graduated examples useful for the training of novices. The gathering of Best Practices is often an important component of Knowledge Management (Davenport & Prusak, [1998]).
What Are the Enabling Technologies for KM?

Although Knowledge Management is not the same as data or information management, data and information retrieval can be important components of it. But just as knowledge and expertise can be unpredictably varied, the data and information that assist them can be unpredictably variable in their form or content. Data, text, images, schematics, video, audio, Web pages, compound and multimedia documents can all be important ancillaries to Knowledge Management. Consequently, we must have widely available commercial technology that can physically manage this wide variety of informative media. Fortunately, we do have this - Oracle's 9i Data Base Management System that appeared recently is a good example of the technology that can manage this wide variety of informative media that may be necessary for Knowledge Management. Other data base vendors, like IBM and Informix, have similar technologies.
Because a wide variety of media may be relevant to Knowledge Management, it is clear that we will also need to access these media in a wide variety of places and through a variety of networks, storage systems, user platforms, and interfaces. Consequently, we will need communication networks that can handle this variety. We need cheap, high-bandwidth communication channels, and a common multimedia communication protocol that will allow a wide variety of systems to communicate with each other. Again we are fortunate - the internet has both a high enough bandwidth and a communication protocol (TCP/IP) that is freely available and widely distributed. As users have come to insist on higher and higher bandwidth to gain access to more complex information, communications engineers have struggled to increase the bandwidth of the last mile that connects many users to the higher bandwidth internet backbones. Again, we are fortunate. With technologies like the earlier ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) and the more recent DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) engineers have increased the capacity of our installed base of twisted pair copper phone lines to carry large amounts of complex information media into the home or small office. Until these advances, it was thought that ubiquitous high bandwidth could only come through the widespread installation of fiber optic connections. This would be both time consuming and prohibitively expensive to do on a large scale because it costs as much to light fiber optic lines as it does to install them, and installation alone was estimated to be in the 100s of billions of dollars if every U.S. home and small business was to have it. It is true that ISDN and DSL are not available everywhere because they require the close proximity of special facilities. But as time passes DSL and ISDN are becoming increasingly widely available (the phone companies are the principal providers of this technology). Until then, cable TV connections can offer a high bandwidth digital service alternative to most who want it.
Another component for high bandwidth communication is a common, widely available multimedia markup language, so that complex information media can be represented in a way that can be understood by a wide variety of platforms and user interfaces. HTML and XML fit these requirements well.
Finally, the ability to store and transmit a wide variety of information types and formats in support of knowledge workers is of no use unless the individuals who want it can find it. This is probably the weakest link in Knowledge Management. As we put more information on the World Wide Web and on organizational intranets, we narrow the bandwidth of how we can express what we want. Current search engines have to base their searches primarily on the literal content of the information itself. in other words, the searcher must anticipate, in his search queries, the words and phrases that will appear in the documents he would be interested in. Yet this is a skill that we are not very good at (Blair & Maron, [1985]). To understand how limiting this can be, imagine the difference between using a search engine to find what you want and asking a colleague or professional searcher for the same information. When talking to an individual we can describe what we want in all the subtleties of our native language, while with the search engine we are limited to, at best, a kind of Boolean pidgin-English.
It is clear that most of the enabling technologies for Knowledge Management are already here, having come about with the growth and development of the internet. Knowledge Management is, in one sense, a means of leveraging more advantage from the internet and the World Wide Web.
What Are the Prerequisites for KM?

A number of things have to happen before Knowledge Management can have a reasonable chance of success. In the first place, because Knowledge Management deals largely with practicing experts, and these experts must communicate with each other to improve their abilities and to train novices, the organization must have a culture that encourages and facilitates the sharing of expertise.
One of the basic principles of management is that you can't manage what you don't know about. This means that an essential prerequisite for Knowledge Management is to have some kind of Knowledge inventory or Knowledge Map that provides an explicit tabulation of the organization's knowledge assets. Because knowledge is strongly associated with individuals, a Knowledge inventory or Map will consist, in part, of a listing of individuals and their respective expertise. Included in this tabulation are not just a naming of these expert abilities, but a description of the kinds of problems these experts can solve. Businesses can take a lesson from universities, which expend a great deal of effort and resources describing the expertise and knowledge of their faculty and research associates.
Knowledge Management requires some significant changes in the abilities of what Peter Drucker called Knowledge Workers (Drucker, [1998]). Because the information or data relevant to Knowledge Management may come from an unpredictable variety of sources, many of them outside of the organization, Knowledge Workers must have strong critical thinking skills; in particular, they must have a well-developed ability to evaluate the validity and reliability of information obtained from unfamiliar sources. The World Wide Web is a treasure of valuable information, of course, but it is also a landfill of inaccurate, incorrect, and sometimes fraudulent information also. Knowledge Workers, more than most other information dependent workers, are particularly reliant on the quality and accuracy of information from the Web.
One of the obvious goals of Knowledge Management is to create value within organizations, and one of the most common ways for Knowledge Workers to create value is to provide support for effective decision making - the kind of analytical skill that Robert Reich ([1991]) has stated is so valuable to the modern organization. ( Creating value does not necessarily mean creating economic value. Nonprofit organizations, government organizations and charities create value in non-economic ways, they create what is now called social capital. ) But the kind of decision making that has been traditionally associated with organizations has been a very structured, logical process whose inputs and decision points can be defined very precisely. But the context of decision making for today's Knowledge Worker is much more complex - relevant information comes from a number of sources, many of which are outside the organization. Gary Klein calls this kind of decision context naturalistic decision making, and describes its characteristics as including time pressure, high stakes, inadequate information (information that is missing, ambiguous, or erroneous), ill-defined goals, [and] poorly defined procedures (Klein, [1998]). Having Knowledge Workers who can create value through effective decision making in this kind of environment is another prerequisite for Knowledge Management.
What Are the Major Challenges for KM?

As we have said, a prerequisite for effective Knowledge Management is an organizational culture that supports and facilitates the sharing of knowledge. But not all organizations have such a culture of sharing. Unfortunately, organizational culture is one of the hardest things for an organization to change, and there is no consensus on how to even attempt such a change (Trice & Beyer, [1993]). This means that organizations that do not have a culture of sharing face less than auspicious prospects for establishing effective Knowlege Management. It does not mean that Knowledge Management is impossible, but it does mean that it will be difficult, and its results more modest than those organizations with cultures of sharing.
Although we do have some understanding about how individuals become experts (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, [1986]), and some researchers have begun to look at the dynamics of communities of practice in organizations (Wenger, [1998]; Wenger & Snyder, [1999]), there remains much to learn about these activities. But whatever we learn about how individuals attain expertise, and how they interact with other experts, will probably have a direct positive effect on the practice of Knowledge Management.
The treatment of Tacit Knowledge will continue to be a challenge for Knowledge Management. In particular, it will be important to make a clear distinction between that part of expertise that is unexpressed but expressible and that part of expertise that is simply inexpressible. Much of the history of Expert System development has been a saga of wasted time, effort, and money trying to make inexpressible expertise explicit - over a number of years, the Department of Defense funded some 300 expert systems projects at a cost of millions of dollars, yet only one of those projects was successful, a rate of success comparable, as we pointed out, to the California Gold Rush (H. Dreyfus, personal communication, 1999).
Finally, there is an important and complex legal issue that lurks within the practice of Knowledge Management: the nature of intellectual property. An expert certainly knows something when he or she can successfully exercise an expertise, but it is not at all clear precisely what it is of what the expert knows that belongs to the expert. This is an even greater issue when there is more than one expert and they interact frequently in the practice of their expertise. Independent consultants have had to deal with this issue when they work for organizations - they are often required to sign a contract that is quite explicit about what they bring to the organization and what they can use or divulge after they leave the organization. This is not a simple process even when an outside consultant brings an expertise that the organization does not have. But in the practice of Knowledge Management the organization usually deals with experts who are full-time employees of the organization and who may have acquired their expertise during their time with the organization. Here it is not at all clear what the expert owns and what he knows is the organization's property. Intellectual property law can take a lesson from copyright law. Copyright law was established explicitly to encourage the sharing of the public knowledge, not to restrict it. That is, it is only when an author's rights to what he or she has written are protected that the author will be willing to have his/her work published and distributed. In the same way, experts will be willing to share their expertise only insofar as what they own can be protected or compensated for. Obviously, what counts as intellectual property is far more complex and ambiguous than what can be copyrighted, but if sharing what experts know is as important for Knowledge Management as we have claimed here, then the specification and protection of both the expert's and the organization's intellectual property will be a sine qua non for the sharing necessary to Knowledge Management.
Conclusion

The title of this discussion asked whether Knowledge Management is Hype, Hope, or Help? It is not an equivocation to conclude that, in various manifestations, it can be all three. It has certainly been hyped beyond its ability to deliver clear benefits in all applications. Some of Knowledge Management has been simply an enthusiastic renaming of existing management practices: as the interest in Knowledge Management began to grow, the established industry publication Image World was renamed KM World, reflecting the early association of Knowledge Management with the information that was kept as images: primarily pictures, drawings, and text. Knowledge Management has been variously associated with Document Management/Retrieval, and, currently, the management of expertise. The current work on the care, feeding, and training of experts seems to have identified a legitimate and promising area of management study - the work on communities of practice and best practices have certainly helped us to understand and better manage this valuable organizational resource, and there is certainly the hope that more study in this area will enable us to manage and leverage expertise better than we now do.
But in the final analysis, Knowledge Management is not an end in itself, it is a means to a further end. For the goal of Knowledge Workers is not so much to manage knowledge but to solve problems. As Thomas Huxley put it over a century ago: The great end of knowledge is not knowledge but action.

Posted by: mary / 4:36 PM 1 comments

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Library Education

Few library school courses in cataloging or technical services teach students how to perform the work of managing technical services operations, which involve creative thinking, writing, and communicating, and interpreting a wide veriety of events, statements, documents, and data in order to make decisions.

The current professional education curriculum does not adequately meet the needs of the profession or of prospective librarians in the area of technical services, and especially in cataloging.

management of library operations must be accorded more importance within the curriculum and this instruction must encompass the management of technical services.

