Moving from Librarian to Knowledge Manager

Headnote

Abstract

Embracing knowledge management (KM), or at least learning how to align one's work with knowledge management vocabulary and processes within an organization, can prove beneficial to librarians whether they are working inside or outside of a library setting. For library and information science (LIS) professionals seeking opportunities outside of library settings, knowledge management projects, which may be led by teams from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, provide an opportunity that matches the skillset they have developed through their LIS education or through employment experience in a library. For libraries, particularly special and corporate libraries trying to articulate their value to funding or strategic decision making bodies, repositioning the work the library does in terms of knowledge management may prove beneficial as it allows the library to demonstrate its potential contributions to organizational goals and its ability to directly help business units. This article provides a brief introduction to knowledge management for LIS professionals who are unfamiliar with the concept or practice, identifies some barriers that have prevented libraries from engaging in KM activities in the past, outlines the competencies that are required to practice KM, and provides some directions on how LIS professionals can develop these competencies. The article provides readers interested in pursuing opportunities in knowledge management with the background information they need to get started.

Keywords

knowledge management; value; career opportunities; LIS competencies

Introduction

Knowledge management (KM) refers to a set of practices or processes that facilitate the creation, capture, organization, and dissemination of knowledge (see, for example, Firestone and McElroy 3 or Koenig 10). Although the various practices and principles of KM have existed for centuries in some form or another, the discipline of knowledge management emerged in the 1990s and has been enjoying significant uptake in various domains since then. The reason for KM's popularity, particularly in management practice, is the list of benefits that it can bring to an organization. These benefits include increased efficiencies realized through the reduction in duplication of effort, reduced research and development costs, reductions in the amount of time it takes an organization to train a new employee, improved organizational memory, improved strategic planning, and greater opportunities for innovation (Dubois and Wilkerson 38). Given the wide range of benefits that KM can bring to an organization, moving into KM can be an excellent way for a special or corporate library to prove its value to its parent organization or for a librarian to utilize his or her skill set in a variety of work settings. Several authors, such as Mahesh and Suresh, Tredwell, and Tjaden, have argued that there is a natural link between librarianship and knowledge management. This article will clarify that link and provide librarians with some practical advice that they can apply to allow them to move from librarian to knowledge manager.

Understanding Knowledge

Significant research attention has been devoted to the description of knowledge and knowledge processes such as knowledge transfer. Developing a basic understanding of the vocabulary, principles, and theories behind knowledge management is an important starting point for librarians considering a move into the field. The author's primer on knowledge management, available on YouTube at https://www.voutube.com/watch?v=ZnSS PrLul c, provides some of this background information. Another helpful way to initially understand knowledge management and librarians' ability to transition into this activity is to examine the hierarchy model of knowledge first developed by Ackoff in 1989.

The hierarchy model is a common way of describing and understanding knowledge through its hierarchical relationships with other shareable elements such as data and information. Data is described as a set of facts, writings, numbers, or symbols that are directly observable or verifiable but generally unorganized or unanalyzed (Dalkir 7). An example of data is daily temperatures. Librarians have been increasingly entering into the realm of data management as "data librarian" roles are becoming more and more common. This role includes the gathering, organization, and validation of data as well as the ability to evaluate and explain data to others.

The next level of the pyramid is information. The difference between data and information is analytical processing: "when these raw facts are contextualized, categorized, calculated, corrected, and condensed, it leads to codification and becomes explicit..." (Srikantaiah 19). Continuing our example, if daily temperatures were data, then organizing them into climate charts which could be checked by year, month or date, and cross-referenced with other information such as the highest or lowest recorded temperatures for the data, trends across past years etc., represent information. Librarians have historically been the key players in the information layer of the pyramid. They catalogue information resources to allow people to find it using various access points. They verify its quality, accuracy, and authority. They condense it through abstracts, annotated bibliographies, reviews, pathfinders, and other reference tools.

Knowledge is the third level of the hierarchy. Although there are numerous definitions and categories of knowledge (particularly the tacit and explicit divide), knowledge is generally seen as information that has been given meaning by an individual (see Koenig for an overview of knowledge management definitions and history). It is also frequently linked with a particular action or decision - "know how" - and is therefore more strategic than information. Continuing with the weather analogy, a person who has an idea of what weather patterns to expect in a season based on past trends may use this knowledge to plan his or her activities. For example, a hobby gardener may avoid planting fruits or vegetables that are sensitive to mould during a season that is expected to be particularly wet. According to Srikantaiah, "knowledge focuses on experience, values, and the context in which information is applied to a message" (20). There is a final level of the hierarchy that sits on top of knowledge, and that level is wisdom. Wisdom involves applying knowledge to make strategic decisions that align with an individual's or organization's values.

