Karen M. Drabenstott
Associate Professor
School of Information
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1092 USA
Voice: (734) 763-3581
Fax: (734) 764-2475
karen.drabenstott@umich.edu
New topic -- "Damn the Information, Pass the Knowledge"
Many thanks to the many CRISTAL-ED members who took part in the open topics discussion, made suggestions, or have volunteered to guest edit suggested topics. We have had a superb open topics discussion with many suggestions and informative reactions. If I am unable to find a guest editor for the date range June 7 to 20, we will have another open topics discussion at that time.
Let me introduce Paul Piper, our guest editor for our new topic entitled "Damn the Information, Pass the Knowledge." Paul holds a BS in Wildlife Biology and an MFA in Creative Writing. His MLIS comes from the University of Hawaii where he learned from incredible teachers such as Carol Tenopir and Peter Jacso. They fueled his interest in things electronic. In Hawaii, Paul Piper was an information specialist for the Pacific Region Educational Laboratory (PREL) (which has since changed its name to Pacific Resources in Education and Learning.) He ran their specialized library, and assisted them with constructing an internet site that would feature lab publications. He moved on to develop this Interest in Webs and digital stuff at the Center of Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance (COE), (a collaboration between the military and the University of Hawaii) where he was hired specifically to create a digital library on the Internet. He also served as webmaster, reference librarian, researcher, and supervised the Pacific Disaster Management Information Network, a branch of the COE that was responsible for disseminating information to the Asia-Pacific Area.
In August of 1997 Paul accepted a position as a college-based Librarian at Western Washington University in Bellingham. The library and university are pioneering a fairly radical model of librarianship that was attractive to him. Also, the price of living in paradise was becoming too taxing.
Please welcome Paul Piper and join in the conversation.
Paul S. Piper
Librarian
The Western Libraries
Western Washington University
Bellingham, Washington
piper@cc.wwu.edu
Knowledge has traditionally been separated by philosophers into Knowledge by Acquaintance (knowledge gained by experience) and Knowledge by Description (knowledge gained by reading and facts). Whether this will have any bearing on the discussion of knowledge management, we shall have to wait and see. Likewise with the relationship between knowledge and belief, and knowledge and understanding. These are weighty areas and may warrant integration into the topic of knowledge management, which is what the subject of this discussion will focus on. I remember several years ago while living in Hawaii having a lively and funny discussion about abandoning the term information professional in favor of knowledge or even wisdom professional. With the rapid spread of the term "knowledge manager" (a CKO to my understanding being a corporate knowledge officer!) the conversation was apparently not entirely fatuous.
The number of ways "knowledge" can be defined echoes the discussion of definitions for "information" in CRISTAL-ED's "What's in a Name" series before Christmas. Since the chain of data information=knowledge=wisdom seems to be a loaded one, the term "knowledge management" could easily garner the same definition contest as "information" did. And perhaps that is a legitimate and necessary role for this discussion. As a recent article title in Informationweek (Jeff Angus, et al, March 16, 1998, p.58) put it, "Knowledge management: Great concept ... but what is it?"
I would like then, initially, to explore the definitions, which tend to be contextual, and particularly examine what knowledge management means to libraries. Richard Lucier, in an essay entitled "Knowledge Management: Refining Roles in Scientific Communication" (Boyton, G.R. and Creth, Sheila, eds., New Technologies and New Directions, Meckler, 1993) states that:
"Knowledge management is a mutual responsibility for scientific and scholarly communication, a responsibility shared by scholars, scientists, and research librarians, utilizing computing and=20 communications technologies as their primary tools. The knowledge management process embraces the entire information-transfer cycle, from the creation, structuring, and representation of information to its dissemination." This definition is vast in scope, but stresses "mutual responsibility for scientific and scholarly communication" and positions librarians in a central and collegial role along with scholars and scientists in the design, production and dissemination of information.
Susan DiMattia in an article in Library Journal ("Knowledge Management: Hope, Hype or Harbinger?" 122(15), 33-35) states that:
"The basic elements of (KM) include accessing, evaluating, managing, organizing, filtering, and distributing information in a manner that is useful to end-users professional judgment-based activities perfected by librarians."