Posted by: mary / 10:55 PM 0 comments

Thursday, January 27, 2005

The utilisation of an intranet as a knowledge management tool in academic libraries
Hamilton Mphidi, Retha Snyman
The Authors
Hamilton Mphidi, Information Specialist in the Academic Information Service, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
Retha Snyman, Professor in the Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
Abstract
The intranet has emerged as one of today's most effective tools for knowledge management. This article reports on the extent to which three South African academic libraries, selected by means of the purposive sampling method, utilise the intranet as a knowledge management tool. Based on the literature, knowledge management and an intranet are briefly defined. The advantages of the intranet as a knowledge management tool as well as the content of an intranet are discussed. The opinions about knowledge management and the utilisation of the intranet as a knowledge management tool in the three academic libraries are weighed up against the findings in the literature. It is clear that a strong awareness exists of the importance of knowledge management and the value of the intranet as a knowledge management tool. However, the potential of the intranet as a knowledge management tool is not utilised fully.
Article type: Literature review, Comparative/evaluators.
Keywords: Academic libraries, Intranets, Knowledge management.
Content Indicators: Research Implications** Practice Implications** Originality* Readability**
The Electronic LibraryVolume 22 Number 5 2004 pp. 393-400Copyright © MCB University Press ISSN 0264-0473
Introduction
The intranet and knowledge management are not new concepts. Many organisations have realised that an intranet can empower their employees. It can also boost the organisation's competitive advantage, improve employee's morale and improve communication among clients and suppliers (Yen and Chou, 2001, p. 80). Intranets also offer new ways to manage and communicate data, information and knowledge (Kim, 2003, p. 66). A literature review indicates that research has been done on the utilisation of an intranet as a knowledge management tool in, for example, law firms and the business environment (Robinson, 1999, p. 95; Du Rand, 2000, p. 1). However, little research has been done on the utilisation of an intranet as a knowledge management tool in academic libraries, especially in South Africa.
Therefore, the purpose of this article is to determine the extent to which academic libraries in South Africa utilise the intranet as a knowledge management tool. Findings from other environments, such as the business environment, as found in the literature, will serve as background for the discussion. Based on the literature, knowledge management and an intranet are briefly defined. The advantages of an intranet as a knowledge management tool as well as the content of an intranet are also discussed. Opinions about knowledge management and the utilisation of an intranet as a knowledge management tool in three academic libraries in South Africa, are subsequently weighed up against the findings in the literature.
This article focuses specifically on three academic libraries in South Africa, selected by means of the purposive sampling method, and referred simply to as libraries A, B and C for privacy purposes. In purposive sampling the researcher may prefer to select a sample based entirely on his/her knowledge of the population and the objectives of the research (Powell, 1997, p. 69). When designing a survey of large academic libraries that utilise intranets, the easiest way of obtaining a sample of such libraries would be to select libraries known to be utilising intranets and that are willing to participate in the research. The research would be based on the assumption that such a sample would be reasonably typical of all academic libraries utilising an intranet. During the research, individual semi-structured interviews were carried out with the representatives of the libraries.
Value of knowledge management for academic libraries
Knowledge management is defined by the Gartner Group (2000, p. 1) as a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving and sharing all the information assets of an organisation. Balcombe (1999, p. 1) defines knowledge management as systematically capturing, sharing, using and creating knowledge to add value to the organisation. It also refers to effectively identifying, acquiring, developing, resolving, using, storing and sharing knowledge, to create an approach for transforming tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge (Shanhong, 2000, p. 13).
For the purpose of this article and based on the abovementioned definitions, knowledge management can be defined as a process of identifying, capturing, sharing and exploiting knowledge (both tacit and explicit). In order to determine the value of the intranet as a knowledge management tool at the three academic libraries, it is necessary to determine their understanding of knowledge management. Table I presents definitions of knowledge management as provided by the three academic libraries.
The definitions provided by the three academic libraries corresponded with the definitions obtained from the literature. It is also clear that they fully understood what knowledge management is. Apart from their understanding of knowledge management, their understanding of the value of knowledge management was also examined.
Knowledge management is essential. In the literature, various authors emphasise that the value of knowledge management is to organise knowledge to enable people and the organisation itself to act as effectively as possible (Wiig as cited in Jantz, 2001, p. 34). Schwarzwalder (1999, p. 65) argues that knowledge management is valuable to help organisations to use what they already know, and to work smarter and more quickly and to make more money. Knowledge management involves capturing the knowledge, wisdom, and added value experiences of individuals within an organisation, making it easy to find again and in so doing, preserving it as an organisational asset (Perez, 1999, p. 75). Knowledge management harnesses the knowledge resources and knowledge capabilities of the organisation in order to enable the organisation to learn and adapt to its changing environments. It also facilitates continuous and ongoing processes of learning and unlearning, thus ensuring that the need for imposing top-down radical change is minimized (Malhotra, 1998, p. 1).
If libraries use and share knowledge, it will improve their services (Jantz, 2001, p. 34). According to Malhotra (2000, p. 54) knowledge management enables libraries to organise and provide access to intangible resources that help librarians and administrators to carry out their tasks. Shanhong (2000, p. 7) argues that knowledge management injectsnew blood into the library culture,which results in mutual trust, open exchange, studying, sharing and developing the knowledge operation mechanism of libraries. Dillon (1999, p. 3) also states that knowledge management has value in the sense that it emerges as a powerful focal point for exploiting technology to add value to many information-processing environments. This is particularly true for universities and libraries.
If knowledge management is applied in libraries, personal knowledge may be turned into corporate knowledge that can be widely shared throughout the library and applied appropriately. Knowledge management can help employees to produce outputs that tap into their skills, talents, thoughts and ideas, so that decision-making is improved concerning strategic issues, competitors, customers, distribution channels, products and services. Academic libraries are also learning organizations; if knowledge management occurs within these libraries, this can be of great value for creating and maintaining a learning culture. Knowledge management also benefits internal communication: while employees share their expertise with each other, they simultaneously learn from each other to fulfil the needs of their clients. The opinions of the three academic libraries with regard to the value of knowledge management are presented in Table II.
All three academic libraries were aware of what knowledge management is as well as the value of knowledge management for the sharing and use of knowledge. This is proven by their definitions as provided in Table I and the values of knowledge management as provided in Table II.
Definition and value of an intranet as a knowledge management tool
To persuade people to share knowledge, they have to be motivated and provided with the necessary tools. If given the right tools and guidance, the individual will be able to make the knowledge sharing process as efficient as possible. Intranets have emerged as one of today's most effective ways of sharing information and knowledge in organisations. They act as the nervous and circulatory systems for a company, supporting business processes as well as the flow of information (Kim, 2003, p. 66). Therefore, it is necessary to define an intranet and determine the value of an intranet as a knowledge management tool.
An intranet has been defined by Parks (cited in Yen and Chou, 2001, p. 80) as follows: "a private computer network based on the data communication standards and technologies of the public Internet". Curry and Stancich (2000, p. 250) define an intranet as a private computing network, internal to an organisation, allowing access only to authorised users. Blackmore (1997, p. 67) describes an intranet as simply a means of exploiting Internet technologies within an organisation-based computer environment to aid the progression towards the seamless navigation of both Internet-based and inhouse-generated learning materials.
Summarising the above definitions, an intranet can be defined as a network that uses Internet concepts and technologies within an organisation in order to be accessed by employees to share knowledge. In addition, such knowledge is stored electronically and access is usually controlled by password.
Intranets benefit organisations in many ways. The main advantages include the following:
Consistency: the same explicit knowledge can be viewed by any employee. There is no need to worry about several copies of outdated information circulating around the office. The intranet will always be available as long as the network is online (Stevens, 1996, p. 76; Blackmore, 1997, p. 70; Mears, 1999, p. 27).
Interactivity: the emergence of Web development tools such as Java and Shockwave have enhanced the scope of websites. One can create discussion groups, comprehension tests and other two-way communication tools (Stevens, 1996, p. 76; Curry and Stancich, 2000, p. 259; Kim, 2003, p. 66).
Ease and low cost for update: with an intranet one can easily and inexpensively updates online publications. This can be done as frequently as needed (Stevens, 1996, p. 76; Mears, 1999, p. 27; Robinson, 1999, p. 97; Curry and Stancich, 2000, p. 260; Yen and Chou, 2001, p. 82; Intracs, 2002, p. 1).
User-friendly interface: an intranet application typically uses an interface that is conducive to point-and-click navigation. If employees can easily get to the information they seek, they are much more likely to look for that information. An intranet is easy to learn (Stevens, 1996, p. 76; Mears, 1999, p. 27; Curry and Stancich, 2000, p. 260; Intracs, 2002, p. 1).
Centralisation: employees can access information from a central database at any time and in any number of geographical locations (Stevens, 1996, p. 72; Mears, 1999, p. 27).
Simplicity in creation and maintenance: an intranet can be created and maintained with a minimum of programming expertise. Once the basic shell is in place, supportstaff at a specific department can easily make most updates to information (Stevens, 1996, p. 76; Blackmore, 1997, p. 70; Fichter, 2001, p. 74; Intracs, 2002, p. 1).
Keeping up with the workforce: as more and more young employees enter the workforce, keeping up with new technology will become increasingly important. Employees will become less willing to receive training information through slides or print outs because they are used to being intellectually stimulated through electronic media. Employees can use the intranet to learn from one another (Stevens, 1996, p. 76; Blackmore, 1997, pp. 70-1; Greenberg, 1998, p. 2; Fichter, 2001, p. 74).
Flexibility: an intranet provides one access point to the organisation's databases and allows a remote worker to access the knowledge available as if she/he is in his/her own office (Stevens, 1996, p. 72; Robinson, 1999, p. 97; Intracs, 2002, p. 1; Choo and Detlor, cited in Van Brakel, 2003).
Improved services: the use of an intranet improves the way in which services are rendered (Fichter, 2001, p. 74).
Faster speed: as long as the network is running, knowledge can be accessed easily and quickly (Blackmore, 1997, p. 70; Curry and Stancich, 2000, p. 259; Fichter, 2001, p. 74; Yen and Chou, 2001, p. 82).
Ease of use for accessing and publishing information: it is easy to publish one's research by placing it on the intranet so that others can access it (Mears, 1999, p. 27; Fichter, 2001, p. 74; Intracs, 2002, p. 1).
Timeouness: depending on the use of the intranet and barring serious technical problems, messages will be delivered on time (Stevens, 1996, p. 75; Mears, 1999, p. 27; Yen and Chou, 2001, p. 82).
Accuracy: information and data are as accurate as supplied by people and will not change between two requests. Information and data will remain accurate and remain the same for all users accessing it (Mears, 1999, p. 27; Fichter, 2001, p. 74).
Save trees: the intranet is a step closer to a paperless working environment, because the more the intranet progresses, the less paper will be used (Mears, 1999, p. 27).
Effectiveness and efficiency: using an intranet it requires the organisation to review and evaluate its working practices and this is a valuable exercise in itself (Robinson, 1999, p. 97; Curry and Stancich, 2000, p. 259).
From the above it is clear that an intranet, if used optimally, has the capability to be a valuable knowledge management tool for facilitating communication and knowledge sharing within organisations such as academic libraries. Web-based intranets provide a universal cross-platform network that allows working groups to communicate, share information, assign and track tasks, and manage complex projects. This leads to employees being more informed and being able to make better and faster decisions with regard to tasks. The intranet also contains the most current information and knowledge, in a format that can be easily accessed, updated, expanded and searched. Intranets are a major step in the transition towards a paperless office - employees can access and move information electronically, rather than through traditional paper bureaucracies, which are slow and expensive to maintain.
All three academic libraries in the study indicated that they realised that the intranet could be a valuable knowledge management tool. It served as a repository of explicit knowledge in their libraries, and original documents could be placed on the intranet, allowing the same information to be viewed by any employee. Additionally, library A mentioned that it valued the intranet because it facilitated communication within the organisation and reduced the use of paper. Library C valued the intranet because it encouraged knowledge sharing, which helped to improve employee performance.
But for an intranet to be of real value, the contents should be relevant, accurate, informative and up to date.
Contents of an intranet
The content of an intranet is the engine that drives the intranet as a knowledge management tool. To be of value to an organisation it must be up to date and of interest to employees. According to Kim (2003, p. 67) one of the biggest mistakes made by companies is to design the site around what they want employees to know, rather than what employees find useful. The content of the intranet depends on the needs of the employees and will therefore differ from organisation to organisation. However, Robinson (1999, p. 96) stresses that an intranet should at least have discussion forums and bulletin boards, since intranets are excellent media for sharing knowledge. He added that intranet content needs to be managed carefully so that it is:
always fresh and up to date; and
concentrates on sharing best practices and the "how was it done factor".
Jussilainen (1999, p. 113) also mentioned that it is vital that all information available on the intranet must be up to date and valid.
A number of authors (Jussilainen, 1999; Mears, 1999; Robinson, 1999, p. 96; Parks, cited in Yen and Chou, 2001) agree that the following information should be available on the intranet:
News: all matters concerning staff.
Directories: a list of contact details of personnel.
Annual budget: annual budget of the enterprise provided by the mother organisation.
Reports: feedback on activities, meetings, business and seminars.
Agreements: e.g. between the institution and vendors or partners.
Archives: repository of information stored and organised for easy retrieval.
Policies: principles of action adopted or proposed by the organisation.
Templates of letters: kept centrally and can be completed. Data can be sent through or a printout generated.
Management information: messages from top management can be made available on the intranet.
Training materials: training materials and policies can be linked using the actual electronic documents.
Electronic magazines: refers to magazines which are available online or stored in electronic format.
Forms: includes application forms for employment, experiential training, leave and conference attendance.
Discussion forums: tools which facilitate interactive communication via the intranet, allowing all users to contribute their knowledge.
Bulletin boards: an information source where notices, announcement, brief news and advertisement are placed.
Points of interest: includes suggestions, comments, recommendations as well as any matter of interest which employees need to raise.
The above-mentioned information items should be included on the intranet because they provide depth to the intranet. Furthermore, they can assist in sharing knowledge. Valuable records can be stored in the archives and retrieved when needed. Availability of such information can save time. It improves productivity because, for example, employees need not leave their offices to look for, e.g. leave forms; they can easily download the forms from their computers in their offices. Employees are also given the opportunity to share their point of interest with the rest of the colleagues.
Based on the foregoing discussion, the following factors will be taken into consideration in the comparison of the contents of the intranets of the three academic libraries in the study:
How does the content of the libraries intranet compare with the content items identified in the literature?
How relevant is the current content to the users of these intranets?
How up to date is the content?
Table III compares the content of the intranets of the three libraries with the items listed in the literature.
Although all three libraries said they were satisfied with the content of their intranets it is evident from Table III that the content of the intranets of all three libraries was very limited. libraries A and B respectively had only seven and four of the fifteen sources identified in the literature, while library C included only two of the identified sources on its intranet. None of the libraries complied with the minimum requirements for an intranet as stated by Robinson (1999, p. 96). As previously indicated, Robinson stresses that for the sharing of knowledge the intranet should at least have discussion forums and bulletin boards. Apart from policies that were available on the intranets of all three libraries, only the intranet of library A included items of value for effective decision making, i.e. the budget and management information.
Notwithstanding the fact that the intranets of libraries A and B did not cover the core information as identified in the literature, additional information items unique to the activities of libraries were included on the intranets of these two libraries (see Table IV). Library C basically only provided links to other sources such as databases and electronic journals. The only other additional information found available on the intranet of library C was information about library services which was possibly of more use to its users than to staff.
According to the guest books of the intranets, the staff of libraries A and B frequently visited the intranets while the staff of library C seldom visited its intranet even if they had been made aware of its existence.
During the interviews it was indicated that the content of the intranets of libraries A and B was updated weekly while the content of library C was outdated because it had been updated over the previous three months.
From the analysis of the content, the updating frequency and the site visits by the staff, it can be derived that libraries A and B had a reasonably effective intranet in operation. The fact that the intranets were visited frequently indicated that the content must be relevant to the basic needs of the staff. The relevancy was further reinforced by the regular updating of the information. Owing to the limited content and the lack of regular updating, the intranet of library C was not attractive or relevant to the staff who were supposed to use it. Therefore, it can be concluded that library C did not realise the potential of the intranet as a knowledge management tool.
Utilisation of intranet by staff for sharing organisational knowledge
An intranet can be used for many purposes and in many ways depending on the type of library. Weiner (1999, p. 66) argues that libraries use an intranet for the following purposes: to provide communication support and proprietary information for use by the internal library community. Knight (2002, p. 1) states that an intranet is used by libraries to improve communication and information dissemination.
In addition, it is indicated that a good intranet should be interactive. This implies that staff members should be able to add their knowledge to the intranet (Stevens, 1996, p. 76). All personnel linked to the intranet and authorised to do so, should be able to access it from any computer linked to the network (Mears, 1999, p. 27).
As indicated, all three libraries in the study utilised the intranet. However, the extent of use differed. Library A employees utilised the intranet for the following purposes:
to obtain information about other library sections;
to get basic information such as a roster for weekends, conferences announcements, marketing news and training materials;
to gain access to databases via the intranet;
to get the latest news about staff;
to download cataloguing and classification manuals;
to clarify some policies, e.g. acquisitions policy; and
to download application forms for conference attendance.
In library B employees utilised the intranet to:
obtain daily information such as procedures on how to perform certain tasks (e.g. how to register students from other institutions);
access agendas and minutes of the meetings;
download manuals (e.g. cataloguing manuals);
get passwords of different databases; and
retrieve annual reports on certain aspects (e.g. financial report).
As previously mentioned, staff of library C seldom made use of the intranet. When it was used, the sole purpose was to access databases and electronic journals and to obtain the library policy.
From the above it is clear that the use of the intranets in libraries A, B and C correlated with the types of information items available on these intranets. These items encourage or limit the use of the intranets. It can therefore be concluded that if the contents of an intranet can be brought in line with the content identified in the literature, an organisations's intranet will be used more intensively.
The intranets of the three libraries in the study were accessible to employees via computers linked to the network. However, not all employees were allowed to add their knowledge to the intranet themselves. The employees responsible for the intranets were the only persons who could add or remove information from the intranets. This impacted very negatively on the implementation of discussion forums and bulletin boards as well as the dissemination of information among staff.
Conclusion and recommendation
Knowledge management and the sharing of knowledge can help libraries with the improvement of the quality of their service as well as the creation and maintenance of a learning culture. Intranets have emerged as one of today's most effective ways of sharing information and knowledge in organisations. Intranets as a knowledge management tool provide people the opportunity to be more informed and to be able to make better and faster decisions.
The purpose of this article was to report on the extent to which academic libraries in South Africa utilised the intranet as a knowledge management tool. Although the three academic libraries interviewed cannot be regarded as representative of all the academic libraries in South Africa, it is clear that a strong awareness existed of the importance of knowledge management and the value of the intranet as a knowledge management tool. Further, although one can accept that the content and use of the intranet may differ from library to library, it can be derived from the research that academic libraries do not utilise the full potential of the intranet.
The content of an intranet is the engine that drives the intranet as a knowledge management tool. To be of value, the intranet must be up to date and of interest to and address the needs of the employees. Comparing the contents and the utilisation of the intranets of libraries A, B and C with the suggested content in the literature, it is clear that there is much room for improvement in all three libraries. Considering the suggested content, the advantages of the intranet as well as the interest and needs of the users, the intranet in academic libraries can be developed as a valuable tool for knowledge management and the sharing of knowledge.
Table I Definitions of knowledge management as provided by libraries A, B and C
Table II Values of knowledge management in libraries A, B and C
Table III Comparison of content of the intranets of the libraries A, B and C with items listed in the literature
Table IV Additional information on the intranets of the three libraries
References
Balcombe, J., 1999, "Getting out of the box: the role of the information professional in knowledge management", The Law Librarian, 31, 2, 91-4.
Blackmore, P., 1997, "The development of an intranet within a college of further and higher education", ASLIB Proceedings, 49, 3, 67-72.
Curry, A., Stancich, L., 2000, "The intranet: an intrinsic component of strategic information management?", International Journal of Information Management, 20, 249-68.
Dillon, M., 1999, "Knowledge management opportunities for libraries and universities", Library and Information Science Annual, 7, 3-11.
Du Rand, A., 2000, "How the corporate intranet can be utilised to support the knowledge management activities of an enterprise", South African Journal of Information Management, 2, 1, 1-16.
Fichter, D., 2001, "The intranet of your dreams and nightmares", Online, 25, 5, 3, 74.
Gartner Group, 2000, "Knowledge management", available at: www.stevedenning.com/what_is_knowledge_management.html.
Greenberg, I., 1998, "Knowledge sharing via intranet", Information week, 10, 703, 1-14.
Intracs, 2002, "Combining intranet business value with portal accessibility", available at: www.intracs.net/.
Jantz, R., 2001, "Knowledge management in academic libraries: special tools and processes to support information professionals", Reference Service Review, 29, 1, 33-9.
Jussilainen, M., 1999, "Intranet as a tool for knowledge management: the case of the Council of State in Finland", International Online Information Meeting, 23, 111-16.
Kim, G., 2003, "Ten steps to intranet success", Online, 27, 1, 66-9.
Knight, J., 2002, "Intranets and libraries", available at: www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue6/intranets/.
Malhotra, Y., 1998, "Knowledge management, knowledge organizations and knowledge workers: a view from the front lines", available at: www.brint.com/interview/maeil.htm.
Malhotra, Y., 2000, "Becoming knowledge powered: planning the transformation: an interview with Dave Pollard, Chief Knowledge Officer at Ernst & Young Canada", Information Resource Journal, January-March, 54-63.
Mears, A., 1999, "The use of the intranet within the SANDF", African Armed Forces, 2, 1, 24-8.
Perez, E., 1999, "Knowledge management in the library", Database Magazine, 22, 2, 75.
Powell, R.R., 1997, Basic Research Methods for Librarian, Ablex, Greenwich, CT.
Robinson, H., 1999, "The development of an intranet as a knowledge management tool", The Law Librarian, 30, 2, 95-7.
Schwarzwalder, R., 1999, "Librarians as knowledge management agents", Econtent, 22, 2, 63-5.
Shanhong, T., 2000, "Knowledge management in libraries in the 21st century", 66th IFLA Council and General Conference, Jerusalem, Israel, available at: http://ifla.inist.fr/IV/ifla66/papers/057-110e.htm.
Stevens, L., 1996, "The intranet: your newest training tool", Personnel Journal, 75, 7, 6-26.
Van Brakel, P., 2003, "Information portals: a strategy for importing external content", The Electronic Library, 21, 6, 591-600.
Weiner, S.T., 1999, "The university intranet", Econtent, 22, 2, 66-9.
Yen, D.C., Chou, D.C., 2001, "Intranets for organisational innovation", Information Management & Computer Security, 9, 2, 80-7.
Hamilton Mphidi is an Information Specialist in the Academic Information Service of the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He obtained a Library and Information Science degree and an honours degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Pretoria in 1999 and 2000 respectively. He is currently completing a Master's degree in Information Science at the University of Pretoria. His fields of interests are knowledge management, intranets in academic libraries and staff development training of library and information professionals. He can be contacted at: hphidi@ais.up.ac.za Retha Snyman lectures and undertakes research within the Department of Information Science at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She obtained a Master's degree in Information Science and a DLitt et Phil from the Rand Afrikaans University, South Africa. She gained many years of experience during her engagements with various information service organisations and academic institutions. She is responsible for the Information and Knowledge Management component of the M.IS (Information Science) (course work) degree as well as the M.IT degree of the School of Information Technology at the University of Pretoria. She is also the study leader of a number of Master's and doctoral students. She has presented papers at local and international conferences and she is also the author or co-author of various journal articles. She is at present involved in a number of research projects, inter alia strategies for information and knowledge management and the employment market for information and knowledge managers in South Africa. She can be contacted at: msnyman@postino.up.ac.za or rsnyman@lantic.net

Posted by: mary / 1:42 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Mason, D. and D. J. Pauleen (2003). "Perceptions of knowledge management: a qualitative analysis." Journal of Knowledge Management 7(4): 38-48.

This paper reports on the results of a qualitative study of middle managers' perceptions of knowledge management (KM) implementation in NZ organizations. Data were collected in a survey of 71 attendees of a KM presentation. The data were analyzed using qualitative coding principles. Two core issues were examined - barriers and drivers of KM. Subcategories under barriers were primarily concerned with factors internal to the organization such as organizational culture, leadership, and education. Drivers were mostly external to the organization and included competition, peer pressure, and the need for increased productivity. The results indicate that the way managers manage themselves and their organizations are perceived to be the biggest barriers to KM implementation.

Posted by: mary / 10:46 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Digital library research in the US:an overview with a kM perspective/Hsinchun Chen,Program:electronic library and information systems:V.38N.3,2004

Abstract
The provision of information resources and services is now readily available online via digital libraries furnished by a wide variety of information providers. Information is no longer just text and pictures, and is now available in a wide variety of multimedia formats. Digital libraries represent a new form of information technology in which content management, service delivery and social impact matter as much as technological advancement. In addition, for digital library researchers there is a need to transform information access to knowledge creation and management. Based on research in the USA in the Digital Libraries Initiative and the National Science Digital Library programmes, a review is provided of significant past and emerging digital library research activities, and research based on new knowledge management concepts and technologies is suggested.


Some researchers and practitioners believe that business, technology and society in general are in a true "Digital Renaissance" (Fiorina, 2000). As Hewlett Packard (HP) chief executive officer, Fiorina, put it:
Like the first Renaissance, which was the liberation of the inventive imagination, the Digital Renaissance is about the empowerment of the individual and the consumer. And if we can bridge the gap between business, science, and government so that we can all understand and foster the Digital Renaissance then we have a chance to make this second Renaissance truly global and grassroots.
Using HP as an example, she suggested three emerging forces in the technology and business landscape:
information appliances covering anything with a chip inside able to connect to the Internet;
always-on IT infrastructure that needs to be as available and reliable as tap water and electricity; and
e-services that will take any process or any asset that can be digitised and deliver it over the Web.
In spite of such a positive outlook, many researchers and policy makers caution against the potential pitfalls of technology innovation without careful policy considerations in areas such as privacy/security, cryptography and export, trademarks, domain names and copyright issues, regulatory framework, taxation, liability and dispute resolution, censorship, and digital signatures and certificates, to name but a few outlined by Cerf (2002) in a presentation on digital government and the Internet. While business and technology are in a true Digital Renaissance, we cannot afford to have our whole approach to policy-making remain rooted in the industrial, medieval world.
The Internet offers a tremendous opportunity for many different traditional institutions such as libraries, governments, and businesses to deliver better their content and services and interact with their constituents - citizens, patrons, businesses, and other government partners. In addition to providing information, communication, and transaction services, exciting and innovative transformation could occur with new technologies and practices. Data and information can begin to become knowledge assets. Digital library (e-library), digital government (e-government), and e-commerce research have many common threads, yet each faces some unique challenges and opportunities.
The location and provision of information services has changed dramatically over the last ten years. There is no need to leave the home or office to locate and access information now readily available online via digital gateways furnished by a wide variety of information providers including libraries, electronic publishers, businesses, organisations and individuals. Information access is no longer restricted to what is physically available in the nearest library. It is electronically accessible from a wide variety of globally distributed information repositories.
Information is no longer simply text and pictures. It is available electronically in a wide variety of formats, many of which are large, complex (i.e. video and audio) and often integrated (i.e. multimedia). This increased variety of information allows one to take virtual tours of museums, historical sites and natural wonders, attend virtual concerts and theatre performances, watch a variety of movies, and read, view or listen to books, articles, lectures and music, all through digital libraries.
The Web has made access to the Internet part of everyday life, and over the past few years, the primary interface to the Web has evolved from browsing to searching. Millions of people all over the world perform Web searches every day. But the commercial technology of searching large collections has remained largely unchanged from its roots in US government-sponsored research projects of the 1960s. This public awareness of the Web as a critical infrastructure in the 1990s has caused a new revolution in the technologies for information and knowledge management in digital libraries.
Digital libraries represent a form of information technology in which social impact matters as much as technological advancement. It is hard to evaluate a new technology, such as digital libraries, in the absence of real users and large collections. The best way to develop effective new systems and services is in multi-year large-scale research projects that use real-world electronic test beds for actual users and aim at developing new, comprehensive, and user-friendly technologies for digital libraries. Typically, these test bed projects should also examine the broad social, economic, legal, ethical and cross-cultural contexts and impacts of digital library development.
Knowledge exists in forms such as instincts, ideas, rules and procedures that guide actions and decisions. This can be represented in tabular form, as shown in Table II as a data, information and knowledge pyramid.

The concept of knowledge has become prevalent in many disciplines and business practices. For example, information scientists consider taxonomies, subject headings, and classification schemes as representations of knowledge. Artificial intelligence researchers have long been seeking such ways to represent human knowledge as semantic nets, logic, production systems and frames. Consulting firms have also been actively promoting practices and methodologies to capture corporate knowledge assets and organisational memory. Since the 1990s, knowledge management has become a popular term that appears in many applications, from digital libraries to search engines, and from data mining to text mining.