Moving Up the Pyramid

So, if librarians are already working at the bottom two layers of the hierarchy, what do they need to do to move up to the top layers so as to be able to assist organizations in organizing their data, information, and knowledge with the objective of acting with wisdom? As a starting point, librarians need to stop creating artificial restrictions over the types of information they are willing to manage. Some libraries and librarians choose to differentiate themselves from information managers and records managers by suggesting that "we" deal with external information such as books, articles, journals and conference proceedings, whereas "they" deal with internal information such as unpublished reports, meeting minutes, and project updates. This differentiation is disadvantageous to both librarians and our information clients for several reasons.

First, the "us" versus "them" distinction is unnecessary. Many of the people who are employed in records and information management have librarian or library technician backgrounds. These related fields have many characteristics in common, such as experience organizing information, an understanding of access points, and an interest in quickly connecting people with the information they need. They are also distinct enough that they each have something to bring to the table.

Second, information users do not differentiate between internally and externally produced information when making business decisions. They simply want the most current and relevant information available on whatever topic they are examining. Note also that the hierarchy of knowledge did not differentiate between internal and external information. Either type of information could be used by an organization to generate new knowledge, and that knowledge could manifest itself in either "external" or "internal" formats. For example, knowledge could be created for external audiences in the form of a publication or conference session or for internal audiences in the form of a procedure or "lessons learned" report. If we as information professionals differentiate between these two types of information, then we may create information silos that will lead to either information gaps or duplications of effort for our clients.

Knowledge Management Competencies

Once a librarian has committed to the idea of moving into knowledge management, one of the first questions to consider is what competencies will he or she need to succeed. The question of what competencies a knowledge manager should have has been addressed by many authors across disciplines, particularly in the information science and management fields (see, for example, Bedford 202; Roknuzzaman and U mem oto 283-284). Given the emphasis that is often placed on information technology in knowledge management, there can be an assumption that strong IT skills are the primary requirement for a knowledge manager. IT skills or literacy is one of the competencies that is involved in knowledge management, but it is arguably not the most important prerequisite.

The traits of a successful knowledge manager include technical, interpersonal, and analytical skills. Table 1 lists these competencies which are described in detail below.

Technical Competencies

The technical skills required for knowledge management are not restricted to the realm of information technology but encompass skills and knowledge areas that have long been included in library and information science curricula (Roknuzzaman and Umemoto 280-281).

The knowledge manager should have enough knowledge of information storage and retrieval systems, including document management systems, electronic collaboration systems, and case management systems, to be able to find information in them with ease and to be able to assist other employees in their use, but they are not required to have the skills to design, implement or maintain these systems. The information technology community is full of individuals with these skill sets, and attempting to gain mastery in a work area that is already occupied is of little value.

Interpersonal Competencies

Interpersonal competencies are vital to a knowledge manager because knowledge management is fundamentally about connecting people with the knowledge they need to do their jobs. In order to do this, a knowledge manager needs to understand both how people work and how the organization works. Obtaining this insight requires the knowledge manager to be able to communicate well with others, to build trust, and to promote collaboration. The information that the knowledge manager needs to do his or her job is sometimes hidden inside employees' minds, so the ability to talk to people and ask the right questions to reveal that information is of vital importance. Knowledge management also involves a great deal of training, coaching and mentoring. KM initiatives often involve the implementation of new tools or technologies. The knowledge manager is frequently involved in either building training programs or directly training employees in the use of these systems. Finally, knowledge management involves change management because KM asks people to work differently by either adding processes to deliberately make tacit knowledge explicit, utilizing new systems or connections with groups such as communities of practice to get work done, or amending procedures entirely based on "lessons learned". An understanding of how people respond to changes in the workplace can help the knowledge manager to better plan and implement KM projects.

Analytical Competencies

Finally, knowledge management requires an organization to harness its knowledge resources for strategic purposes. As such, knowledge managers must therefore possess strong analytical and strategic thinking skills to be able to recognize information and knowledge of strategic value. They must have a strong understanding of the organization's overall strategic priorities as well as the priorities and values of each of the teams with whom they are working. They must be able to understand the opportunities and risks involved in a project. McKeen and Staples (3) have pointed to a strong understanding of the organization as one of the most important characteristics of a good knowledge manager.

