Knowledge Management, the role of Library Professional -The Asian Age
“And knowledge management is a means, not an end.”-Bill Gates
Knowledge management is a “process” or “way” of dealing with knowledge creation or gathering, acquisition, storage or packaging, application or dissemination or reuse of knowledge. Nonaka, I. & Takeuchi, (1995) “The capability of an organization to create new knowledge, disseminate it all over the organization and symbolize it in terms of products, services, and quality”. Knowledge is classified into types: 1.Tacit Knowledge and 2. Explicit Knowledge. Tacit knowledge is the knowledge of anything without knowing how you know; explicit knowledge is the knowledge of things that can be explained. Tacit knowledge is what people carry in their minds but is difficult to access, whereas explicit knowledge is what is documented and can be transferred easily to others.
Knowledge management in libraries
While the business world is changing into the new knowledge economy and digital era, libraries and librarianship are going through dramatic changes. The conventional role of a library or librarianship or a library professional was to collect, process, store, disseminate, and utilize information to provide various types of services or information to the people for their purpose. The new role of library professionals in the 21st century is to be the hub of learning and knowledge centers as well as intellectual commons for the users. Some major roles in the field of knowledge management of a library professional are as follows:
Knowledge information management
With the exponential growth of human knowledge in various formats libraries need to develop to access all types of users in varieties of formats may be printed or electronic means. An integrated online public access catalogue (OPAC) with the provision of internal and external access to both printed and electronic resources. A useful and resourceful website must develop and search for regular updates. Beyond capturing all explicit knowledge, the library should be able to mean the tacit knowledge also. The website of a library should serve as a “portal” for a kind of resource where tacit or explicit knowledge, site or remote all formats.
Resources and networking
The library has had a long tradition of resource sharing and networking. Those services have been expanded in today's stage with tremendous use of the computer.
Technological development
To provide or facilitate all the library services of knowledge management, a well-designed and operational knowledge management should be set up. In this concept, the librarian or library professional should consider himself a Chief Technology Officer to implement the technical development. He/ She should have some common knowledge of data warehousing, data mining, text mining, content management, knowledge extraction, knowledge mapping, groupware, information visualization, etc.
User services
The Ultimate goal of knowledge management service is to providevarieties of services to the users. User’s services may be developed by analyzing user’sregistration records, surveys, circulations statistics, frequently asked questions, and use of e-journals and digital resources. “Push Technology” may be used by the professional to provide the services automatically to the users.
Dissemination of knowledge
It refers to strengthening the creation of libraries' files assets and improvement of document records assets, raising first-rate libraries' staff, and usage of all media to ensure the safety of operation of networks and prevent online criminal activities. Understanding dissemination management plays the position of professionalism, using various media and channels to disseminate various new ideas.
Human resource management
A significant amount of expert knowledge is possessed by way of library staffs and users, both in and out of doors to the libraries. In university and research communities such know-how is abundant and must be inventoried, indexed, and updated frequently and be made searchable and accessible through digital databases created and maintained using libraries. Libraries must also encourage the switch of know-how and experience from skilled staff to a new body of members.
The play role of library professionals has been expanding from library economy to documentation, from documentation to knowledge management. In the business world, knowledge management has been treated strategically as a vital thing to reach the customer's mind and thus achieve their organizational goals.
As libraries enter the knowledge age of the 21st century, we should no longer take a back seat to the development of know-how management. Instead, armed with our professional information and experiences, we must be in the driver’s seat.
Pen & Ink by: Mohammed Motiur Rahman & Md. Abdul Latif (Authors are working as Deputy & Asst Librarian at East west University of Bangladesh)