The Internet delivers library, business, and government content and services with different levels of interaction (Elmagarmid and McIver, 2001). Digital libraries, digital government (or e-government) and e-commerce share many common challenges and opportunities.
At the lowest level, library, government or business "information" is created, categorised and indexed and delivered to its target audiences through the Internet. Digital library services exhibit this characteristic most strongly. Metadata, data consolidation, content quality and system interfaces are the most critical issues under consideration. Most early government-to-citizen (G2C) and government-to-business (G2B) services also belong to this category, in which governments merely act as information providers and do not provide a two-way communication channel connecting them with citizens or businesses. Many business portals (business-to-citizen (B2C)) also serve to convey their product and service information through the Web. For digital government and e-commerce researchers and practitioners, there is much to learn from the content creation, management, organisation, searching and analysis experience of digital library researchers.
At the next level, e-services support two-way "communication", whereby patrons, customers or citizens can communicate their needs or requests through Web forms, e-mail or other Internet media. Many early B2C, G2C and G2B applications quickly evolved into providers of such communication services by adding simple Web-based groupware functionalities such as Web forums, e-mail, bulletin boards, chat rooms, etc. Computer-supported collaborative systems (or groupware) and recommender systems can significantly improve communication services for all digital library, digital government and e-commerce applications. Some of these systems have only begun to emerge recently. We believe groupware-based technologies have a tremendous potential for helping digital library, government and e-commerce researchers and practitioners better understand their targeted customers or citizens and deliver more customised services.
At the third level, "transaction" services for patrons, citizens and businesses are supported. Many businesses support transactions among their suppliers (business-to-business (B2B)) or customers (B2C) through enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM) and customer relationship management systems. Various government departments or branches also use the Internet for transactions among themselves. Many of the more advanced G2C, G2B and government-to-government (G2G) digital government applications also belong to this category. Income tax filing, withholding and returns (for citizens and businesses), municipal service requests and tracking, business licence applications and payments, etc. constitute e-government transactions that can be conducted over the Internet. E-commerce researchers and practitioners clearly have the most experience in this area. Most e-consumer services provide seamless (e.g. "one-click" service) e-transactions. Similarly, most within-business (e.g. ERP-type) and between-business (e.g. SCM-type) e-commerce enterprise systems and services support complete process integration and transactions. However, significant adaptation needs to be done before such e-commerce systems become practical and cost-effective for other non-commercial applications.
At the fourth and highest level, we believe there is an opportunity for the "transformation" of practices and services delivered by libraries, government agencies and businesses. Digital libraries have allowed traditional libraries to re-examine their content management and service delivery assumptions and practices. Many leading information and library science departments are also re-structuring their curriculum to take advantage of the abundant opportunities presented to the new generation of Internet information specialists. Business consulting professionals are creating new methodologies and best practices to take advantage of the new business opportunities. E-voting and e-politics are examples of e-government applications that may significantly alter the conducting of democratic voting and political processes. In the law enforcement and litigation support area, new database and data mining technologies could become the catalyst for encouraging information sharing, supporting collaboration and investigation among police departments, corrections offices, social services and courts (Hauck and Chen, 1999). The information-communication-transaction-transformation pyramid is shown in tabular form in Table III.
By transforming enterprise-specific data and information into knowledge that could be used to support fundamental transformation of processes and practices, we believe Internet-enabled IT and knowledge management could become the catalyst for innovation in digital libraries, and possibly also for digital government and e-commerce.
We believe information technologies such as the Internet, the Web, data mining, knowledge portals, recommender systems and visualisation are best considered as the "catalysts" for creating a human-driven, system-assisted transformation process rather than as "silver bullets" for solving an institution's basic problems. IT cannot be effective if it is not implemented and utilised properly by its owners and users, and without considering its larger organisational and social context. Over the past decade, we have seen many excellent examples of fundamental transformations occurring in many organisations with the help of new IT deployment, from e-commerce to digital libraries. We hope that IT professionals and information science practitioners will embrace the IT challenges (and the associated opportunities) and consider leading activities in "trailblazing a path towards knowledge and transformation" in their own organisations.

Posted by: mary / 3:47 PM 0 comments

Thursday, November 04, 2004

Knowledge management and reference services/Smiti Gandhi

Many corporations are embracing knowledge management (KM) to capture the intellectual capital of their employees. This article focuses on KM applications for reference work in libraries. It defines key concepts of KM, establishes a need for KM for reference services, and reviews various KM initiatives for reference services.
Knowledge management (KM) emerged as a business trend in the 1990s and continues to evolve a decade later. Its fundamental premise is that enormous amounts of knowledge about customers, processes, products, and services exist at all levels of an organization, and if this cumulative knowledge can be captured and communicated, it can help organizations become more productive, effective, and successful.1 Eighty percent of the world's largest companies are engaging in KM.2 Corporations such as Ford, Eastman Kodak, Chevron, Digital Equipment Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, Chrysler, Amoco, Dow, Texas Instruments, Gartner Group, and Arthur Andersen are experimenting with, and benefiting from, KM initiatives.3 Organizational “knowledge repositories” such as Andersen's Knowledge Exchange, Booz, Allen & Hamilton's Knowledge Online, CAP Gemini's Knowledge Galaxy, Ernst & Young's Center for Business Knowledge, and Monsanto's Knowledge Management Architecture enable information sharing among employees and facilitate access to company-wide information.4 In 2004, the market for KM tools is expected to reach US$9.8 billion.
In recent years, KM has also become visible on the radar screens of libraries. Library and information science publications are increasingly, including KM articles, and professional associations such as the Special Libraries Association and American Society for Information Science are offering publications, seminars, and conferences on KM.6 At the core of the KM discourse in library and information science is the belief that since organization of knowledge has been the strong suite of librarians, they must not only engage in, but also actively spearhead, KM initiatives.
Definitions of KM abound. Simply defined, KM is “organizing to know.”7 It is a concerted effort to capture critical knowledge, share information within an organization, and capitalize on the collective organizational memory to improve decision making, enhance productivity, and promote innovation. It “involves capturing the knowledge, the wisdom, the added value experiences of individuals within an organization, making it easy to find again, and in so doing preserving it as an organizational asset.”8 KM is an attempt “to turn employee's knowledge (human capital) into a shared, firmwide asset (structural intellectual capital).”9
The goal of KM is to create a learning and sharing organization by linking together and creating a flow between the buckets of information generated by people in different parts of the company—finance, operations, competitive intelligence, etc.10 Most people and organizations engage in KM for one or more of the following reasons:
• enhance collaboration;
• improve productivity;
• enable and encourage innovation;
• cope with information overload and deliver only the essentials;
• facilitate the flow of appropriate knowledge from providers to receivers without the constraints of time and space;
• facilitate information sharing among employees and prevent them from having to reinvent the wheel every time;
• capture and record the knowledge of employees before they leave the company, ensuring that valuable expertise does not leave when an employee leaves;
• increase an organization's awareness of the gaps in its knowledge;
• help companies stay competitive by increasing their awareness of strategies, products, and best practices of their competitors; and
• improve customer service.11

KM has two parts: first, the management of data and information; and second, the management of individuals who possess specific expertise, abilities, or knowledge
12 These two parts—content and people—are integrated with the help of specific processes and technology to facilitate KM.13 Benchmarking, capturing best practices, creating learning organizations, developing learning communities, data mining, fostering culture change, improving workflow, and systematically gathering competitive and business intelligence are just few of the tools, practices, interventions, and infrastructure-based approaches organizations have embraced to manage knowledge and information.14
The two constituent terms of KM—“knowledge” and “management”—are integrated with the help of its two enablers—technology and corporate culture to harness the collective memory of organizations. To understand KM, it is vital to understand the following:
Data are the raw materials—the observations, facts, or figures—from which information is obtained. Typical examples of data include statistics, lists of items, and lists of names and addresses.16 Statistics about the number of earthquakes worldwide, or the number of people who had the flu, or the number of people hurt on the job every year, are all data. Similarly, lists of all the materials that a library has in its collection, as well as lists of the names and addresses of library staff or patrons, are also data. Each library collects a tremendous amount of data every day about the items patrons check-out. During a typical check-out transaction, a library system may collect the following data elements: the name, address, and phone number of the patron, number of library materials checked out, the format of materials checked out (books, videos, etc.), titles of materials checked out, fines if any on the account, etc. Data itself are relatively devoid of context. For example, the name of a particular book is the name of a book regardless of whether it appears in the library's online public access catalog (OPAC), a magazine article, a publisher's catalog, or on an advertising bulletin.
When data are organized in a logical, cohesive format for a specific purpose, it becomes information. So, data about earthquakes that occurred in the United States and were above 6.5 on the Richter scale will be considered information. Similarly, if one were to extract data about how many people between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five had the flu, or how many people actually died of job-related injuries, it would become information. Examples of information in the library environment could include a list of all the materials that were added to the OPAC in the last three months; a bibliography of all the materials used to answer a specific reference question; a list of patrons who checked out more than five books in a certain time period; or a list of the most frequently checked out books.
Data are also converted to information when it is placed in a meaningful context and helps in understanding the relationships between different data elements. For example, a five-year comparison of the statistical data about the number of earthquakes, incidences of the flu, or on-the-job injuries will provide information about whether the numbers went up or down. Similarly, a comparison of the number of items listed in a library's OPAC for each of the past five years will yield information about whether the collection is growing or not. By comparing check-out transaction lists at a particular library, it is possible to obtain information about how many items in various formats were checked out during a specific time frame.

Knowledge is stage three in the four-stage continuum from data to wisdom. When information is analyzed, processed, and placed in context, it becomes knowledge. Knowledge involves making inferences and recognizing unusual patterns, hidden trends, and exceptions in the data and information.17 It involves creating a mental model of the pattern or trend that can be applied with a degree of reliability and predictability in a particular context.18 Knowledge is an elusive and complex process that requires an individual to make value judgments based on prior experiences and understanding of the patterns.19 Based on this prior experience and understanding, an individual may have formulated certain if–then rules which can be applied with a degree of predictability to similar situations.
For example, a knowledgeable geologist may look at the information on earthquakes and be able to discern the conditions and factors that make certain geographic areas more prone to strong earthquakes. Similarly, a knowledgeable health worker may look at the information related to the incidence of flu in eighteen- to thirty-five-year-olds and deduce that eighteen- to thirty-five-year-olds who have children or work closely with children are more likely to catch the flu. At a library, a knowledgeable librarian may observe that all new materials added to the library in the past six months on authors like Edgar Allan Poe, Amy Tan, Alice Walker, and Nathaniel Hawthorne not only get checked out right away but constantly remain checked out. Or patrons who check-out more than five books are also the heaviest interlibrary loan users. Or students who attend formal library instruction or orientation sessions as part of the curriculum are more likely and willing to use electronic databases and ask librarians for help.

When knowledge is applied to make and improve decisions, processes, and productivity, or to yield profits, it is transformed into wisdom. Wisdom requires individuals to be willing and able to absorb information, evaluate, and reflect on that information, decide whether or not to use that information for the specific problem or situation, and understand why they made that decision.20 To be wise, individuals must not only possess knowledge, but must also have a thorough understanding of the principles embodied within that knowledge.21 A health worker who discovers the relationship between the incidence of flu among eighteen- and thirty-five-year-olds and people who work with children may decide to mount a hygiene campaign targeted at eighteen- to thirty-five-year-olds who work with children. Or a librarian who discovers that students who attend library orientation sessions also use the library more frequently may decide to approach administration and prepare a plan so that all incoming freshmen students are required to take library orientation sessions.
In summary, data, information, knowledge, and wisdom are four stages along the information continuum. Data are devoid of context and consist of observations, facts, or figures from which information is obtained. When data are organized for a specific purpose and placed in context, it becomes information. When information is analyzed to reveal unusual patterns or hidden trends, it is transformed into knowledge; and when knowledge is applied to real life situations to make decisions, it becomes wisdom.

KM has four critical components—knowledge, management, IT, and corporate culture. Each one of these components plays a significant role in KM and can have a tremendous impact on its success or failure.

Addleson states, “People have always had knowledge and always used it.”22 But what exactly is knowledge? Knowledge is the “knowing” embedded in people's experiences, skills, expertise, competencies, capabilities, talents, thoughts, ideas, ways of working, intuitions, and imaginations that manifests itself in the form of the tangible artifacts, work processes, and routines in an organization.23
There are two principal kinds of knowledge—explicit, and tacit or implicit. Explicit knowledge is knowledge that has been “codified” or “fixed in some format,” i.e., explained, recorded, or documented, and therefore can be shared easily with users. Explicit knowledge may be codified or “fixed” in the form of manuals, written procedures, business records, magazine, or journal articles, books, Web pages, databases, intranets, e-mails, notes, graphic representations, or audio and visual materials. When knowledge is “fixed” or codified, a knowledge artifact is created, and it is this knowledge artifact that can be managed.24

Tacit or implicit knowledge is the personal, unarticulated, unexpressed knowledge possessed by an individual. It is “the stuff between people's ears—the know-how, the little tricks, the intuition, the judgment, the stuff that makes things work.”25 Simply put, it is the knowledge and expertise that a person has gained over the years through experience, by interacting with others, and through trial and error. This knowledge resides only in a person's head or in his personal notes, computer files, or desk drawers. It has never been completely articulated, recorded, documented, or written down in a format understandable to people other than the individual himself. It is estimated that 80 percent of the most important knowledge is tacit knowledge.26
A reference librarian, for example, may possess a great deal of tacit knowledge about how to answer difficult reference questions such as what is in a love bug that causes paint to discolor/peel on a car; or the size of the egg of a tapeworm; or the name of the agency that can help to find matches for single, missing shoes. However, this knowledge is accessible to others only if the reference librarian chooses to share it with her colleagues through formal and informal conversations, or through detailed notes, an article, or book about the process involved and the best sources used. Similarly, standard reference sources such as the Statistical Abstract of the United States or Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism are available to any library user. However, knowing when and how to use these resources to answer specific reference questions is tacit knowledge that reference librarians possess.
Almost all activities people engage in require some combination of explicit and tacit knowledge. For effective KM, it is essential to capture both tacit and explicit knowledge.
The real challenge of KM lies in being able to identify and capture tacit knowledge so that it can be retrieved when needed. However, while explicit knowledge is easy to record and transfer, tacit knowledge is difficult to identify, capture, and transmit. Therefore, most organizations concentrate on managing the 20 percent of the explicit knowledge available, leaving it to coincidence that tacit knowledge is used.27
Although converting tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge is difficult, it is not impossible. Tacit knowledge is generally transmitted in the form of stories about best practices, which are often documented and put on a network and are subsequently used by other employees to learn and improve processes.28 At PayMaxx, the CEO successfully converted his employees' tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge by asking all employees to write down step-by-step directions for everything they did, thus forcing them to record knowledge they had internalized as experience or memory. This helped to create detailed road maps of all processes for colleagues and successors and even unearthed weaknesses that needed to be addressed.29

For KM projects to be successful, it is important to differentiate between information and knowledge. Not all information is knowledge. Information cannot become knowledge until it is analyzed and acted upon, and it will only be acted upon in the right organizational culture.30 While most organizations and employees suffer from information overload, they do not suffer from knowledge overload. On the contrary, there is a dearth of knowledge. One of the biggest challenges of KM lies in being able to make sense of the mountains of information, sifting out valuable information, and sharing it.

In KM, the principal goal is to manage explicit and tacit knowledge within an organization. To manage explicit knowledge, organizations must
• generate, create, or acquire knowledge;
• codify and organize knowledge to facilitate easy access;
• make knowledge available to others through communication or publications;
• facilitate access to, and retrieval of, knowledge; and
• use and apply knowledge to solve problems, support decisions, improve performance, coach, and analyze situations and processes to support business activities.32
Tacit knowledge can be managed in two ways. It can be converted to explicit knowledge, through written communications, interviews, and oral histories. Organizations can also create “knowledge communities” or “communities of practice” to transfer tacit knowledge through face-to-face interaction, verbal communication and dialogue, hands-on instruction, interactive problem solving, networking, coaching, mentoring, training, and professional development opportunities. In the traditional reference environment, tacit knowledge is usually transferred through knowledge communities or communities of practice.
IT can serve as a powerful enabler of, and provide effective and efficient tools for all facets of KM including capturing, sharing, and applying knowledge.33 The ability of IT applications to search, index, collate, archive, and transmit information can greatly facilitate and improve information collection, organization, classification, and dissemination.34 Technologies such as relational database management systems, document management systems, the Internet, intranets, search engines, workflow tools, performance support systems, decision support systems (DSSs), data mining, data warehousing, e-mail, video-conferencing, bulletin boards, news groups, and discussion boards can play a pivotal role in facilitating the management of knowledge. However, IT in itself is not the “heart” of KM and a project is not a KM project simply because it utilizes or incorporates the latest IT applications.35 IT only plays a supporting role in KM; it alone does not provide knowledge. While IT can assist people in locating information, people have to determine whether that information is appropriate and relevant to their particular need.36 They have to analyze, interpret, understand, and place that information in context for it to be converted to knowledge.

One of the most important enablers of KM is an “open” corporate culture that encourages people to interact with each other, share ideas, experiences, and viewpoints and be heard without fear of reprisals.37 The absence of a corporate culture that encourages collaboration, trust, knowledge sharing, listening, learning, and creativity can be a major barrier in developing and implementing a successful KM project. Davenport et al. assert, “if the cultural soil is not fertile for a knowledge project, no amount of technology, knowledge content, or good project management practices will make the effort successful.”38 Jerry Junkins, the late CEO of Texas Instruments said, “Transferring best practices is not like transplanting a begonia. It's more like an organ transplant, often rejected by the immune system as “not me!” In companies, the immune system is the culture, and if the culture is not receptive, best practices, however good, will be rejected.”39

Without the wholehearted commitment of top-level management, the KM initiative will flounder and ultimately perish. Management support must be forthcoming in fiscal, personnel, and technical resources, as well as with adequate training opportunities and reward systems. Goman suggests KM initiatives often fail because “All too often team leaders withhold information and dole it out on a ‘needs to know’ basis, executives ask for collaborative input when what they really want is a ‘rubber stamp’ for decisions already made, and people are not sharing what they know due to a variety of personal and organizational inhibitors.”40
The success of KM projects will depend on the collaboration and knowledge sharing between all participants, and all participants must be actively engaged in collecting and contributing content to the projects. However, if employees are penalized instead of being rewarded for sharing their knowledge, they will not contribute to the KM effort. Goman, O'dell, and Grayson suggest that people are often reluctant to share their knowledge because they may:
• be too busy;
• not wish to take on additional responsibilities that come with sharing;
• be assigned to projects that do not utilize their talents or aptitudes;
• feel that sharing knowledge will hinder their personal success;
• feel outranked and intimidated in team discussions and think they have nothing to contribute;
• not trust others with their knowledge or that they will reciprocate by sharing their knowledge;
• feel threatened and “punished” for contributing if their opinions are ridiculed, criticized, or ignored; or
• work for managers and decision makers who withhold information from them.41

Each of the four components of KM—knowledge, management, IT, and corporate culture—plays a vital role in any KM initiative and has the potential to significantly impact its success. Knowledge is the explicit and tacit know-how that people acquire through personal experience. Successful KM initiatives try to manage this explicit and tacit knowledge by recording or codifying it or transferring it through knowledge communities or communities of practice. IT serves as a tool to help with capturing, organizing, sharing, and applying knowledge. An open corporate culture that encourages sharing of ideas and best practices and the transfer of knowledge is a critical enabler of KM.

Organizations have utilized computers to manage data and information since the 1950s. In libraries, computers have been used primarily to automate and efficiently manage processes such as circulation, cataloging, serials, acquisitions, interlibrary loans, and bibliographic information retrieval. However, in the 1990s, dramatic hardware and software improvements significantly enhanced the ability of computers to store, manage, manipulate, and provide access to data and information. These improved capabilities of computers have spurred their use for KM activities in organizations.

Data management systems were first used in libraries for automating circulation and serial records, cataloging, indexing, interlibrary loans, and assisting in the retrieval of bibliographic information. According to a Special Libraries Association survey, by 1966, data processing equipment was being used by 209 libraries, primarily for serials management and acquisitions. In addition, 131 libraries were using data processing systems for reference or document retrieval.43 By the late 1960s, a number of libraries had also begun to develop first-generation OPACs to enhance bibliographic information retrieval. These early OPACs were “known item” finding tools that provided few access points (typically only author, title, and control number) to short nonstandard bibliographic records.”44 Since these first-generation OPACs had limited functionality, and did not assist users in discerning patterns or relationships between the various data elements, they are best characterized as data management systems.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the introduction of database management technology provided a major impetus to information management. Relational database management systems (DBMSs) enhanced the functionality of TPSs and permitted users to rearrange and present data and information in new and creative ways. With this flexibility, users were able to discover correlations between data elements. For example, users could discover relationships between sales of specific products and the times of the year.45
DBMSs found several information management applications in libraries. In the 1970s and 1980s, they led to the development of second-generation OPACs, such as the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign's OPAC, with greatly enhanced bibliographic information retrieval and data manipulation capabilities. Users could search not only by author and title, but could also search by subject headings, keywords, Boolean operators, and cross references. In addition, they could restrict searches to specified record fields and limit results by date, language, place of publication, etc.46 The flexibility of picking and choosing fields to search by enabled users to combine and rearrange data elements in various permutations and combinations, and thus discover correlations between data elements.

During these two decades, a number of information management and retrieval systems for improving access to periodicals, newspapers, and other nonbook sources were also developed. Online bibliographic databases, indexing and abstracting databases, and full-text databases were introduced and began proliferating. Databases and online retrieval services such as DIALOG, BRS, OCLC, WILSONLINE, VU/TEXT, MEDLINE, Chemical Abstracts Online (CAS), InfoTrac, Lexis, Nexis, ERIC, NTIS, Dun's Market Identifiers, AGRICOLA, and the electronic edition of the Academic American Encyclopedia made their debut and began to permeate reference work.47

In the 1990s, the number of online databases containing bibliographic citations, indexes, abstracts, and full-text expanded exponentially. The number of online databases grew from 40 in 1972 to 300 in 1979; 2800 in 1987; 5300 in 1994; and to as many as 12,000 in 2001.48 This phenomenal growth led to online databases becoming an integral part of reference services in libraries. In addition to online databases, the World Wide Web also became a key component of reference work in the 1990s.