Developing Technical Competencies

The technical competencies surrounding the organization of information should be among the librarian's strengths as these are incorporated into the core curriculum of most LIS programs. Any librarians who are not actively involved in cataloguing or metadata and taxonomy building, or who did not take electives in these areas during their LIS education, may expand these skills and knowledge through programming offered through LIS professional associations or by reading books and articles on these topics. The background knowledge obtained from these courses can help librarians to explain how metadata and controlled vocabularies work and more importantly to explain the implications of metadata and vocabulary decisions in terms of information retrieval.

A good precursor for becoming involved in enterprise-level knowledge management initiatives is to assist work teams in the organization with metadata decisions for other projects. For example, if a group in your organization is looking to implement a new case management system, or even to design a new website on the corporate intranet, the library team would make itself available to provide guidance on how to organize the resource to maximize its user-friendliness or searchability.

Another effective way to establish the library team as the "go to" group for organizational learning, collaboration, or knowledge management projects is to ensure that the team takes part in the pilot projects for the implementation of any new technology. Libraries have a history of being the champions of corporate intranets, wikis, and other collaborative tools. If an individual librarian has limited experience working with these tools, then library managers should encourage him or her to learn how they work and how they can be used by the organization. If the organization is considering setting up a corporate e-collaboration tool, then library managers should encourage their staff to experiment with changing internal library procedures to use these tools. This will give librarians knowledge of how the tool works as well as any challenges or advantages associated with incorporating these tools into existing work flows. Becoming an early adopter of a new technology puts library staff in an excellent position either to become trainers and help other groups adopt the tools as well or to have an influence on the rollout of the tool to the larger organization based on their experiences.

Developing Interpersonal Competencies

Interpersonal competencies are another group of skills that many librarians will already possess as a result of their education and library experience. The reference interview is an excellent tool that prepares librarians for working with clients across a variety of tasks and work situations because it includes several highly transferable micro-skills. These micro-skills, or basic skills that can be combined in various ways to perform more complicated tasks, include active listening, analytical thinking and problem solving, the ability to ask good questions to obtain detailed information from people, and an understanding of the importance of coming to a shared sense of understanding with a client. All of these skills can be applied to the information gathering stages of a knowledge management project. A knowledge audit is a vital part of knowledge management program implementation, and it is very similar to the information audit that is already a part of LIS education. The audit involves examining corporate documents including organizational charts and strategic plans and conducting interviews and focus groups. All of these activities are directly related to work that librarians have experience performing. In fact, much of the reference work that librarians are already performing can be leveraged into knowledge management projects. Even the reference questions that a librarian answers provide clues about what projects their clients are working on, what types of information are difficult for clients to find, and how their clients like to receive information. This information can be used to develop small knowledge tools, such as the bibliographies, backgrounders, or pathfinders that libraries already produce, to help connect clients to the information that they need more quickly. These skills can be enhanced through practice. Library managers should encourage their staff to participate in multi-branch work teams and projects as much as possible to help librarians gain experience with collaboration, teamwork, and project management (which can be learned from observation even if the librarian is not the leader of the project team).

Developing Analytical Competencies

Analytical competencies were mentioned above in connection to the reference work that librarians are already performing. The leap that needs to be made is that knowledge managers think at the organizational level while librarians tend to focus on the client level. These are not mutually exclusive perspectives, and an effective knowledge management tool needs to be user-friendly in order to be adopted by users. Many librarians already pay attention to organizational priorities in their work and this is particularly evident in collection development and collection management. Libraries tend to focus their collection building on areas that are of relevance to their clients to ensure that their budget is as effectively allocated as possible. The one deficit that librarians may have is a strong knowledge of the work processes of the various work units in the organization that is needed to make analytical decisions that can contribute to a knowledge management plan. Knowledge managers need to know how these teams work so as to be able to identify knowledge needs and propose solutions that will fit with existing work flows. This knowledge may be partially obtained through library work as mentioned earlier in the discussion of the results of the reference interview, especially if librarians are working in an embedded model. It can be expanded by encouraging librarians to work with records and information management staff in performing information audits and especially in taking part in process mapping activities.

Conclusion

Knowledge management and librarianship are sister disciplines. Knowledge management has roots in the LIS discipline as well as the management and information technology fields. Because of the strong connection between the skills and competencies required for a knowledge manager and a librarian, moving from a librarian role to a knowledge management role may be a natural transition.

References

Works Cited

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