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Knowledge management" is the latest technology rage, the siren call of the moment. It seems that corporate and information technology bigwigs are falling over themselves to throw enough money at this solution, er, problem.
It seems a simple concept, at least to librarians. This "new" approach 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. Knowledge management evangelists stress automated methods for capturing and making accessible the information that the organization has already purchased. In other words, they're focusing upon storing and reusing specialized information that's already been paid for in one way or another. Imagine that, what will they think of next?
Isn't that what we librarians have been talking about all these years? Does this mean that, at long last, we're going to get our place in the sun?
WHO'S GETTING THESE ASSIGNMENTS?
Unfortunately, it seems to me that librarians are missing this boat. Once again, the MIS/IT types seem to be snatching it out from under us. Whose journals are printing the big "how to do it" articles? Whose conference booths have the megabucks knowledge management software displays? Which group do you suppose is getting these juicy assignments?
MIS people seem to think that information technology is the total solution for knowledge management. Unfortunately, these are the same people who often don't appear to have a clue about the organization or representation of knowledge-nor do they understand the behavior of information users. But, whose budgets are getting the big boosts for the knowledge management projects? Have you gotten your slice of this budget windfall yet?
I've not yet heard about many corporate library operations and librarians that are getting these plum knowledge management assignments. Of course, there are a few; the Boeing and Microsoft operations come to mind. There were a number of librarians actively involved in these and other knowledge management projects presenting at recent conferences (Special Libraries Association, ONLINE WORLD, and Internet Librarian). But the numbers were far from showing any real boomlet of professional activity in this area.
Librarians, predictably, are grumbling about this, "Who is better qualified to manage knowledge than librarians?" Although many of us...