Even though OPACs, online databases, and the World Wide Web have proliferated tremendously over the last several decades and have become an integral part of reference work in libraries, they are still essentially information management systems. IT applications in libraries have simply changed the way that libraries package, store, and provide access to information. Instead of card catalogs, libraries now provide access to their holdings through OPACs; instead of print journals, newspapers, directories, and encyclopedias, libraries provide access to this information through online databases and World Wide Web gateway sites. However, OPACs, online databases, and the World Wide Web still deal with the collection, codification, classification, and organization of information. These processes increase the user's access to information but do not provide any value-added or special insights to the user. They do not help a user make inferences, recognize unusual patterns, hidden trends, or exceptions in the data and information they find. As Borgman states, “Information Retrieval systems are little more than a set of elaborate matching routines performed very quickly on a high speed computer; the system cannot ‘think’ in the same manner that humans can.”49
For example, a user searching a library's OPAC may find a list of fifty books on nuclear proliferation in a matter of seconds. However, it is up to the user or the librarian to determine which is the best book for his particular information need. Similarly, a user may find lots of full-text articles in WilsonSelect or Encyclopedia Britannica Online on a particular topic, but the online databases do not provide any knowledge to the user as to which article is the best or which database would be the most appropriate for his particular information need. Knowledge about best sources or best practices is tacit knowledge that librarians may have acquired through experience, but it is not transmitted to users through information management systems like the OPACs, online databases, and the World Wide Web.


KM is not merely information collection, organization, presentation, storage, and retrieval. While information and data management are important components of KM, KM differs from information and data management due to its emphasis on collaborative learning, capture of tacit knowledge, and value-add obtained through best practices and data mining.50 Early IT applications for KM took the form of decision support systems (DSSs) and expert systems (ESs). The goal of these systems was to utilize IT applications to either improve human decision making or replace it entirely. As KM evolved, it was recognized that human decision making is a form of individual expertise and cannot be supplemented or replaced by IT.51 This realization led to a quantum shift to “expertise-centered management.”52 The focus of KM shifted from trying to supplement or replace human expertise to trying to encourage and facilitate its sharing.53
Unlike data management and information management systems, KM does not have a specific computer or IT associated with it.54 KM may utilize one or more of a host of IT applications such as data warehousing, data mining, enterprise information portals, document management systems, groupware, DSSs, intranets, Lotus notes, search engines, e-mail, content management systems, and collaborative applications. Of these, data mining applications perhaps have the greatest potential for KM since they can help users identify unusual patterns or hidden trends in the data that are not otherwise apparent.55
In summary, data management, information management, and KM are interrelated but distinct operations.
...data management, information management, and KM are interrelated but distinct operations
Data management systems automate manual, repetitive processes related to daily transactions within an organization and provide limited types of information. Information management systems allow users to manipulate and rearrange the data to a certain degree and thereby help them discover correlations between data elements. Information management is inextricably integrated into today's libraries in the form of OPACs, online databases, and the World Wide Web. Even though data management and information management may be important components of KM, the ultimate objective of KM systems is to promote collaborative learning and sharing within organizations.
KM is not a linear, static process. On the contrary, it is a dynamic, cyclical process that requires employees to continuously engage with information, acquire new knowledge, apply it to improve decisions, create new information and knowledge in the process, apply that new knowledge to new situations, and so on.56 Three things are central to the KM process. First, people have to possess knowledge; second, they have to be willing to use that knowledge; and third, they have to have the ability and wisdom to know when to apply or use that knowledge.57 The KM process consists of the following steps:

Knowledge acquisition:
The basic premise of KM rests on attempting to capture and codify the explicit and tacit knowledge of employees. If employees do not possess knowledge, there will be no need for KM. Therefore, the first step in the KM process is knowledge acquisition by employees.

Knowledge inventory
An organization cannot manage information or knowledge that it does not know about. Therefore, an organization engaging in KM must first take a “knowledge inventory” and explicitly tabulate its knowledge assets.58 It does not need to create an inventory of all its knowledge, but focus on identifying knowledge that is critical, highly valuable, reliable, and useful to the organization or business unit such as the following:
• knowledge of a specific job or task, e.g., how to do reference work;
• a list of subject or task level experts who have the best qualifications, latest training, or expertise to best perform certain jobs/tasks;
• a list of experts who can solve particular types of problems that have the potential to reoccur;
• knowledge of historical precedents—have certain processes been tried before and what was their outcome;
• knowledge of customers and competitors; and
• knowledge about creating successful project teams—knowing who has the skill sets for similar projects and has worked together successfully in the past.59

Link knowledge to corporate strategy
The third step in the KM process is to link the knowledge inventory to key business processes that drive corporate strategy or performance. Key business processes may include product development, service enhancement, customer management, sales, etc.60 This step will assist in discerning the most critical and vital knowledge elements required for key business processes and will help to filter out knowledge that is only peripheral or tangentially important. Based on this step, the knowledge inventory can be refined to create a hierarchical representation of critical and peripheral data elements.
Knowledge map
The fourth step in the KM process is to create a knowledge map. This involves capturing the key inputs and outputs of knowledge. Key inputs may include specific data and information, verbal or written communications, and other shared explicit and tacit knowledge such as best practices. Key outputs may be internal documents, reports, research papers, procedures, internal benchmarks, and best practices.
Knowledge collection and organization
The fifth step in the KM process focuses on developing a process to systematically capture, record, and organize the key inputs and outputs of knowledge and to find, collect, and organize internal knowledge and best practices.
Knowledge access and dissemination
The collection and organization of best practices and other knowledge are meaningless if users do not have access to it when they need it. Therefore, the sixth step in the KM process focuses on creating a mechanism to improve access to this knowledge so that it can be retrieved, disseminated, shared, understood, and used repeatedly.
Knowledge application
As users apply best practices to new situations to improve performance, they will adapt, refine, and modify those practices and create new best practices. The final step in the KM process involves capturing these new best practices and adding them to the KM application so that they can be made available to users in the future.61
To summarize, KM is a dynamic, cyclical process that moves through several stages. Employees acquire knowledge in the knowledge acquisition phase. The organization tabulates its knowledge assets and creates a knowledge inventory. This knowledge inventory is linked to organizational strategy. Subsequently, key inputs and outputs of the knowledge are mapped, systematically collected, and organized. A process is developed for providing access to and disseminating the knowledge and best practices collected. Users access and apply this knowledge to improve performance and generate new knowledge in the process, which is collected and so on. Most KM projects do not try to manage all the knowledge that exists within an organization. A majority of KM projects focus on managing the knowledge embodied within a single business unit, area, or domain.62 The following sections of this paper will focus on the application of KM to reference services in libraries.

KM and reference services—needs analysis
Euster states, “The glory of libraries lies in their ability to gather together new and established information and knowledge, and to maintain them in an organized fashion that is stable and reliable.”63 Libraries have fulfilled this mission remarkably well and have become vast repositories of information. In the process, they have generated a considerable amount of information and knowledge about internal operations and processes, including reference services. Reference librarians have long recognized the need to capture, codify, record, and “fix” the collective knowledge of their colleagues in some sort of explicit knowledge artifact. This need stems from three principal realities of reference work:
• Reference librarians in libraries across the United States and the world answer thousands of questions every day.
• Reference librarians manage to answer only 50–60 percent of the questions correctly; therefore, there is immense potential to improve services and learn from each other by sharing correct answers.
• It has long been recognized that librarians cannot remember all sources.
Reference librarians answer tens of thousands of questions every day. In some library systems librarians may respond to ten million plus questions per year.64 To answer these thousands of questions, reference librarians consult a vast number of information resources in a variety of formats such as reference books, periodicals, pamphlets, newspapers, circulating books, vertical files, picture files, outside sources, the library catalog, electronic databases, and the Internet.
In the process of helping users locate relevant information, librarians have amassed enormous amounts of tacit knowledge about print, electronic, and community resources. They have internalized knowledge about resources and tools most appropriate for each query, as well as the reference process used to find these resources. However, it is virtually impossible for any single reference librarian to have complete recall of all the materials in his or her library collection, keep up with the constant flow of new materials, and consistently remember the best sources for answering specific reference questions.65
O'Dell suggests, “The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where and how to find it—just in time.”66 Reference librarians know where and how to find information when it's needed only about half the time. This is reflected in the results of more than forty unobtrusive surveys of ready reference questions in public and academic libraries in the United States, England, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Germany, which reveal that reference librarians managed to provide correct answers to only about 50–60 percent of these questions.67
While no single librarian can consistently keep track of or remember the best sources of information for all reference questions asked, collectively reference librarians possess tremendous knowledge about various reference processes and information sources to answer a multitude of queries. KM systems are needed to tap into this “communal knowledge” of librarians.
KM systems are needed to tap into this “communal knowledge” of librarians
Waters, in an article about the National Agricultural Library's (NAL) attempts at developing a “computerized expert system” to assist users in obtaining answers to questions on agricultural topics, wrote:
“No single librarian is capable of remembering the best sources for locating answers to all the questions asked at a typical library reference desk. Tools are needed to assist reference librarians in their work. These tools could aid end users themselves in locating either appropriate information sources or the specific answers to their questions without professional assistance. An expert system that serves as such a tool could free librarians to handle complex queries requiring in-depth effort and relieve them of the more ready reference and directional questions. It could also be used to stem ‘brain drain’ by acquiring and making available the special and local knowledge of reference librarians who are leaving the library.”68
In addition to serving as buffers against the imperfect memories of librarians, allowing librarians to focus on more complex queries, and stemming brain drain, KM systems for reference work also have several other benefits. Such systems can help reference librarians to
• systematically collect, organize, and record the explicit and tacit knowledge of expert reference librarians;
• quickly and efficiently locate answers to frequently asked questions, or questions that are difficult and time consuming to answer;
• improve decisions about the best reference sources to consult for answering a particular question;
• improve knowledge sharing;
• acquire in-depth knowledge of their library's collection;
• understand the types of questions they get asked most often and the various information resources available in their library to answer those questions;
• improve collection development—determine which questions they do not have sufficient resources on, and address gaps in their library collection; and
• improve patron access to information. A KM system users can search themselves can guide them to appropriate resources or specific answers without assistance from a librarian.
The high volume of questions reference librarians deal with daily, an average success rate in answering reference questions correctly, and the limitations of the human memory, collectively establish a firm need for reference librarians to adopt collaborative sharing and learning initiatives such as KM. Corporate and academic libraries are beginning to recognize the benefits of KM initiatives and tap into their potential.
KM applications for reference services
Over the years, reference librarians have made some attempts to collect, organize, codify, and “fix” their internal information and knowledge and share it with their colleagues or users through formal and informal KM initiatives. These initiatives span the gamut from informal, paper-based, loosely organized card–files of frequently asked questions, to technologically sophisticated applications such as ESs and data mining tools.

Frequent question card files
Early attempts to capture the collective memory of reference librarians were rather informal and generally consisted of information about elusive or repeatedly asked queries recorded on index cards that were filed either alphabetically or by subject. Known by a variety of names—quick reference file, hard question file, fugitive file, query file, rough-reference file, useful reference file, information file, file of answered questions, vertical file—these card files recorded very basic information or hints. There was no systematic attempt at collecting, recording, editing, or updating information. Most contributions were voluntary, and staff contributed items as and when they deemed appropriate. As early as 1897, Eleanor B. Woodruff provided guidance on what to include in the card files and suggested that staff record the following:
• all materials that were found with difficulty, i.e., those that took a long time to find, or were found in sources that were not obvious;
• references to questions asked frequently or repeatedly;
• odds and ends of useful information that staff picked up during the course of their reading;
• information or items not easily located through indexes; and
• any information or items that staff were likely to need in the future but would be at a loss to find again.69
Grogan suggested that librarians also include in the card file specialized information of local interest and queries that could not be answered despite a thorough search.70 Miller recommended that the card file include references to community resources and people with special talents or interests who may be able to assist with answering certain reference queries.71
Although there is anecdotal evidence that ready reference card files existed in almost every library, there is very little systematic study or evaluation of these card files in the library literature. The few cases reported in the library literature suggest that the “ready reference” card files at some libraries were very large and were designed to supplement existing reference tools. For example, the ready reference files at the Chicago Public Library filled as many as 200 filing cabinet drawers and according to a 1982 study by Bronwyn P. Parhad were used to answer 30 percent of the 1000 phone queries received every day.72 The fugitive files at the University of Minnesota Libraries in Twin Cities comprised of thirty-six hanging file folders in 1999.73 Perez characterizes these “frequent question” card files as “beta-test knowledge-bases.”74 A number of ready reference files, such as those at the University of California at Los Angeles, were computerized in the 1980s.75 In 1992, the ready reference card file at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), was automated to provide keyword access to 800 tidbits of elusive information. Any CSULB reference librarian could add records to, or search this automated reference file.76

Knowledge-based ESs
In addition to ready reference files, university and public libraries developed many prototype knowledge-based ESs in the 1980s and 1990s to assist librarians with simple fact-type questions. These knowledge-based ESs basically consisted of three components: an interface module where a user could ask a question; a knowledge base comprising of if–then rules that an expert librarian would follow; and an inference engine that specified how the if–then rules applied to the user's particular query.77
One of the earliest ESs was Pointer. Developed by the State University of New York Buffalo's Government Documents department, Pointer guided users through a series of menus to help them select a reference resource for their particular government documents query. Answerman, an ES developed by the National Agricultural Library, guided users to reference sources likely to answer questions related to agriculture. Plexus, an ES for the domain of gardening, employed a natural language interface and guided users to reference resources, personal specialists, and institutions related to gardening. The Online Reference Assistance developed by the University of Waterloo mimicked a librarian in answering factual questions. It suggested strategies for literature searches, explained how to find whether specific documents were in the library, and helped in filling out interlibrary loan forms.78 Other subject-specific ESs include the following: Research Advisor for business, education, and economics; Reference Advisory System for law, life sciences, medicine, and public health; TomeSearcher for business, computer science, electrical engineering, IT, and material science; Pronto for law; Patent Information Assistant for patents; Cansearch for cancer research; and CHEMREF for chemistry.79

Knowledge repositories
Corporate and special libraries are leading the way in developing knowledge repositories.
Corporate and special libraries are leading the way in developing knowledge repositories
The WebLibrary at Digital Equipment Corporation evaluates, analyzes, synthesizes, qualifies, and delivers externally created content to 1500 corporate library users worldwide. WebLibrary is a Web-based corporate intranet that serves as the delivery vehicle for online pathfinders, electronic content created through specific business partnerships, tailored views of news, market research, technical information, and other information and knowledge that impacts business decisions.80 Kalliope, developed by librarians at Hewlett-Packard, is a KM repository “of internal documents written by software engineers in support of their software development activities.” It is a knowledge access tool on the corporate intranet that captures, stores, indexes, and tracks thousands of documents created and used repeatedly by 1500 software engineers working in various labs in at least four geographical regions. Kalliope allows engineers to search for, locate, retrieve, and share documents quickly and efficiently.81 The SunLibrary provides KM services to Sun MicroSystems through its corporate intranet, SunWeb.82 The Oak Ridge National Laboratory Library is engaged in KM initiatives to improve access to strategic knowledge throughout the organization. It is piloting a Virtual Proposal Support Center to “increase access to knowledge about grants and proposals of interest to Oak Ridge.” Intended as a one-stop shopping center for scientists, the Virtual Proposal Support Center will allow them to search multiple databases for grants and proposals, retrieve lists of experts available to support a proposal, and access similar proposals and lessons learned. In addition, scientists will be able to retrieve the same types of knowledge from collaborating institutions.83 Corporate librarians at Aventis Pharmaceuticals have built a global information portal to facilitate knowledge sharing between 65,000 employees' worldwide. Through the portal, users can access information about 1000 resources, searchable archives of daily news stories, industry newsletters, and other information pertinent to the company.84
Recent KM initiatives in academic libraries include Refquest, the Common Knowledge Database (CKDB), the Reference Desk Manager, and the Reference Desk Program. Refquest, a searchable Internet-based reference information knowledge base developed by the Ithaca College Library, permitted natural language searching of 200 reference questions entered from the library's “frequently asked” questions file, questions of current and future interest, and interesting questions. It provided short summary answers to the reference questions, together with notes, lists of reference sources, pertinent Web sites, pointers to materials in library collections elsewhere, and contact information for other organizations as well as human experts.85 CKDB was developed by librarians at the New Brunswick Campus Libraries of Rutgers University to facilitate knowledge sharing between various campuses. It focused on acquiring, collecting, and sharing information and knowledge useful for reference librarians.86 Librarians at Oregon State University designed Reference Desk Manager, a Web-enabled, keyword searchable KM database that replaced information previously recorded in card files, manuals, and clipboards. It contains frequently asked questions, information, and resources for class assignments, important policies and procedures, e-mails, addresses, phone numbers, and URL's of frequently used local resources.87 The Faculty Database, Reference Desk Program, and Collection Development Helper are KM databases developed at Cal Poly library to assist librarians in their work. The Reference Desk Program is an online Web-based database where librarians can record information about class assignments, difficult questions, and problems. This information was previously recorded in card files and clipboards kept at the reference desk.88
A clearer understanding of the difference between KM approaches in corporate and academic libraries can be obtained by placing them in the context of Peter Drucker's two incarnations of knowledge: “Knowledge applied to the new is innovation; and knowledge applied to the existing processes, services, and products is productivity.”89 KM efforts in corporate libraries incorporate both incarnations since they promote innovation and help to increase productivity. KM initiatives in academic libraries focus primarily on the second incarnation and are geared towards improving productivity and knowledge sharing between reference librarians.

Electronic listserv's, USENET newsgroups, and collaborative reference
Reference librarians have also taken advantage of the World Wide Web to build online communities of practice through e-mail listservs, USENET newsgroups, discussion boards, and collaborative digital reference applications to manage and share their collective knowledge. Stumpers, an electronic listserv created in 1992, is an Internet-based mailing list that allows librarians to consult with hundreds of colleagues throughout the world about difficult or sticky reference questions. Therefore, a question that may seem impossible to answer to one librarian may very easily be answered by another librarian who has either tackled it before or knows the answer due to a personal interest in that particular subject area. In 1994, more than 700 reference librarians subscribed to Stumpers and 50–100 questions were exchanged every day through the listserv. The questions and answers exchanged are stored in a searchable archive for future use and retrieval.90
In addition to Stumpers, reference librarians have also developed online communities of practice such as specialized USENET newsgroups on various subjects. Questions that recur frequently in a newsgroup are collected, answered, put through an intense peer review and revision process, and posted to FAQ files of the newsgroup.91 These FAQ files become knowledge repositories that can be tapped into repeatedly.
Reference librarians are also harnessing the power of the World Wide Web to create collaborative reference programs. One such program was the Collaborative Digital Reference Service (CDRS), a pilot program started by the Library of Congress and sixteen partner libraries in early 2000.92 CDRS was a question-and-answer system that utilized customer relationship management software (CRM). It notified libraries worldwide about reference questions needing to be answered and routed questions to appropriate libraries. This provided librarians with access to library collections beyond their own collections, hence improving the likelihood of the question getting answered. Questions and answers were stored in an archive database.93 By 2002, when CRDS ceased operations, it had 260 participating libraries.94
CDRS was replaced by QuestionPoint, a collaborative effort of OCLC and the Library of Congress. Launched in June 2002, QuestionPoint is a collaborative network of reference librarians throughout the world who lend their expertise to answer reference questions. After library patrons submit a question on QuestionPoint, it files, tracks, and manages the questions; automatically routes questions to appropriate libraries locally, in consortia or cooperatives, and/or to international libraries in the Global Reference Network; and constructs a searchable Global Knowledgebase of asked and answered reference questions. In 2003, QuestionPoint had 300 member libraries, and over 3000 question and answer sets in its Global Knowledgebase.95
Through electronic listservs like stumpers, USENET newsgroups, and collaborative reference services like CDRS and QuestionPoint, reference librarians are engaging in KM by creating knowledge repositories, improving knowledge access, and enhancing the knowledge environment. By writing down answers to difficult reference questions in e-mail and Web-based responses, reference librarians are recording the explicit knowledge about particular sources, as well as tacit knowledge that they had internalized about where to look for the information, and creating knowledge artifacts that can be managed and reused.