One key component of this system, which is pointed out later in the article by KM expert Tom Davenport (University of Texas School of Business) is "eliciting the knowledge requirements of customers." He continues by questioning whether "librarians are sufficiently aggressive and strategically oriented to play a major role in knowledge management." In the same article, John Peetz (Ernst & Young = CKO) tells us that KM provides "an opportunity for people with traditional library skills to go upscale." I immediately went out and bought a Lexus.
Librarian of Congress' James Billington ("Help! I'm Drowning in Data. Quick! Call the Knowledge Manager," Boston Globe June 22, 1997) states:
"I haven't heard of knowledge management. I sure don't like the sound of it." His point being, perhaps, is "management" something librarians want to, or should be, involved in? His preferred term is navigation.
Are these definitions good ones? Is knowledge management any different from what we, as librarians, already do, and have been doing for years? Are there other, better definitions out there? Should we be in this business at all? I invite comments on these questions to get the ball rolling.
Other issues I am particularly interested in hearing feedback about:
One of the earlier references to KM I found (I'm sure there are older ones) dated back to a 1975 article entitled, "Cybernetics, Professionalization, and Knowledge Management," written by George Frederick Goerl for the Public Administration Review, Nov/Dec 1975. In this article, he equates the politics of knowledge management with knowledge as power. In fact he uses the two terms simultaneously. He questions whether those who possess knowledge, particularly on the policy end, benefit from sharing it.
His argument frames the questions:
Is access to information a critical component of knowledge? Is access to a diversity of information (i.e., varied points of view, perspectives, beliefs) a critical component of knowledge? And to extrapolate, is the librarian responsible for finding the answer to a question, an answer to a question, or answers to a question?
And another. Is it troubling to contemplate corporate (or other) knowledge managers paid to filter data and information and decide what knowledge is and what we need to know?
Thanks for your input.
Richard J. Cox
Associate Professor
Department of Library and Information Sciences
School of Information Sciences
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Voice: (412) 624-3245
Fax: (412) 648-7001
rjc@lis.pitt.edu
Judith Segal jsegal@cms.wwu.edu
Richard -- Without the complete titles and descriptions of the courses you allude to, I can only say that I think it eminently worthwhile to explore "knowledge" in much the same way as we explore "information." We need to understand it for it passes as the culmination of each and every step of the learning process, and we need to grasp the handles for its retrieval and organization as we feed it constantly with new information and data.
Bob Watson
Executive Director
Franklin Park Public Library District
10311 Grand Avenue
Franklin Park, IL 60131
Voice: (847) 455-6016
bwatson@linc.lib.il
I want to thank Paul Piper for bringing up an excellent topic.
As a public library administrator whose background is in reference services, I estimate that something over 50 percent of the work done by our professional public service staff deals with managing "knowledge" rather than "information." But the definitions do get a tad confusing -- so let me say that I'm defining managing "information" as managing "access to what the library holds or can get" and managing "knowledge" as providing a gatekeeper function (thus using personal subject knowledge) so as to provide useful answer and guidance to the library patron -- which may or may not lead to access to "information."
There is a large buzz about KM (knowledge management), but most of what I've seen deals with knowledge mining and the so-called "learning organization" (which assumes that organizations can do things that improve their abilities to distribute the knowledge obtained by employees). Businesses realize that a lot of expertise exists, but getting to it, contextualizing it, and making it available to others is a continuing problem.
Not all of this involves text (or other media). Some simply involves having a system for accessing knowledgeable employees. Librarians, I think, have a two-fold role: on one hand, they provide context through various indexing tools (including such nice new ones as XML -- eXpanded Markup Language); on the other they function as gatekeepers -- helping others get a handle on what they need.
This is no new thing, 'cept maybe in how we speak and write about what many librarians have been doing for many, many years.
Brian (Bo) Newman
The Knowledge Management Forum
(509) 967-2286
Bo.Newman@km-forum.org
My thanks to our good moderator, and those joining into this discussion.