Data mining and data warehousing applications
Data mining and data warehousing applications have been used by the corporate world as DSSs for more than a decade. However, libraries are just beginning to tap into their potential. In 2003, Barbara Mento and Brendan Rapple surveyed 124 members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to determine the extent to which they were using data mining technologies. Of the sixty-five respondents, 26 or 40 percent did use data mining and 38 or 58 percent believed that data mining could be a valuable tool. However, most libraries are using data mining and data warehousing to strengthen administrative decision making by facilitating the collection and analysis of data pertaining to door count statistics, circulation, interlibrary loans, collection development, acquisitions, electronic resource usage, and Web usage patterns.96 For example, the MIT data warehouse contains data on collection management, cataloging, and serials' management.97 Similarly, Indiana University libraries data warehouse contains data about circulation statistics, acquisition statistics, and title/volume counts for the collection.98 The Vanderbilt University library data mining effort focuses on collecting Web usage statistics with the help of the Web Trends software.99
With respect to reference services, data mining and data warehousing is being used either to facilitate library users' research by mining the Web and building large repositories of information resources, or tracking usage patterns for Web and electronic services. One example of a repository of information resources is INFOMINE, a virtual library of evaluated Internet resources such as databases, electronic journals, e-books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, OPACs, articles, directories or researchers, and other information.100 The library literature reviewed did not yield any examples of data mining or data warehousing initiatives in libraries that focussed on collecting and analyzing patterns about the internal knowledge of reference librarians and the services they provide. None of the applications systematically collected, analyzed, or tried to discover patterns in how reference librarians answered specific reference questions, the process they followed, their success and failure rates in answering questions, and the explicit and tacit knowledge that they accumulated and transmitted or recorded.
In summary, reference librarians recognize the benefits of KM and of collaborative and knowledge sharing activities. They have attempted to collect, organize, codify, “fix,” and share their internal explicit and tacit knowledge through KM initiatives such as frequent question card files, knowledge repositories, electronic listservs, newsgroups, collaborative reference, data mining, and data warehousing applications. Although these early KM efforts are a step in the right direction, KM initiatives in libraries have a long way to go and have tremendous potential for improvement.
Analysis of KM applications for reference services
Although libraries are starting to embrace KM, it has not been widely integrated into the business processes of most libraries. Very few libraries are initiating “real-life” KM projects that are linked to the corporate business strategy. Stratigos suggests that these early KM efforts represent “more of a grass-roots approach to KM than anything systematically organized from the top.”101 After analyzing fifty-three knowledge-based ESs for general reference work, Richardson concluded that real or commonsense knowledge was not present in any of the systems, primarily due to the dearth of expert knowledge. He suggested that since the fifty-three prototype systems were capable of assisting reference librarians with some basic, fact-type questions, these systems were more appropriately classified as “assistants” rather than expert KM systems.102 KM systems developed in libraries thus far suffer from one or more of the shortcomings discussed in the following analysis.
Information versus knowledge
Perhaps the biggest shortcomings of KM initiatives in libraries stems from the confusion surrounding the terms “information” and “knowledge”
Perhaps the biggest shortcomings of KM initiatives in libraries stems from the confusion surrounding the terms “information” and “knowledge”...
and how each of these terms relate to the term “management.”103 Many library and information science professionals equate KM with the organization of knowledge.104 However, as discussed earlier in this article, the mere organization of knowledge is not KM—it is information management. While some librarians consider information tools like the library catalog as beta-test knowledge bases,105 a clearer understanding of the distinction between information and knowledge would lead to the classification of the library catalog as an example of information management rather than KM.
Knowledge as an asset
Davenport et al. identify four broad types of objectives for KM projects: “(a) create knowledge repositories, (b) improve knowledge access, (c) enhance knowledge environment, and (d) manage knowledge as an asset.”106 Most KM applications for reference services revolve around the first three objectives, creating knowledge repositories, improving access, and enhancing the knowledge environment. Very few focus on managing knowledge as an asset that can add value or produce a return on investment.
Lack of systematic and logical approach
Successful KM systems must be grounded in a systematic and logical approach.107 However, most KM initiatives in libraries have not followed a systematic and logical approach/process to identify, organize, or share internal knowledge or best practices to improve the operational effectiveness of the library.108 Very few libraries have explicitly tabulated their knowledge assets or created knowledge inventories and knowledge maps of their internal knowledge. As evidenced from the KM systems discussed above, librarians contributed best practices and knowledge to the KM databases on a purely voluntary basis. The only criterion for adding information to the KM database was the perceived need/value of such information by a particular reference librarian.
Who are the experts?
As mentioned earlier, knowledge acquisition is the first step in the KM process. For successful KM systems for reference, it is critical to identify reference librarians who are experts in their subject domains, are willing to share their knowledge, and whose knowledge can be coded for computerized systems.109 According to Richardson's rule, only 5 percent of the reference librarians can be considered experts; another 10 percent are really good; and 85 percent are MLS competent.110 Many KM systems developed thus far have not made a concerted effort to identify experts either internally within a particular library or externally in the overall library community. They have also failed to capture the knowledge of the 15 percent truly expert or good reference librarians.
Capture explicit versus tacit knowledge
Successful KM systems try to capture both explicit and tacit knowledge. Most KM systems in libraries focus on capturing the explicit knowledge of reference librarians—e.g., what information is available on a particular topic, where is it available, and what are the best sources for a specific query. Typically, this information is compiled in the form of a bibliography or list and added to a searchable computerized or Web-based database. However, these KM applications do not satisfactorily or systematically capture and codify the tacit knowledge of reference librarians—knowing how to find information, where information is available, how to select the right sources, when to use a certain source, how to follow a trail of clues to get to the right information, etc.
Focus on Product versus Process
Most KM initiatives in libraries have been project oriented rather than process oriented. They have focussed more on building specific products or applications rather than refining reference work to create a process that actively generates and communicates knowledge. Reference librarians continue to employ the basic reference process that has the following steps:
a. Library user articulates problem.
b. Librarian analyzes the query to determine information need.
c. Librarian negotiates question.
d. Librarian identifies and selects specific reference tools that may provide answer to the query.
e. Librarian selects reference sources that provide answer.
f. Librarian communicates information selected to the library user.
g. If user is satisfied with answer, the process is terminated here. If user is not satisfied, librarian renegotiates query and repeats steps c through f.111
Successful KM initiatives help an organization to establish internal benchmarks, identify and record best practices, and create an environment of continuous learning.
Successful KM initiatives help an organization to establish internal benchmarks, identify and record best practices, and create an environment of continuous learning
KM systems implemented in libraries so far have not achieved these goals. They have not led to a restructuring of the basic reference process to either improve its efficiency, uncover flaws in the process, or streamline it. To establish internal benchmarks, identify best practices, and promote continuous learning, reference librarians will need to integrate KM into, and add an additional step to, the reference process—that of recording/debriefing and failure analysis after completing each reference transaction. They must make a concerted effort to record reference interactions in detail and analyze and provide expert commentary on successful as well as unsuccessful reference queries. To learn from the process and avoid repeating mistakes, it is vital to record what worked, what did not work, which steps in the process were useful, and what would they do differently next time. In the absence of this additional step of debriefing and failure analysis, reference librarians will be unable to improve the reference process and the performance of their work.112
Build it and They Will come
O'Dell and Grayson emphasize that “just creating databases will not cause change to happen.”113 KM initiatives for reference will not succeed if they are not tied to specific goals or objectives within the library or the larger organization. The goals may be to improve communication between reference librarians, prevent them from reinventing the wheel, or to share knowledge with patrons. Perkins cautions “Don't assume that if you build it, they will come. First ask, what is the business problem that this application is trying to solve? If you can't find an acceptable answer, don't do it.”114
Not linked to organizational strategy or performance
Another shortcoming of KM initiatives in libraries is that a majority of them are not explicitly linked to organizational strategy or performance. Very little effort has been made to understand how the best reference practices apply to, add value to the work of, and are used by different stakeholders. Are they valuable to users? To librarians? To the larger organization of which the library is a part? Is there empirical evidence of this? There is also no concerted attempt to analyze how KM initiatives add value to reference services and promote future innovation and improvements in either the reference process, the library, or organization as a whole. Also lacking is a systematic evaluation of how KM initiatives assist in adapting and applying best practices to new situations and to improve and streamline them.
To summarize, KM initiatives in libraries can be further improved by critically analyzing them and addressing several shortcomings. For more efficient KM systems that can yield greater benefits, it is vital that libraries engaging in KM clearly understand the distinction between information management and KM and learn to treat knowledge as an asset. They must also adopt a systematic and logical approach based on the KM process, identify the internal and external knowledge experts, and focus on capturing and making available tacit as well as explicit knowledge. Libraries engaging in KM for reference services must also focus on refining the reference process to include failure analysis, establishing clear goals, and linking KM initiatives to organizational strategy and performance.
Conclusion
KM initiatives have the potential to assist libraries in capturing, collecting, organizing, and disseminating the collective memory and wisdom of reference librarians and helping them become more productive, effective, and customer service oriented. KM can also help libraries streamline their day-to-day operations, improve their visibility and involvement in the larger organization, and assume a leadership role in helping to capture the institutional memory. However, successful KM initiatives require a clear understanding of the information continuum; the four key components of KM; the distinction between data management, information management, and KM; and the KM process. KM initiatives are most likely to be introduced and succeed at libraries that function as learning communities, have strategic goals, a knowledge sharing culture, the versatility to accept new challenges and try different approaches, and the ability to harness the power of IT. To develop KM initiatives for reference services, librarians and library administrators must
• Identify the core mission and goals of why a library provides reference services
• Identify what kind of knowledge is vital and essential either to provide core services or improve services
• Determine who has this knowledge, or if nobody has it, then how can this knowledge be acquired. In other words, identify the experts. This is the knowledge acquisition phase
• Put processes in place so that this knowledge can be used to improve the core mission and goals of the reference service
• Create processes so that reference librarians know:
• What knowledge is available
• Who has it, i.e., who are the experts
• How can it be used or applied to a particular situation or context
• How can it be mapped, captured, and “fixed” as a knowledge artifact
• How can it be made easily accessible for reuse by others
• How can it be refined further and added to, to improve future processes.Since “knowledge and knowledge processes are inextricably tied to the function, structure, culture, and mission of an organization,”115 an effective KM strategy will require libraries to develop an in-depth understanding of the domain of knowledge and how it is used within their broader organization. Reference librarians will have to “shift (their mental models) from custodians of a document collection to managers of the corporate memory.”116 They must move beyond the role they have always excelled at—finding, selecting, organizing, and managing information—to creating and managing knowledge. They must move beyond being “administrative workers” who organize things for others to access and become true “knowledge workers” who use knowledge as a dominant aspect of their work and possess high levels of skills and expertise.117

Posted by: mary / 7:41 PM 0 comments

Management and the management of information, knowledge-based and library services 2002/Patricia Layzell Ward.-Library Management Vol. 24 N0.3, 2003

McManus and Loughridge (2002) carried out a pilot project of UK senior staff in academic libraries to find out why knowledge management (KM) had made little impact on the universities and their libraries. Many of the respondents felt that the organisational culture within the university and among academic staff was at the heart of the lack of progress on KM.
Whether change can be managed depends on the images of managing and change that are adopted, argues Palmer and Dunford (2002). They distinguish between management as controlling and managing as shaping, and separate outcomes into the intended, the unintended and the partially intended. Change management is seen as directing, navigating, caretaking, coaching, interpreting and nurturing. Heracleous (2002) considers the high failure rate associated with organisational change and suggests that many change initiatives pay insufficient attention to the cultural and social aspects of the organisation.
The changing role of academic librarians from librarians as service providers to educators reflecting the shift from bibliographic instruction to information literacy is reviewed by Lupton (2002). This encourages a culture of reflective practice and provides a framework in which academic librarians can develop their self-image as a teacher rather than a trainer or service provider. The status of academic library staff at Oklahoma University Library is described by Weaver-Meyers (2002). There had been a long tradition of faculty status for its librarians but this was challenged in the 1990s. A case study suggests that a strong sense of service may help to unify academic librarians in conflicts about their ambiguous status within the broader academic community. Various strategies are reviewed. Holt (2002) focuses on the multiplicity of tasks that make up the workload of the professional librarian and changes resulting from the use of IT. Structures may need to be modified to make optimal use of skilled staff by consolidating staff into larger units, standardising the reporting process, reducing time in meetings, using work teams, specifying time to be spent on tasks, more training and using support staff.
The changing roles of paraprofessionals in the knowledge economy and the impact this has on traditional library services in the National Library of Singapore, are described by Tin and Al-Hawamdeh (2002). Their study showed that for paraprofessionals to be able to deliver quality reference services, continuous training is required in areas such as the use of electronic resources, reference interviewing and search skills, as well as a change of mindset to instil a customer service commitment.
Oxbrow and Abell (2002) reflect that in the past the value of a company was measured by quantity of output, now knowledge assets are the key. They argue that amidst budget cuts and a slowing economy, knowledge management (KM) embedded in an organisation and "chief knowledge officers" exploiting opportunities for change, are now playing a crucial role in sustaining corporate success.

Posted by: mary / 4:57 PM 0 comments

Writing the Book on Knowledge Management/Christina Stoll. Association Management. Washington: Apr 2004.Vol.56, Iss. 4; pg. 56, 6 pgs

The concept of knowledge management is still fairly new to library personnel, at least in the US. The North Suburban Library System (NSLS), a small nonprofit organization in the northwest suburbs of Chicago serving more than 650 multitype member libraries, is doing its part to change that by introducing knowledge-management concepts to its members. Some key elements in the success of NSLS' efforts that you might consider when introducing knowledge management to your organization are presented: 1. Start a team. 2. Get buy-in. 3. Be patient. 4. Survey staff.

A LIBRARY SYSTEM MANACINC ITS KNOWlJiDCE? Not such a startling concept given that libraries are, after all, in the information and knowledge business. Yet the concept of knowledge management is still fairly new to library personnel, at least in the United States. At the North Suburban Library System (NSLS), a small nonprofit organization in the northwest suburbs of Chicago serving more than 650 multitype member libraries, we're doing our part to change that by introducing knowledge-management concepts to our members.
Our knowledge-management initiative started as a way to improve how we share, capture, and use our institutional knowledge to provide service to our members, but it has grown into an effort to help members organize their knowledge as well. We hope our efforts will help other organizations gain an understanding of the value of managing information and knowledge, the benefits of making the effort, and some of the challenges of developing such a process when starting their own initiatives.
Growing interest in knowledge management
For NSLS, knowledge management started as a grassroots effort within our staff of ju, some of whom had developed an interest in the concept and thought that it had possibilities for the library system. Staff learned that knowledge management was a way of examining how an organization moves from data to information to knowledge. We likened it to putting together a jigsaw puzzle, with data being the random puzzle pieces you see when you first open the box; information begins to emerge as you turn all the pieces face up, sort them by color and design, and group all the edge pieces together. Yet, the puzzle still doesn't tell you much until you've completed it; and the full knowledge of the puzzle picture appears and can be used. That knowledge, of course, can take many forms depending on how you interpret the information-from appreciating the beautiful picture that the puzzle makes to realizing what a perfect gift the puzzle would make for a friend. As staff began to understand this concept, we were able to learn and share more about its potential benefits; enthusiasm soon spread to the organization's upper management.
The pros that we saw in implementing a knowledge-management system included
* better organization and use of our institutional knowledge;
* reduction of staff time used searching for information;
* less duplication of work;
* more efficient customer service to members; and
* increased time to spend on improving member services.
We decided to begin exploring these possibilities by forming a knowledge-management team consisting of staff from various areas of the organization. The diversity of the team-particularly making sure to include librarians and non-librarians-was essential to its success. The team was able to offer differing perspectives on how NSLS works and shares its knowledge; serve as an advisory panel to oversee the project; take the lead on various parts of the project; and spread awareness of knowledge management throughout the organization.
The team also saw knowledge management as the next step in our efforts to continually improve as a learning organization, which for us means having a shared vision and individual responsibility toward obtaining that vision. As a learning organization, NSLS already had a defined culture in the areas of teamwork, knowledge sharing, and innovation, which provided us with a good foundation and a leg up toward our success with our intended initiative. Dealing with your culture and forming a strong knowledge-sharing organization are key elements to implementing a knowledge-management plan.
Developing support and setting expectations
We first identified and agreed upon our initial goals, which centered around increased efficiency and service. Once we accomplished that, the next big step was to introduce the plan to our board of directors. In doing so, we learned a number of lessons that might be valuable to others.
1.Consider a consultant. Being new to the field of knowledge management, we realized that we could benefit from working with a consultant to get the project right the first time. We researched and interviewed possible candidates, ultimately selecting consultants from APQC, the American Productivity and Quality Center (www.apqc.org), because of the group's 25 years of experience with various forms of knowledge management and for its similarities to our organization, which created a comfortable working relationship.
2. Get your board on board. Our initial proposal to the board was met with mixed reactions; some applauded our efforts, while others were unfamiliar with what we were talking about. We addressed the initial benefits to NSLS in more detail with a follow-up proposal of our expected outcomes that included projected staff time and cost, additional background information on APQC, and literature on knowledge management. With this additional information in hand, the board approved our proposal. The initial benefits we presented included
* enhanced knowledge sharing among NSLS staff and members;
* a records-management system for better collection and use of our knowledge, providing added value to NSLS; and
* a system for customer relationship management that uses member knowledge to improve our service to the membership.
Clearly, if you decide to undertake a similar project, be prepared to educate your board on a topic that is still fairly new to many.
3. Consider the funding of the project. The projected total cost of our initiative came to $46,000, the largest charge being the consultants' fee. We also included in this figure the cost of staff time and an allowance for possible technology resources. Our annual operating budget at the time was approximately $3 million, and because we were able to fund the project by dividing the cost across three budget years, we did not have to dip into our reserves.
4. Set expectations and goals, but be prepared for change. When the project officially started in August 2002, our first tasks were to establish expected goals and outcomes. We had to keep in mind, however, that because the intention of the project was to improve the way we work, it would also mean a lot of change to our organization. We saw that improving knowledge-management practices would immediately become a new focus for a few staff members, while the effects of the initiative for the entire organization slowly worked their way into our daily routines.
Moving forward
From August through December 2002, the Amercian Productivity and Quality Center consultants assisted NSLS staff with an analysis of our work processes and procedures. This involved interviewing staff, board members, and members at large to get a better understanding of how we use and share our information and data and to look for gaps in that process. APQC presented to the knowledge-management team a final report of its findings, which identified a number of gaps and suggested how we might fill them.
Confirming anecdotal information from staff members, the report indicated that 50 percent of NSLS members seek advice or expertise from the organization, and 56 percent of members would like to share knowledge via communities of like-minded experts. Time was reported as the largest barrier to effective knowledge sharing. For us these were clear indicators of the need to enhance internal and external knowledge-capturing methods as well as face-to-face sharing opportunities.
APQC and the project team used these findings to identify areas of opportunity for applying knowledge-management techniques and principles. The three projects that the team rated highest in terms of anticipated results, transferability, and member value became our pilot programs. These particular projects also are often the basis for many other organizations' knowledge-management efforts as well.
1. Establish a staff-expert locator. This project would take the form of a searchable online knowledge map that identifies staff areas of expertise, giving staff the ability to find the needed knowledge faster.
2. Facilitate communities of practice. Our plans include the development of communication and knowledge-sharing enhancements for our member networking groups through the development of design teams for each community of practice and the use of an online tool created in-house. Each design team consists of select group members whose role is to develop relevant topics of conversation for meetings and facilitate online discussion in between meetings. The tool will provide members with forums (discussion hoards), an online calendar of events, the ability to upload and download files, polling capabilities, an updatable member roster, and an area to share useful links.
3. Create a knowledge database. Our goal is to establish a searchable online database that stores knowledge entered by staff and members on selected topics of interest and is organized in such a way that allows staff and members to easily access the information they need.
Tackling the details
Members of the staff project team have taken the lead on each of the three pilot projects, dividing project responsibilities among the rest of the staff based on interest and skill. Involving the entire staff has increased our efforts to embed the principles of knowledge management throughout the entire organization, in addition to spreading the workload throughout. Two of the three pilots are internally focused, because we want to perfect things before taking the project to our members. The commumties-of-practice project, however, directly involved members from the start and has become our best selling point for knowledge management throughout the membership.
Since January 2003 the three pilot projects have been in various working stages. Of our accomplishments so far, the most significant has been the creation of a knowledge taxonomy. Establishing a shared vocabulary is key to managing information, providing a better understanding of the information most in demand, and facilitating the collection and retrieval of such information during the search process. For example, while creating our taxonomy, we noticed that staff used the words marketing and public relations interchangeably; so we decided to combine the two words and use marketing/PR from that point on, wherever possible. Hence, when staff or members conduct searches for information related to these topics, they access all relevant material in both categories. Other results of the pilot projects:
Staff-expert locator. Using our taxonomy and information gathered from a staff survey, we are updating the staff directory on our Web site to reflect areas of staff expertise. In the future, our intranet will allow staff to update their expertise areas themselves and create a record of staff skills for internal use.
Communities of practice. Three member networking groups (electronic subscription managers, genealogy, and youth services) have developed their design teams, which will identify the topics of interest to be discussed among these groups and facilitate the discussion. Since launching the communities-of-practice pilot, we've had one additional networking group-public library directors-join, and other groups have shown an interest in developing communities. As we near completion of the pilot project, we are already planning for other groups to move to this format. Temporary groups and projects can also benefit from this online tool. For example, our awards committee, which meets briefly during the year, is using the tool to conduct its entire process, selecting award nominees and winners online.
Knowledge database. Currently under development, our knowledge base is being designed for staff to collect, store, and use the following five types of information and knowledge:
* NSLS member information-such as member-library staff changes, needs, new information, and so on.
* Internal staff expertise-including answers to frequently asked questions relating to areas of staff expertise such that staff can easily access and share knowledge.
* Consultations-knowledge exchanged during a staff and member consultation recorded for use by NSLS staff. Informal knowledge might include member requests for products and services, problems or questions that require a more detailed explanation or note, and staff ideas that result from discussions with members.
* Hot topics-knowledge identified as relevant to our organization and profession and then expanded upon by staff with the intention of pushing it to members via our Web site.
* External knowledge-knowledge on a particular topic supplied by an identified outside source. For example, another library-system consultant might supply us with information on library law.
Evolving issues
As our initiative has unfolded, we've identified several additional processes necessary to provide support to our main pilot projects. These processes include the following:
Creating hot wash guidelines. Named by staff from the idea of a quick and immediate rundown of events, a hot wash is conducted at the end of a project or event to capture the lessons learned for future use; new lessons can be e-mailed to staff members and details archived on our intranet. For example, the hot wash conducted after our last annual member banquet pointed out that it was advisable to 1) allow several weeks in between the banquet and any other significant event, 2) re-examine the registration table and name-tag process to reduce confusion, and 3) conduct an all-staff meeting the day before the event.
We've found that hot washes are one of the simplest yet most effective knowledge-management practices to incorporate into operations, and they offer some of the largest rewards.
Using surveys to enhance meetings. With a small staff and a team environment, we've found it valuable to conduct a survey about our monthly staff meetings to learn if knowledge exchange is being conducted in the most effective and efficient way and to find out where improvements can be made.
Revamping our intranet and shared-file drive. We are developing a new staff intranet to serve as the foundation for the storage and retrieval of knowledge related to the pilot projects. The intranet will provide access to files stored on our central staff drive, which has already been restructured using the new taxonomy. Staff participated in an e-cleanup day, which involved weeding through thousands of files on the old drive and moving them into the new file structure.
Beyond developing and applying our new tools and processes, we noted some key elements in the success of our efforts that you might consider when introducing knowledge management to your organization:
1. Start a team. A dedicated team with belief in the project-and the passion to see it through to completion-are essential to moving the project forward.
2. Get buy-in. Staff buy-in is critical and must be continuously sought through education about knowledge management and examples of how it can benefit the individual staff person as well as the entire organization.
3.Be patient. Knowledge sharing, capturing, and use does not occur overnight. It's a process that needs to be developed with a lot of consideration for time, staff involvement, and other organizational priorieties.
4. Survey staff. A staff survey is a valuable tool. We conducted one at the start of our knowledge-management efforts to grasp our existing knowledge sharing, capturing, and use. Comparing the baseline survey results against subsequent surveys helps measure the impact of knowledge-management efforts as they unfold. In our case, the outcomes and measures of success that we've noticed to date are
* Knowledge sharing has increased among NSLS staff, improving teamwork with faster turnaround times for projects that involve various staff, skills, and knowledge. For example, our goal of embedding continuing education throughout our organization was facilitated by the increased sharing of staff information and experience via our new tools.
* Awareness and education of staff and members about knowledge management has increased through workshops and presentations at member libraries by our project team members.
* Members have expressed an interest in learning about knowledge management and how its processes and techniques can benefit their own libraries; member-library staff show a willingness to attend fee-based classes and programs on the topic to learn more.
* Knowledge and information are being captured and made accessible to NSLS staff through several new tools and processes. Staff have found both the staff-expert locator and the repository of NSLS and member information to be beneficial in increasing their ability to meet member needs and enhance the value of the organization.
Overall, we are quite pleased with our project's success so far and feel the initiative has gone far beyond our expectations. We expect our knowledge-management efforts to continue not only within our organization and among our members, but also to spread to other libraries, where member libraries and staff can participate in the benefits and possibilities gained by managing knowledge in a deliberate, intentional, and strategic way.

Posted by: mary / 4:31 PM 2 comments

From librarian to knowledge manager /The Lawyer. London: Oct 4, 2004. pg. 29

Senior legal librarians (SLLs) are increasing in importance at their firms as the new knowledge management technologies they govern become more crucial to delivering top-quality legal services. According to recent research by Sweet & Maxwell among the top 100 UK law firms, more than 20% of SLLs now either report directly to the managing partner or chief executive officer, or sit on the most senior management board of their firms.
Knowledge management is now at the very core of many firms, and because of this, SLLs are increasingly important. The old perception of legal librarians working away in small, dusty libraries, searching through volumes of legal texts is completely divorced from reality.
The role of the SLL has increased dramatically. They are now responsible for the management of powerful online legal information services and practice tools, teams of researchers and ensuring lawyers are fully trained to use the latest research tools and supplied with all the additional information they need to pursue their sector specialisations.
Of all SLLs, 55 per cent have seen their job titles change in the past five years. In fact, half of all those holding the old SLL role within their firm no longer even have the term 'library' or 'librarian' anywhere in their job titles. Their new managerial powers and IT knowledge are being recognised by new job titles, such as head of knowledge management and head of information services.
The future for the legal library service is incredibly exciting. I expect to see more investment in this area over the coming years. The responsibilities of SLLs are expected to grow as law firms seek to further exploit their knowledge base through IT and as legal librarians use their research capabilities to assist marketing and management decision making.

Posted by: mary / 4:23 PM 0 comments

Thursday, October 07, 2004

The business world discovers the assets of librarianship/Michael E D Koenig,T Kanti Srikantaiah Apr 2002 Information Outlook

IT IS NO SECRET THAT KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT (KM) IS NOW THE LARGEST and most long Lasting business trend of recent decades. To librarians the connection between librarianship and KM has long seemed obvious. Indeed, in some fundamental sense it can be argued that KM is librarianship, or at least a direct descendant.
It not difficult to see this family tree-documentation was librarianship with a few more components; information resources management was documentation with a few more components; and knowledge management is information resources management with a few more components. While it seems obvious to us that the skills of librarianship are a central component of KM, the business world has been woefully uninformed and obtuse about that relationship (at least as it seems to those of us in the library world).
Though the KM world has begun to discover the skills associated with librarianship and information science, it does not attribute those needed skills and assets to librarianship. It almost seems as if the business world is trying to carefully avoid the "L" word. There is in fact no animus; it is just that the business world simply doesn't get it. What it calls librarianship is the "T" word-taxonomy. It sounds sexier and more scientific.
However, a current development-KM's maturation into its third stage-may give librarians an opportunity to bridge this gap.
KM has already gone through two stages, with a very clear third stage now emerging. Inherent in that third stage is a recognition (though perhaps disguised) of the importance of librarianship, or at least the skills and assets of librarianship and information science.
Stage Three
A good marker of the shift to stage three can be seen by perusing the content of the 2000 and 2001 KMWorld conferences (commercial KM trade shows) organized by Information Today (www.kmworld.com). At KMWorld 2000, a track on content management appeared for the first time. At KMWorld 2001 in October/ November, content management was the dominant track, constituting the largest cluster of topics in the conference. Since a good alternate description for the second stage of KM is "it's no good if they don't use it," then perhaps the best description for the new third stage is "it's no good if they can't find it" or "it's no good if they use it but can't find it." Another bellwether is that TFPL's report of their October 2001 CKO (Chief Knowledge Officer) Summit showed that for the first time taxonomies emerged as a full-blown, major topic.
What is still distressing in this welcome development is the lack of recognition in the KM community of the obvious overlap of content management and taxonomy with librarianship and information science. An interesting indicator of that gap was presented at the KMWorld 2001 by members of the staff of the American Productivity and Quality Center (www.apqc.org), an important "opinion leader" organization in the world of KM. The presentation was entitled "Managing Content and Knowledge." Its theme was the critical success factors for successful implementation of KM. The study was based on a rather extensive examination of a number of KM implementations. Two very interesting points emerged directly, and they were the points most heavily stressed. One point was a high correlation between KM success and having done an earlier "content audit" (i.e., what we would call an "information audit" as pioneered by Woody Horton). The second point, "Taxonomy before Technology," was offered! for successful KM implementation.
What was even more interesting was what emerged indirectly. A number of examples/case studies were briefly described. One of those was the Washington State Library's implementation of a system to deliver state agency and related information to small business in partitular and to the public at large. Some dollar figures were given, and the Washington State Library project was striking indeed for its impact per dollar, a fact commented upon by the audience. To those few from the library and information science community in the audience, the phenomenon was not surprising. After all, the project had a running head start; it was spearheaded by librarians with a professional education in content management. While there was no opportunity to ask in public (because the content-filled session ran overtime), the question that obviously occurred was: Had the team examined whether the central involvement of such staff was also a generic critical success factor? The answer, delivered ! privately after the talk, was "yes." The next question we have to ask ourselves is: Why wasn't this information revealed in the presentation?
Ramifications for the Field
This article doesn't intend to replow the field of pointing out opportunities provided by KM or encouraging the librarian to take advantage of the KM opportunity. Judith Field eloquently made these points in her article "Information + Technology + YOU Equals Knowledge Management" (see Information Outlook, September 1998). As she put it, "KM is the new competitive asset" that " if fully implemented has the potential to make our future as a profession both exciting and very rewarding." But there are some urgent ramifications emanating from the emergence of the third stage of KM that need to be made clearly and forcefully.
First, get over it and get involved. "Get over it" means don't waste time on what knowledge means and what KM is or isn't, or whether it is a good descriptor. It's not, but it is what the folks with budget authority choose to use. Nor should we waste time bemoaning the lack of recognition revealed in the far too typical incident described above. " Get involved" of course means seize the opportunity offered by the third stage of KM.
If one looks at the program of any of the KM conferences, the "L" word is conspicuously absent. The business world doesn't get the connection. The business world connects organizing information with taxonomies, and in turn connects taxonomies with the natural sciences. If business professionals could visualize what they have in mind when they talk about taxonomies, what would constitute that picture is something very similar to MESH, the carefully structured compendium of MEdical Subject Headings compiled by the National Library of Medicine. But there is precious little awareness that taxonomies and classificatory structures like MESH are the natural domain of librarians. Taxonomies are perceived as emanating from natural scientists, not from librarians. A token of this lack of comprehension is that a conference speaker, who admitted that the involvement of librarians was a critical success factor, said only a few sentences later "but content management and librarianship ! aren't the same thing." The response was, "Can you give me a better two word description of what librarianship is about than `content management?' If you can, I'll host you to a very handsome dinner." To be sure, content management and librarianship are not a one-to-one relationship, but the area of core overlap is substantial and critical. The challenger and the challengee have been in contact since, primarily on related issues, and while the challenge has been repeated, it has yet to be met.
The most obvious lesson, therefore, is that while the third stage may be about content management and taxonomies, and of course that domain is fundamentally Library and Information Science 101, "they" don't know that. We have to let them know and promote our expertise and KM domain knowledge. There is a window of opportunity here now, and if we don't take advantage of it, it will close soon and close permanently. That is the principal and overwhelmingly important lesson.
An important corollary is that one area where information professionals can and should play a central role is in software selection. Our expertise is central in evaluating most KM software. Most hot, new KM software packages are of two types. By way of illustration, 25 software packages were submitted for the KM Promise Award at the KMWorld 2001 Conference. They provide a snapshot of where the vendors think the field is going, and where they think there is a need they can address. Those 25 software packages fell chiefly into two clear and dominant clusters: programs that attempted in some algorithmic fashion to structure and index a body of documents and "communities of practice"/"yellow pages" programs that attempted some version of identifying who in the organization or the extended organization possessed what subject knowledge or expertise, and then facilitating an appropriate linkage. The first cluster is very clearly stage 3. While the second cluster is obviously sta! ge 2, it also has, in that the programs attempt to recognize and classify expertise, stage 3 characteristics. No program from either cluster should be selected by an organization without the central involvement of information professionals who are familiar with taxonomies, thesauri, indexes and the world of textual information retrieval in general.
The third stage of KM presents a window of opportunity of huge proportions for our profession-perhaps the greatest opportunity that it has even been offered. That window is here now, but if we don't take advantage of it, it will close soon and close permanently. And then others will occupy the turf.
The Three Stages of KM

1. Information Technology, Intellectual Capital and the Internet (intranet, extranet, etc.) " by the Internet out of Intellectual Capital"

2. Tacit Knowledge, Communities of Practice, Organizational Culture, the Learning Organization and Human Resources

Nonaka's (Tacit Knowledge) and Senge's (The Learning Organization) work already existed, but was latterly pulled into the mainstream of KM.

3. (Enterprise) Content Management and Taxonomies. The discovery of LIS (Library and Information Science).

Posted by: mary / 7:15 PM 0 comments

Monday, September 27, 2004

Martin, Bill (2003)

• The rise in prominence of these intangible resources is a direct result of wider changes in globalisation and the emergence of a knowledge-based economy.
  
  
  Much of the original impetus for the concept of the knowledge-based economy came not from economics but from the field of management. Particularly influential in this regard was Peter Drucker, who a decade ago identified knowledge as the only meaningful economic resource (Webber, 1993), predicting the onset of new organisational structures and styles of management to address some of the risks involved in global economic change (Drucker, 1992) Strong institutional support for these views later came from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which defined the knowledge-based economy as one directly based on the production, distribution and use of knowledge and information (OECD 1996). The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Council Economic Committee then extended this definition to include the production, distribution and use of knowledge as the main driver of growth, wealth creation and employment across all industries (APEC 2000).
  Although knowledge has been of central importance in all ages and societies –from pre-history through the agricultural and industrial revolutions, it has assumed a new level of significance as the driver of innovation and wealth-creation, equally important to entire economies and individual organisations.
  
  · Data: Customarily defined as observations of the state of the world, as facts about events, or records of transactions such as amounts sold or purchased (Davenport, 1998). Although data can be qualitative as well as quantitative, the term usually applies to symbols that can be stored in a computer. Data is easily structured, captured and transferred. Data is nonetheless a form of information, one that when properly stored and structured can be communicated easily. However, it is information in a minimal form and consequently can be regarded as representing the raw material of information, the basis for future action.
  
  Information: Can be described as data put into some kind of context or, alternatively, as data endowed with relevance and purpose. Information can thus be regarded as some form of processed data, as data to which, through human intervention, some form of value has been added. One example would be the reordering and analysis of raw census data by age, social class and gender in order to build mailing lists for potential purchasers of products or services. Alternatively, information can be regarded as some form of communication, as a message extracted from data by an individual for transmission to a receiver, a message that can take any number of forms including text, sound, image, computer file or multimedia. For such messages to be effective some consensus on meaning between sender and receiver is required.
  
  Intellectual Capital can thus be described in terms of intangible assets that frequently do not appear on the balance sheet, assets that can be categorised as follows:
  
  · Assets that give the company power in the marketplace: trademarks, customer loyalty, repeat business.
  
  · Assets representing property of the mind: intellectual property such as patents, trademarks, copyright.
  
  · Assets which give the organisation internal strength, such as corporate culture, management and business processes, IT systems.
  
  · Assets derived from the people who work in the organisation: their knowledge, competencies, work related know-how and networking capability (Brooking, 1997, 364)
  
  
  Even Robert Buckman, Jr one of the best-known knowledge management figures in the world does not like the term. He insists that his company, Bulab Holdings, never meant to call what they did in this area knowledge management, but rather that it was the trade that gave it this name. Nonetheless, for all its perceived terminological and conceptual limitations, knowledge management has become part of the organisational landscape. This is true of so-called Old Economy companies such as hotel chains, banks and the oil and petroleum industries as well the New Economy firms in information and financial services and the so-called Big Three management consultancies and their boutique counterparts. It also applies to industries such as automobile and aircraft manufacture that have made the transition to new economy status along with such diverse entities as the World Bank and a growing number of national and international governments.
  
  
  there is more to knowledge management than technology and that the human and organisational elements are the critical ones. Moreover while acknowledging that knowledge management can be described as an oxymoron simply because knowledge cannot in fact be managed, what can be managed are knowledge environments including knowledge resources and their associated technologies, strategies and processes and above all, that human component which is the source of all knowledge. The central premise behind knowledge management is that all the factors that lead to superior performance --- organisational creativity, operational effectiveness and quality of products and services – are improved when better knowledge is made available and used competently. Knowledge management is not a solution in itself, but rather it complements and enhances other organisational initiatives (for example, in total quality management and business process re-engineering) in order to make better use of the know-how and expertise available within the company. In essence, knowledge management is a two-fold process involving the management of knowledge assets and management of the processes for creating, organising, transferring and sharing knowledge throughout the organisation.
  
  
  Scarcely a decade ago it would have been difficult to name more than a handful of books on the subject of knowledge management. Today there is a considerable volume of literature on the subject and with it possibly hundreds of definitions of knowledge management (uit Beijerse, 1999). From this mass of perception one working definition has been chosen:
  
  Formalisation of experience, knowledge and expertise to create capabilities, enable superior performance, support innovation and enhanced customer value
  
  The capacity to create, enhance and share intellectual capital across the organization
  
  It is a shorthand term that covers all the things that must be put in place – processes, systems, culture and roles – to build and enhance this capability.
  
  the benefits claimed for practicing knowledge management tend to include:
  
  · Improvements in efficiency
  
  · Clarification of how to build, create and account for new knowledge
  
  · Ability to retain core knowledge within the organisation
  
  · Ability to track and account for key assets
  
  · Improved protection for intellectual property
  
  · Identification of gaps in organisational knowledge
  
  · Ability to obtain a higher return on human capital
  
  · Ability to enable staff to learn more efficiently and effectively
  
  · Retention and addition of value to products and services
  
  · Enhancement of the organisational focus on its core business and on critical company knowledge
  
  · Increased customer satisfaction
  
  · Major cost savings as reported at companies such as Ford Motor Co., Dow Chemical and BP Amoco
  
  there are also potential risks associated with the practice of knowledge management and some of these include:
  
  · Problems in finding what is needed, when it is needed
  
  · Information overload
  
  · The pain of learning and cultural change
  
  · Potential conflicts over implementation
  
  · Danger of technological determinism
  
  · The likelihood of neglecting areas of potential improvement
  
  · The risk of wasting money on ill-conceived schemes
  Whereas it is only prudent to bear these potential risks in mind, it is clear that these are likely to be outweighed by the potential benefits accruing from an involvement in knowledge management
  
  
  . Key obstacles to the successful implementation of knowledge management include:
  
  Organisational structures: producing top-down decision making and resulting in knowledge silos and poor knowledge management practices
  
  · Infrastructures (especially technology infrastructures): mandating inappropriate and unhelpful practices, processes and behaviours
  
  · Management: that fails to lead by example and/or allows the avowed knowledge management mission to be thwarted by non-compliance
  
  · Behaviours: a reluctance to engage in knowledge management activities right across the board, but notably in the key activity of knowledge sharing.
  
  · Systems: that inhibit proper recognition and rewards for achievements in knowledge management and which fail to deter inappropriate practices such as knowledge hoarding
  
  Some questions for would-be knowledge managers
  
  Let us finish this session by posing some fundamental questions relating to the practice of knowledge management.
  
  · What knowledge so we have now?
  · Is knowledge being transferred systematically within the organisation?
  · Is external knowledge being acquired systematically?
  · Is new knowledge being created?
  · Is knowledge being leveraged?
  · Are investments in knowledge being leveraged?
  · Is technology being used effectively to acquire, disseminate and transfer knowledge?
  · Is knowledge sharing encouraged or discouraged?
  · Does senior management understand and support knowledge management as a business strategy?
  
  
  
  

Posted by: mary / 7:25 PM 15 comments

Sunday, September 26, 2004

Corporate information, institutional culture and KM: a UK university library perspective/Damien McManus, Brendan Loughridge.-New Library World

This paper is based on the results of a small-scale pilot project undertaken in late 1999 (McManus, 1999). The purpose of the project was to elicit the views of a small sample of senior information professionals working in academic libraries and others identified as having a particular interest in knowledge management in universities, as to why knowledge management had as yet made little impact on universities in the UK and, more specifically, on their libraries

With a few exceptions, however, universities appear not to have shown as much interest in or acceptance of knowledge management as a management practice as they have in introducing knowledge management to their teaching and research programmes.

The relationship of corporate culture to organisational performance has received considerable attention in recent management literature in the last 15 years or so.
... [knowledge] often becomes embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organizational routines, processes, practices and norms.
One of the greatest impediments to the introduction of any change, let alone knowledge management initiatives, to universities, may be their organisational culture:
Clearly, in universities we've decided that knowledge creation is the thing we care about. We care much less about knowledge distribution, dissemination, use. We produce a vast amount of knowledge that never gets used by anyone but other academics. The average research article never gets cited by anybody. We've proliferated all these channels, but nobody seems to pay attention to them. There's a real need for change in that respect. But the tradition of the culture is so weighted against making any change. The inmates run the asylum in these places ... (Bernbom, 1998).
Our findings suggest that the success of knowledge management depends primarily on people and behavioural issues. Tools are less important than attitudes, planning is less important than leadership, and gathering facts is less important than changing the ways that people work (Scarbrough, 1999, p. 74).
technology and its ability to enhance the storage and accessibility of knowledge could not be ignored. It was agreed by the interviewees that technology was important for the sharing and storing of knowledge. Though it would be wrong to assume that technology was the only or the most important facilitator of knowledge management, it could help in various processes such as effective communication of information and knowledge via e-mail and its facilities such as group distribution lists, and its speed of message transmission compared with other forms of communication.
Conclusion
In general, respondents thought that staff working in academic-related, or support departments, such as libraries or central computing facilities, would probably respond in a more positive way than their academic colleagues to concepts and practices associated with knowledge management. One interviewee remarked that it was the business of library staff to share information and knowledge, so perhaps the benefits of knowledge management would be easier to convey to them. Additionally, it was thought that library staff were more amenable to change, particularly since the advent of team-based structures in some institutions and close, if sometimes unofficial, co-operation with computing support services.
Most of the interviewees were optimistic that cultural changes would allow more effective knowledge sharing in the future. Some dwelt on the length of time it took to change the culture of an organisation, especially the culture of an academic institution where departments and faculties would not necessarily have similar approaches to how they worked. However, university structures were being developed in which larger, interdepartmental groups were replacing smaller departments, to help reduce the threat of conflicts between faculties about resources and working practices. The lack of rigid dividing lines between departments, it was hoped, would in turn lead to a more relaxed approach to sharing what had hitherto been jealously guarded by faculties, departments and individuals. Any shift in culture, however, was likely to be a painful process, but one which would lead to a far more open environment:
We have to be much more flexible in the kinds of organisations that we have, a much more developmental approach to managing, a much more organic approach to managing, and to our organisations ... You have to create the kind of organisation where people can join communities, can create new communities, can join groups, setting up task forces working across the organisation, bringing people together, [that's] actually really helpful.
Most of the interviewees felt that applying knowledge management principles was not an impossible task and some emphasised that knowledge management was by no means new:
I think that effective organisations have always shared knowledge and exploited knowledge effectively, maybe not using the technologies that we [now] have.
Several themes became apparent during the course of the interviews regarding the application of knowledge management principles. The planning of the project or programme was crucial in the eyes of one respondent. Essentially, knowledge management, like any other approach to managing resources, would involve an element of managing change. Such a process would need to be introduced with subtlety and care. The understanding and acceptance of the concepts behind knowledge management were vital to its successful implementation. However, it was also emphasised that a grasp of the fundamentals of knowledge management would not mean that its adoption wholesale would work:
If you had some kind of global vision and want to "do knowledge management" for a university you'd fall at the first hurdle ...
Equally, an approach to knowledge management, whereby senior management enforced its introduction to the organisation would be undesirable:
I don't believe that knowledge management can be a top-down-driven process. It has to be supported from the top, but it can't be its driving force. It has to be a process which is bottom-middle up ... You can't have the Vice-Chancellor, or me for that matter, saying "Right, we're going to share knowledge; there's a piece of technology, dump your brains into this, and do it by tomorrow or next week".
It needs to be far more than just saying yes, this is a good thing, and get on with it; it needs to be backed up by pushing resources into new areas ..., it crucially needs to involve participation by senior management, because that is the only way they get the understanding of what's going on and what's involved.
Equally vital was ensuring that library staff assertively promoted knowledge management to those running the organisation as a central activity of their work, presenting the library of information service as a resource that facilitated access to relevant information and knowledge. The need to identify those aspects of knowledge which added value to the library's contribution to the organisation was seen both to raise the profile of the library service and to provide staff with evidence that knowledge management initiatives were beneficial and worth pursuing. Some of the factors best able to augment the application of knowledge management were the features of any well-run organisation but were among the hardest to grasp and foster, namely the attitudes, attributes and working practices of its staff. While the need for support of senior staff for knowledge management projects was emphasised, it was also stressed that such projects should be instigated by members of staff at all levels. For this to be effective, an atmosphere of trust was seen to be vital. For example, at one university a major contributor to the effectiveness of the university's marketing group was the perception that staff involved, who came from departments dispersed across the university, could work together in the knowledge that:
... they get on with one another, they trust one another and they share best practice ... they see benefits for the organisation, for them and for the group of sharing ... knowledge.
If you look at really interesting knowledge strategies, they have much more to do with communities, of getting groups of people and individuals sharing their tacit knowledge with one another, having rules of exchange.
However, these networks and communities needed to be recognised and exploited in a sufficiently sensitive manner to avoid destroying trust and any ethos of reciprocity and co-operation which might have existed. One interviewee recognised that, to get knowledge management initiatives under way, the help and expertise of consultants from outside the library or university might be necessary. This being so, it was emphasised that support and implementation of new initiatives should be managed from within as much as possible, for instance, by human resources staff, and not just information services, or computing and information technology specialists. Once again, the willing collaboration of different elements of the university's expertise would be required to implement effectively new initiatives.

Posted by: mary / 6:48 PM 0 comments

Lynne Brindley. Information World Review. Oxford: Mar 2001. , Iss. 167; pg. 10, 1 pgs

Colin Sharman in his 1999 ISI annual lecture introduced the human dimension. He said: "The key problem for knowledge sharing is not technology or information literacy, but changing people's behaviour ... the largest challenge is the human factor ... we can only turn knowledge into value through sharing."

Posted by: mary / 6:38 PM 0 comments

Friday, September 24, 2004

Librarians in the knowledge age/Katarzyna Materska.-New Library World

The knowledge age has created a new context and challenges for different organisations and professional groups. Understanding the forces and trends that are shaping the future of the knowledge territory is very important for librarians.
There are many new factors shaping the environment of today's libraries. The characteristics of this new world include: knowledge society, knowledge-based economy, knowledge-intensive organisation, knowledge workers, organisational knowledge, knowledge culture and knowledge management, competitive intelligence and so forth. Most of these phenomena represent a significant career opportunity for librarians, an opportunity for improvement of their image, but also the need to change with the times.
It could be asked, what is the difference between information environment and knowledge environment? Generally speaking, in information environment librarians work with information objects (explicit representation of knowledge) - documents and collections (in different formats). In the knowledge environment they additionally have to work with people. The "complexity of human factors includes not just the organisational culture but the skills and abilities of the staff to be able to create, share and integrate knowledge" (Houghton and Halbwirth, 2002). This implies focus on relationships, collaboration, critical thinking, innovation, adaptability, intelligence and individual and group learning - generally on communication - as communication is the means to connect human minds through interaction.
In the knowledge age knowledge is power. People and organisations that have realized the true value of information (codified knowledge) and knowledge per se are succeeding today. However, working in the knowledge environment is not an easy task. Knowledge resides in human brains, in individuals, in communities of interest, in relationships between individuals and communities, not in collections. Knowledge has a dynamic structure, which is permanently undergoing change by the thinking and learning processes. Knowledge is not static. What is innovative today will become core knowledge tomorrow. Knowledge is generated and shaped through interaction between people. Very often knowledge is intangible; the so called "tacit knowledge" comes from collaboration, innovation and sharing (Houghton and Halbwirth, 2002) Much knowledge cannot be codified and remains inaccessible to modern information technology - intuition, hunches, subjective insights, beliefs are good examples of uncodifiable knowledge. Most information systems do not capture the knowledge or even the information that managers use in their daily lives (because managers rely very often on face-to-face or telephone conversations).
Knowledge workers whose jobs rely on their ability to find, synthesize, communicate and apply knowledge are becoming the most valuable resource in such a world.
Knowledge-based economy", "knowledge-driven economy", "new economy", "innovation-based economy", "learning economy", "digital economy", "network economy", "global economy", "borderless economy" are terms that came into the vocabulary of politicians and economists .
They are often used interchangeably and generally concentrate on the scale of ICT application. The problem of the knowledge economy and society is not a telecommunications or technology issue, it is a content issue, and, therefore, one in which the skills of librarians, information and knowledge professionals can play a part. The ability to access information by anyone and anywhere in a manner that is appropriate in format, which is convenient, affordable and reliable, is critical to knowledge economy and knowledge society. Thanks to information and communication technology (ICT) - one of the main driving forces of the knowledge economy - innovators and customers now have a choice of information markets and products, and an expectation that relevant and accurate information (in the language of choice) will be available 24 hours a day, via computer or mobile phone.
In March 2000 - during the Lisbon Summit (Lisbon European Council, 2000) - European heads of state and governments set a new goal for the European Union (EU) - to become the most competitive knowledge-based society in the world by 2010 They stressed that:
businesses and citizens must have access to an inexpensive, world-class communications infrastructure and a wide range of services;
every citizen must be equipped with the skills needed to live and work in this new information society; and
a higher priority must be given to lifelong learning as a basic component of the European social model (European Commission, Directorate General for Press and Communication, 2002).
The goal of the eEurope initiative[1] is to ensure that everyone (not just a privileged minority) in the EU - every citizen, every school, every company, every administration (and every library, we hope) - has access to the new ICTs and exploits them as fully as possible, to improve their quality of life[2].
ICT acts as a knowledge amplifier. Knowledge itself does not accelerate economic growth. Technology and sets of data alone are not sufficient to ensure economic success also:
In the end, the location of the new economy is not in the technology, be it the microchip or the global telecommunication network. It is in the human mind (Webber, 1993).
It is through research workers that firms can get appropriate knowledge and use it to produce innovative new products and services.
In this context the knowledge economy is a world in which:
people work with their brains instead of their hands;
communications technology creates global competition;
innovation is more important than mass production;
investment buys new concepts or the means to create them, rather than new machines; and
rapid change is constant (Encyclopedia of the New Economy, 2000).
Knowledge economy and society are not only information markets in which knowledge products and services are sold, but a space (Japanese "Ba") in which business enterprises, academic institutions and industry sectors are provided with the opportunity to collaborate in the sharing and transformation of their information and knowledge into a multitude of ideas, opportunities and solutions that create economic and social wealth (Bryson, 2001).
In this knowledge space it is necessary to also find libraries and librarians. The main task for the librarians is to organise and control the information and knowledge space. In this sense librarians can be called the managers of information and knowledge space.
Lifelong learning environment
Learning is the key to individuals succeeding in the new economy. At school, in further education, throughout people's working lives. The key capability for people to survive and thrive in the new economy is their capacity to learn, and then to apply that learning (Blair, 2000).
Companies face two key challenges in becoming effective learning organisations:
First they define themselves increasingly by what they know, and concentrate on developing core competencies, the flexible skills that allow them to produce distinctive, competitive products and services (OECD, 1997).
Open and distance learning (ODL) methods used by librarians and information professionals might be important factors for supporting some learning environments. Libraries for knowledge-base organisations could organise training courses and seminars via networks and in this way participate in organisational learning models. They could - as previously - serve as multi-media learning centers lending videos, books, audiotapes, CD-ROMs, etc. to help employees to fulfill their current jobs in a better way, or to prepare them for new jobs or processes. In this way they create ability to learn, ability to change and ability to create relations, which are so important in the knowledge economy. Librarians and other information professionals should act as the facilitators of learning, helping learners to develop the knowledge of tools and services and the skills to access, evaluate and utilise information and knowledge. They should help people to become information-literate knowledge workers.
Contemporary organisations have three key resources - information, IT and people.
However, information (collections) and new technologies are meaningless without skilled and intelligent knowledge workers:
Knowledge workers are at the core of an innovation-based economy. They are central to corporate competitiveness and the resilience of the economy. They are workers with transportable - and transformable - skills. They are adaptive learners, continually retraining within reasonable timeframes and at reasonable costs to take on new tasks of work practices (Nymark, 1997).
Professionals - knowledge and research workers - are a key source of new ideas and the wealth creators in the knowledge age. They are responsible both for producing knowledge and exploiting it.
The links between the economy and the literacy of knowledge workers are obvious:
High literacy skills are determinant of individual economic potential: higher employment participation, lower unemployment probabilities and higher skilled employment ... As far as macro-economy is considered, literacy and gross domestic product (GDP) go hand in hand (Pont and Werquin, 2000).
Information literacy is a survival skill in the information age[5]. Literacy "is a means to achieving individual goals and developing individual knowledge and potential" (OECD, 2001b). Instead of drowning in the abundance of information that floods their lives, information-literate people know how to define what information is needed, how and where to obtain it; they can evaluate it, and use information effectively to solve a particular problem or make a decision to help the organisation achieve the greatest advantage - whether the information they select comes from a computer, a book, a government agency, a film, or any number of other possible resources. In all instances information should be used according to ethical and legal constructs.
Libraries, which provide a significant public access point to such information and usually at no cost, must play a key role in preparing people for the demands of today's information society. It is important to remember that today's library users are the knowledge workers of tomorrow also.
It is worth noticing that new technologies influence the general understanding of "information literacy". In order to describe this concept different authors use different terms. Bawden (2001) and Clausen (2000) in their review of concepts discuss the occurrence of various terms related to "information literacy" in the literature: "computer literacy" (synonyms: IT/information technology, electronic/electronic information technology); "library literacy", "media literacy", "network literacy", "Internet literacy", "Web literacy" and "hyper-literacy", "digital literacy". All of these are based largely on specific skills, but they lead to general concepts, such as information literacy and digital literacy, which are based on knowledge, perceptions and attitudes. The term "digital literacy", for instance, has been used more recently, to encompass the situation where networked resources are a significant part of those available, and includes such skills as "hypertextual navigation" and "knowledge assembly" (Bawden, 2001). In the knowledge-based environment the concept of information literacy moves towards a concept of knowledge literacy "which encompasses a myriad of skills that provide a basis for meeting the challenges [of this environment]" (Houghton and Halbwirth, 2002). These skills are needed, for instance, for collaboration, sharing, innovation, problem solving and decision making.
Librarians as knowledge workers
In a natural way librarians who use their mind to work with information, understand its nature, know how to use it, transmit and produce information as a product are knowledge workers.
Participating in today's knowledge economy requires increasingly complex skills. According to the International Adult Literacy Survey[6], workers of the "information age" not only must have higher levels of education, but also the ability to adapt, learn and master new skills quickly and efficiently. The level of "information skills" - especially the ability to filter out information (or lack thereof) may be the primary cause of either professional success, or failure of a knowledge worker.
As mentioned above, the main feature of knowledge environment is working with people. In this context the success of librarians as knowledge workers depends on some of the skills stressed as follows:
Communication skills. These relate to the ability to convey somebody's knowledge to other people effectively. Forces shaping today's new knowledge age, have made communicating information a must for all organisations and their employees. This involves not only making oral presentations, but also preparing written reports, and the like. If librarians refuse to communicate with knowledge workers" communities they will not be taken into account in the knowledge world at all - and the knowledge workers are a group whom librarians should serve in the knowledge age before any other.
Interpersonal skills. These rely on the ability to work with other people. In business this may involve explaining a warranty to a customer, working in a team environment to solve a problem, negotiating contract terms with a supplier, or a variety of other people-interactive tasks. In the age of ubiquitous information retrieval systems the problem of disintermediation (Downie, 1999), or the act of bypassing librarians and other information specialists, appears in the literature more often. This means that end users are trying to find their own way through the information universe. However, if "users of all kinds are going straight to the information then those who organise information to enhance access are needed more than ever" (Lawton, 2002).
There is another side of the phenomenon of "information at your fingertips". It is information overload of which Butcher's (1995) research highlighted two dimensions. First, personal information overload and its relationship to stress and lack of control, and second, organisational information overload hampering effective decision making and problem solving.
This phenomenon acquires special meaning in the knowledge-based economy. "We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge" (Naisbitt, 1982).
Thus in the knowledge age - as a consequence of civilized, economic and technological changes - information stress is a very common and serious problem facing knowledge workers:
Today, information can be gathered and diffused on a global scale, bringing with it countless opportunities, but also fear and frustration, with many people worrying that they are being left behind (Andersson and Kang, 2001).
While computers have become faster and more powerful the human brain can absorb only the limited portion of information and knowledge. Information fatigue syndrome is a result of enormous frustration because of unread articles, reports, memos and the deluge of new information with which people want to be acquainted.
Assisting people with their information problems and frustrations, giving them advice in an increasingly complex and volatile information and knowledge environment probably can diminish this stress. Hence the daily work of librarians with selecting and evaluating information can be seen as a kind of therapy - "infotherapy".
Communication and interpersonal skills are very important in preparing new information products by librarians. Library portals (or vortals) can be considered as an example. The process of designing such products promotes cooperation between librarians from different libraries, different cities or sometimes even countries. It promotes communication with experts from a wide range of disciplines and creates a kind of collective intelligence. Such activities provoke sharing knowledge about users and provide a good platform for communicating with knowledge workers about their needs (but also their wants and desires) and opinions. This feedback is really useful and librarians should not be afraid of experimenting, because this is a method by which necessary experience and unique knowledge can be obtained. In this way, librarians are able to prepare a unique product, filled with knowledge and innovation, a space in which the knowledge workers can meet and collaborate. This collaborative method of attaining the final product is its greatest asset, so valued in the knowledge age.
To succeed as knowledge workers librarians need to understand:
The true nature of information (what makes certain information highly valuable, and other information completely worthless).
Knowledge - how knowledge is acquired, constructed, transferred and otherwise shared with other members of the organisation or society (in a way that seeks to achieve the organisation's/society's objectives).
Changing needs of knowledge workers (librarians in particular should be aware that today's users are tomorrow's knowledge workers. They should know their users - not only have information about them).
How to harness the power of individuals by supporting them with communication and information technologies and other tools (being technologically literate).
How to enhance the learning capabilities of individuals and groups (sustaining lifelong learning).
How to prepare/stimulate, maintain and strengthen the knowledge culture It cannot be assumed that people will share information and knowledge just because the network allows them to. The problem is to get people to change the way they think about sharing their knowledge as a natural process).
How to extend their skills into managing knowledge, how to manage "knowledge space" (enabling research, supporting innovation).
The ethical responsibilities of working with information and knowledge.
The new knowledge environment is a period of rapid change for all information professionals. In the literature many names can be found for new roles and positions of information professionals - "facilitators/enablers of knowledge", "navigators of knowledge", "knowledge leaders", "change agents" (in the process of moving from information management to knowledge management), "chief knowledge officers", knowledge engineers, content managers, innovators, teachers, learners, etc. (Baruchson-Arbiband Bronstein, 2002; Pedley, 2001; Durno et al., 2001; Corcoran et al., 2000; Oxbrow, 2000).
The essential question in the knowledge age is how information professionals (librarians included) can help to transform existing information into structures of useful and easy accessible knowledge. The essence of this transition must be analyzed from many points of view. Hitherto existing activities of librarians involve assisting people in communicating and interacting with each other, learning new information and "knowledge skills", and prepare people to be effective knowledge workers. They create more and more effective systems of training information skills, build knowledge portals, design interfaces, which enable information to be turned into knowledge and solutions giving equal access for different socio-economic groups to a network of knowledge - containing all types of information in all sort of formats. Value-added products and services of information professionals amplify the potential usefulness of the messages they deliver through greater ease of use, noise reduction, in proved data quality, greater adaptability, and so on (Choo, 1998). Their work will enable people to save time and energy and increase their access to the world's knowledge and information.
The success of eEurope (knowledge-based Europe) depends not only on European institutions, national, regional and local governments throughout the EU, businesses, universities and library schools. It depends on each library and information professional who contributes to sustaining social change in the knowledge society. Librarians should understand all these changes and should be prepared to take advantage of them in their workplace.
Indeed, it is a formidable challenge to be a highly qualified librarian in the knowledge age, but it is well worth trying.

Posted by: mary / 3:59 PM 0 comments

Knowledge Management:Are We in the Knowledge Management Business?/Sheila Corrall

Over the last twelve months Knowledge Management (KM) has become the latest hot topic in the business world. There has been a phenomenal growth in interest and activity, as seen in many new publications, conferences, IT products, and job advertisements (including a post advertised by HEFCE). Various professional groups, notably HR professionals, IT specialists, and librarians, are staking their claims, seeing KM as an opportunity to move centre stage. People often used to describe librarianship as the organisation of recorded knowledge, so perhaps our time has come?
there is still quite a gap between KM theory and KM practice.
Explicit knowledge is formal and systematic. For this reason it can be easily communicated and shared, in product specifications or a scientific formula or a computer program. Tacit knowledge is highly personal. It is hard to formalise and therefore difficult, if not impossible, to communicate.
Tacit or implicit knowledge (also referred to as 'experimental' knowledge) is thus both unrecorded and unarticulated.
move from tacit to explicit knowledge, and reduce the risk of losing valuable knowledge if people leave the organisation. Loss of 'corporate memory' as a result of downsizing is one of the prime reasons given for adopting formal KM practices. Other factors often mentioned include global competition and the pace of change; organisations see KM as a means of avoiding repetition of mistakes, reducing duplication of effort, saving time on problem-solving, stimulating innovation and creativity, and getting closer to their customers.
However, while KM is arguably an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary development, there are several aspects of this current phenomenon which taken together represent a significant change in the way organisations manage people, processes and information. KM involves taking a more holistic view of information, not only combining internal and external information - previously practised in some corporate libraries, relatively rarely in other sectors - but also co-ordinating planning and control (monitoring) information, and consolidating informal ('soft') and formal ('hard') information. KM also requires a strategic focus on valuable knowledge, concentrating on knowledge that will contribute to the improvement of organisational performance.
Converting informal personal contextualised knowledge to formal systematic organisational knowledge is the key objective, exemplified by creating databases of frequently asked questions (FAQs) searchable by both employees and customers, and compiling lists of what went right and what went wrong in projects (lessons learned) as guidelines for similar future undertakings.
In addition to improving the visibility of knowledge, another aim is to develop its intensity, by creating a climate to encourage generation of ideas within workgroups, and (eventually) generalisation to other areas. At the same time, as organisations are concerned about information overload, a further objective is to achieve a better balance between 'pushing' and 'pulling' it, by giving people just-in-time access to knowledge, allowing the need to know to be determined by the information user (not the 'owner').
Applications typically fall into the following broad categories:
Knowledge databases and repositories (explicit knowledge) - storing information and documents that can be shared and re-used, for example, client presentations, competitor intelligence, customer data, marketing materials, meeting minutes, policy documents, price lists, product specifications, project proposals, research reports, training packs;
Knowledge routemaps and directories (tacit and explicit knowledge) - pointing to people, document collections and datasets that can be consulted, for example, 'yellow pages'/'expert locators' containing CVs, competency profiles, research interests;
Knowledge networks and discussions (tacit knowledge) - providing opportunities for face-to-face contacts and electronic interaction, for example, establishing chat facilities/'talk rooms', fostering learning groups and holding 'best practice' sessions.
These efforts must be supported by building a knowledge management infrastructure, including both technical and organisational aspects - systems and processes for capturing, structuring, diffusing and re-using knowledge; roles and responsibilities for making things happen; and a culture and style that promotes communication and sharing. Although a culture of teamwork and trust is more important than the technological infrastructure, a consistent and reliable organisation-wide communications and IT infrastructure is essential (incorporating security, standards and support for users). IT thus provides the network for sharing at a technical level; it is a necessary condition, but not sufficient in itself to ensure successful KM.
KM requires a mix of technical, organisational and interpersonal skills: the mix and emphasis varies according to responsibilities, but everyone involved needs to be able to understand the business, communicate effectively and have at least basic competence in handling information and using IT. Although LIS people are not always prominently involved at the outset of KM initiatives, many organisations have brought them in at a later stage, when the ongoing management of content usually emerges as the major technical challenge. The need to structure and codify information, to have a common language, and to manage selective dissemination of information, has highlighted information specialists' skills in indexing systems, thesaurus construction, and user profiling for customised alerting.
librarians' traditional reluctance to move beyond the information container towards analysis and interpretation of its contents has resulted in organisations overlooking their potential contribution, even in areas where their competence should be obvious. Information professionals are seen as service- oriented, but not value- oriented - they don't understand the impact they can have on the business. Both the British Library Research and Innovation Centre and the Library and Information Commission are concerned about the profession's role in KM, and are sponsoring investigations of skills needs to influence curriculum development for professional education and the continuing professional development of practitioners.
knowledge management involves connecting people with people, as well as people with information. It is a management philosophy, which combines good practice in purposeful information management with a culture of organisational learning, in order to improve business performance. The core skills of library and information professionals are both relevant and essential to effective knowledge management, but they are often under-utilised and under-valued. Surely it is our job to put this right.

Posted by: mary / 2:58 PM 1 comments

Thursday, September 23, 2004

KM: re-thinking information management and facing the challenge of managing tacit knowledge/Suliman Al-Hawamdeh/Information Research, Vol. 8 No. 1, Oc

Knowledge embodied in books and journals does not necessarily translate into useful and usable knowledge unless it is read, manipulated and communicated from one person to another. In other words, knowledge can only reside in the minds of people and the minute it leaves the human mind, it is information.
not all types of knowledge can be codified and captured. Knowledge in the form of skills and competencies can only be transferred from one person to another through interaction. Information management on the other hand deals with knowledge that can be captured, processed and managed.
The knowledge management activities comprise the construction of information management systems, artificial intelligence, data mining and other enabling technologies.
The core knowledge management activities encompass assessing, changing and improving human individual skills and/or behaviour. It is a complex set of dynamic skills and know-how that is constantly changing.
Everyone is more or less agreed that explicit knowledge is information. Information management and systems is a very well established area and many of us familiar with the techniques and methods used for processing and managing information. The confusion surrounding knowledge management seems to be contributed largely to the lack of understanding of tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is a type of knowledge that many people believe that can only exist in the human minds. It is a product of people interaction with each other and the people interaction with the environment around them. Polyni (1958, 1966) referred to tacit knowledge as something that we do unconsciously and most of the time we are not aware of its existence. Knowledge in the form of skills and competencies is normally acquired through training and interaction with the environment. It is not only difficult to articulate, but according to Polyni, it is something that we cannot express and even we do not know. He explains, 'we can know more than we can tell'.
not all types of knowledge can be captured and codified as information. A great deal of useful knowledge is normally lost when people leave their organizations or they feel that there is no incentive for them to share what is rightly theirs.
One of the key technologies that is driving knowledge management is collaborative technology. Collaboration tools enable a company's professionals to work together and work virtually regardless of the geographical location. Web technology allows organizations to build Web and knowledge portals that can handle substantial amount of information and made it accessible to users anywhere anytime.
Information management systems are a very important component of any knowledge management project. But while these tools are very useful, unfortunately, they are not designed to capture the complexity of context and the richness of knowledge. Clearly, there is a need to rethink the approach in designing and developing information systems. There is a need to go beyond merely the search and replace approach of changing the word document in "document management" to the word knowledge in "knowledge management". Unless knowledge management leads to fundamental changes in the design, development and deployment of information systems, it will remain an illusion best described as that of the 'Emperor's new clothes'.
Indeed, in the Internet world where customer expect services to be available on a twenty-four hour basis, firms have no choice but to make the quantum leap improvement in various aspects of their services such as time-to-market, time-to-solution and time-to-delivery, or risk being forced out of business. This in turn created the need for organizations to have organized information to facilitate their operations, information that is timely, accurate, useful and more importantly tailored to organization’s need. There is also increased pressure on firms to recycle and re-use knowledge, instead of reinventing the wheel.
In order to stay ahead of the competition, firms nowadays understand fully the need to know (a) their customers and (b) their competitors deeply. Stewart (1997), recognized that customers are an integral part of the firm’s intellectual capital (i.e., customer capital) and the firm’s reason for existence.
knowledge management plays a critical role in managing customer relationship and competitive intelligence, by collecting jigsaw pieces of information and piecing together the puzzle on the customers, competitors and the overall market.
'Knowledge has become the primary ingredient of what we make, do, buy and sell. As a result, managing it - finding and growing intellectual capital, storing it, selling it, sharing it - has become the most important economic task of individuals, business and nations.'
Drucker (1988), predicted that the organization of the future would be knowledge-based and would comprise largely of specialists who direct and discipline their own performance through organized feedback from colleagues, customers and headquarters. He added that a large and successful information-based organization would be one without any middle management.
Stewart explained that the rise of the knowledge worker is the result of an elevation of work from 'hands to mind', from sweatshop jobs to knowledge-work jobs. He added that in the New Economy, there is a fundamental change in the approach to performance measurement: professionals are measured by their ability to deliver results rather than the competency in performing the tasks. This supported by Drucker (1988), who asserted that that business needed to turn themselves into 'organizations of knowledge specialists'.
Stewart viewed human capital as the most important asset of companies nowadays and not the traditional view of raw materials and machinery. He noted that the way huge corporations scrambled to find ways to retain their best staff (e.g., generous stock options, huge bonus) is an indication. However, he argued that human capital on its own cannot make the impact, it needs Structural Capital, to 'manage the knowledge'. Structural Capital’s role in Intellectual Capital is 'continuous recycling and creation utilization of shared knowledge and experiences'. Its purpose is two-fold: (a) codify and preserve knowledge that can be transferred, specifically through documentation or storage in databases; and (b) facilitate the linking of people to their sources for data, experts and expertise - on a just-in-time basis.
The public sector is also turning to knowledge management, having recognized that they too face competition in funding and from alternative services. Increasingly, customers in the public sector are demanding higher service quality, particularly in the area of e-government. Services, particularly e-services, are expected to be available on a twenty-four hour, seven days a week basis, immediate response and attention, simplified and one-stop processing, quality products and services and fast processing time. Knowledge management is thus a natural solution for them to improve operations and enhance customer service. Large organizations in the US have begun implementing knowledge management as long as eight years ago.
Knowledge management as a concept is very attractive and to many organizations is trendy and nice to be associated with. For many IT vendors and management consultants, it is a business opportunity that should not be missed. But while there is nothing wrong with making business sense out of knowledge management, there is a need to go beyond the search and replace practice of the word information to the word knowledge. Information management is a subset of knowledge management and technology should be seen as an enabler and part of infrastructure. For the majority of those interested in knowledge management, the key drivers are organisational efficiency, maximising organisation’s potential, competitive advantage, building a learning organisation and managing intellectual capital. However, implementing knowledge management is also not that easy. Organisations wanting to implement knowledge management have to grabble with issues such as strategy, technology, organizational culture and knowledge organization. But despite all these issues, companies worldwide in both the private and public sector have shown keen interest in knowledge management, judging from the amount of money expected to be committed for knowledge management in the next few years.

Posted by: mary / 5:26 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Knowledge Management in Libraries in the 21st Century/Tang Shanhong,66th IFLA Council and General

Knowledge management in libraries should be focused on effective research and development of knowledge, creation of knowledge bases, exchange and sharing of knowledge between library staffs (including its users), training of library staff, speeding up explicit processing of the implicit knowledge and realizing of its sharing.
Human Resource Management Is the Core of Knowledge Management in Libraries
In the knowledge economy era, the libraries will attach importance to vocational training and lifelong education of library staffs to raise their scientific knowledge level and ability of acquiring and innovating knowledge.
The Objective of Knowledge Management in Libraries is to Promote Knowledge Innovation .
Knowledge management in libraries is to promote relationship in and between libraries, between library and user, to strengthen knowledge internetworking and to quicken knowledge flow. In the knowledge economy era, libraries will carry out researches on development and application of information resources, construction of virtual libraries, protection of intellectual property rights in the electronic era etc., thus founding the base for knowledge innovation.
As a completely new method of management, knowledge management in libraries leaves much to be desired in its theoretical system.
knowledge management in libraries should include such respects as follows:
Knowledge Innovation Management:
theoretical innovation management of knowledge, technical innovation management and organizational innovation management.
Theoretical innovation management is to enrich and enlarge the theoretical and practical research fields of library science and information science through pursuing the latest development trends in library science the world over. Technical innovation management is to manage the network systems constructed by institutions and organizations that relate to the full course of technical innovation. In their evolution from conventional libraries to electronic libraries, or digital libraries, Libraries should make technical breakthroughs and progress and build up technical facilities to support knowledge management. Organizational innovation management is to create a set of effective organizational management systems adaptable to the requirements in the electronic library era to support and strengthen knowledge management activities, by optimizing the functional departments and operation procedures of libraries.
Knowledge Dissemination Management
Knowledge dissemination is of equal importance as compared to knowledge innovation. Knowledge creators do not have much time and energy to look for knowledge users. Though there are a multitude of knowledge users, it is very difficult to acquire knowledge that already exists in the minds of knowledge creators as restricted by various objective and subjective conditions. Therefore, libraries may play the part of knowledge tosser, use diverse media and channels to disseminate various new knowledge. In the 21st century, the Internet, with its mass information and extensive contents, will provide people with the main approach to searching knowledge and acquiring information. But now there emerge absurd, salacious, false and uncivil information resulting from seeking for commercial profits and political objectives on the Net. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen knowledge dissemination management in libraries as follows:
uninterruptedly strengthening the creation of libraries' own document resources and deepening the development of document information resources;
continuously raising the quality of libraries' staffs and strengthening continuous engineering education of working staffs;
giving full play to the special role of the expert system in knowledge dissemination;
making a comprehensive utilization of all media to ensure security of operation of networks, and Therefore, knowledge services based on high-speed information networks should be carried out by:
Setting up virtual libraries or information centers for enterprises, governments, public organizations and scientific research institutions. It is difficult for an enterprise or a social organization to put sufficient manpower, material and financial resources on information gathering, organizing and developing. It is also impossible and unnecessary to spend a large amount of funds on information resources for their own use. Libraries can create virtual libraries or information centers for these organs separately according to their respective information requirements by using abundant information resources on the high-speed information networks.
Setting up digitized knowledge services which is actually a development trend of libraries in the 21st century. This presupposes: creating step by step the users-oriented information service systems such as information dissemination, information search and special supply of information; quickening the creation of digitized libraries; studying the methods, means and techniques of information distribution and search with the Internet as the base and WEB technique as the core.
Digitizing libraries' resources. The electronic libraries or digitized libraries are the technical modes and development trends of libraries in the knowledge economy era. The knowledge services of libraries in the future will start with creation of databases comprising electronic journals and books in different languages that have discipline features and can operate on high-speed information networks. Great efforts should be made to transform all existing large non-electronic information resources into electronic information and integrate them into electronic libraries.
Human Resources Management
Human resources management takes it as its basic starting point to train high quality specialized talents and to revitalize the library undertaking. In practice, we should pay full attention to diversity and variation of library staffs' requirements, strengthened management of different library staffs by applying contingency management approach. That is, to some people, rigid management method is applied, rigorous supervision and control imposed, and quantity and quality requirements of work according to regulations and procedures are made clear. And, to the rest of people, more flexible management method is applied to let them participate in decision-making and consultation and undertake more jobs so as to bring their management abilities into full play and realize organizational and personal objectives. Doing well in continuous engineering education of specialized staffs, which should not only focus on the theory of library science and related disciplines, but also cover the latest technical knowledge. And strengthening professional ethics education [6].
Technologies for Realizing Knowledge Management of Libraries: One of the aims of knowledge management in libraries is to promote the knowledge exchange among library staffs, strengthen innovation consciousness and abilities, arise the library staffs' enthusiasm and abilities for learning, making the knowledge most efficiently applied to business activities of the library, and rebuilding the library into a learning organization. Therefore, the main train of thought in realizing knowledge management of libraries is a rational design of the organizational structure and business procedures of libraries, and cultural fostering, as well as modernized information support, thus creating an environment and incentive mechanism for innovation, exchange, study and application of the
In the Field of Organizational Structure, Business Processes and Culture of Libraries
(1) Introducing the CKO SystemThe Chief Information Officer (CIO) is a conspicuously high management position that has emerged successively in the government departments and large organizations in Western countries since the 1980s. The Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) is the highest-ranking person in charge of knowledge management, which has evolved from CIO along with the transition of information research management into knowledge management. The CKO system represents the latest development trends of the information management system of the organizations, and marks the transition of information management from the stage of information resources management to that of knowledge management. [7].
(2) Realizing seamless combination of library business management with knowledge management during the business process reorganization of librariesKnowledge management integrates itself with the whole process of knowledge exchange, sharing, innovation and application of the organization, and becomes the key driving force for the knowledge innovation, exchange and application of the organization. The implementation of knowledge management will inevitably give rise to organization of library business process. This reorganization will also be the process of further combination of library business management with knowledge management.
(3) Rebuilding the library culture by using the theory of knowledge management Knowledge management will inject new blood into the library culture. The main contents include: mutual trust, open exchange, studying, sharing and developing knowledge operation mechanism of libraries, enjoying the knowledge management process [8]. In a word, to make full use of knowledge, it is necessary to foster a new type of library culture suitable to its requirement. This is high level requirement of realizing technology of knowledge management.
In the Field of Information Technology
The main information technologies relevant to knowledge management includes: Internet, Intranet and Extranet; storage architectures; database management systems; metadata; data acquisition and gathering; dissemination, messaging; push and pull; information retrieval; information resources sharing; groupware; middleware; on-line analytical processing; multidimensional analysis and data mining. How to convert data to the object of knowledge management - knowledge is also relevant to some basic information technologies, mainly including data processing, reporting, networked communication, document management, information search and retrieval, relational and object-oriented databases, electronic publishing, work flow and help desks [9].
In addition, because of the differences in architecture, usage and characteristics between information and knowledge, the storage and management of knowledge are more complicated than those of information. The storage architecture technology, database management system technology and metadata are also the key technologies in knowledge management.
Conclusions:
Economic environment and information environment is changing quickly today. Knowledge management has become a powerful tool for promoting innovation and realizing reengineering the various walks of life. It occupies very outstanding position in the creation of the knowledge innovation systems of a country. How for the library circles to meet the challenge of knowledge economy and to build the knowledge management systems of libraries is a subject that demands our urgent study and solution.

Posted by: mary / 11:19 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Knowledge management - the new librarianship?./Jennifer Rowley.Library Management,Volume 24 Number 8 2003 pp. 433-440

the issue of the relationship between knowledge management (KM) and librarianship has received considerable attention. Some proponents are currently promoting KM as the way forward, While others stubbornly declare that KM is simply old librarianship in new clothing. In this, they would sometimes seem to believe that if the library and information profession rejects the notions, concepts, language and practice of KM it will go away.
KM is, in conceptual terms a paradigm, and in professional terms, a collection of strategies and practices that has arisen in response to the needs of organizations, businesses, communities and governments in the knowledge-based society of the twenty-first century.
While accepting a considerable degree of fuzziness exists around "KM" as different stakeholder groups seek to make it their own, and integrate it with their disciplinary knowledge bases and professional practices, this article takes a provocative position on the relationship between librarianship and KM.
There is a general agreement that knowledge is:
... a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experience and information (Davenport and Prusak, 1998, p. 5).
Knowledge is differentiated from data, and information. Data are raw facts, which when organized become information, whereas knowledge is meaningful information (Bhatt, 2001). Knowledge can be broadly grouped into individual and organizational knowledge. Individual knowledge resides in an individual mind. Organizational knowledge, on the other hand, is knowledge that is formed through interactions between technologies, techniques and people. A common classification of organizational knowledge (Nonaka, 1991) is into explicit knowledge, which can be documented and shared, and implicit or tacit knowledge, which resides in the minds, cultures, and experiences within the organization.
KM is concerned with the exploitation and development of the knowledge assets of an organization with a view to furthering the organization's objectives (Davenport et al., 1998).
There are a number of models of KM. For example, the information processing model of KM focuses on the processes related to acquiring, codifying, distributing and utilizing knowledge, and privileges explicit k