This is a topic I have also been waiting to see, to see the perception of those on the list have on the topic of KM. Coming from the other side of the fence, might I offer how this member of the KM community views LS. Eight to 10 years ago when I and others started to try to bring definition to this thing we now call KM, one of the first models we turned to was the field of LS. Our first attempts at defining an enterprise-wide capability to improve the management of knowledge were actually called "Knowledge Libraries." For me, the core of this model was the reference librarian. That seemed to me to be the first place people went when their question started, "I want to know ..."
I agree with Bob Watson when he talks about the multiple roles the libraries perform as managers of knowledge artifacts of all types. I see the key capability that libraries provide as their ability to respond to the ad hoc knowledge seeker by maintaining and helping the user to locate the artifacts, but it is guidance in transforming these artifacts into knowledge that enable actions or decisions.
One of the challenges that KM faces is the ability to not just manage artifacts but to be able to make the connection between user needs, the actions they need to meet those needs, the knowledge needed to enable those actions, and how the available information can be used to provide that knowledge. (I believe you even have a name for this process.) This is the type of help I look forward to each time I walk up to the reference desk. Are my expectations wrong?
From my perspective, rather that just a concern about KM in the library, I would like to see some more leadership in the KM movement coming out of the ranks of Library and Information Science. To me, it only makes sense, as I wrote several years ago, "in one form or another, knowledge management has been around for a very long time. Practitioners have included philosophers, priests, teachers, politicians, scribes, and, Liberians." So why shouldn't these same professions be lending their leadership now that we call it KM?
But then, as the good Mr. Miller puts it, "... that's my opinion, and I might be wrong."
Jim Nichols
Ph.D. Student
Indiana University
jtnichol@indiana.edu
Brian (Bo) Newman wrote:
"...I see the key capability that libraries provide as their ability to respond to the ad hoc knowledge seeker by maintaining and helping the user to locate the artifacts, but it is guidance in transforming these artifacts into knowledge that enable actions or decisions.
"One of the challenges that KM faces is the ability to not just manage artifacts but to be able to make the connection between user needs, the actions they need to meet those needs, the knowledge needed to enable those actions, and how the available information can be used to provide that knowledge."
Two things occurred to me in reading the passages above. First is that the focus on maintaining artifacts and helping users to locate artifacts is only a partial view of what is happening in modern public services in libraries. Delivering the document or artifact is a predominant mode of service, but many other things are happening. For an idea of what kinds of things, you may want to take a look at the chapters on interventions in Kuhlthau's book, Seeking Meaning.
The second thing is that much of what Bo Newman projects for knowledge management echoes statements about information literacy which encompass the entire process of learning, from the recognition of a need, through the locating and obtaining of needed information, to the use and presentation of information (see http://www.ala.org/acrl/nili/nili.html or http://www.ala.org/acrl/nili/nilihp.html). Is it fair to cast KM as information literacy for organizations?
Paul S. Piper
Librarian
The Western Libraries
Western Washington University
Bellingham, Washington
piper@cc.wwu.edu
Thank you all for your input thus far. And thanks Jim for the reference to Carol Kuhlthau's book (Seeking Meaning: A Process Approach to Library and Information Services [Information Management, Policy, and Services], Dec. 1992, Ablex Pub Corp., ISBN 1567500196).
I haven't read it but intend to. Several key issues have emerged from the discussion thus far which I will attempt to summarize. Please forgive me if I leave anything out or misrepresent someone's thoughts.
Is knowledge management then the same as the manifestation of information literacy (recognition of a need, etc. through the use and presentation of information)? Is this what Richard Lucier means when he claims that knowledge management embraces the entire information transfer cycle?
And perhaps more importantly, or more interesting, is this any different than what librarians have always done?
Paul S. Piper
Librarian
The Western Libraries
Western Washington University
Bellingham, Washington
piper@cc.wwu.edu
Folks:
We seem to have reached a lull in discussion, which is a shame because I feel this is a rich topic with plenty of room for exploration. I'll try and inject a bit of energy into the discussion, first by encouraging any "lurkers" out there who may have thoughts to please make them known; and secondly by introducing, and in one case re-introducing, some issues. If you have other issues involving "Knowledge Management" please make them known.
Given the standard corporate definition of knowledge management -- the harnessing and making use of employee knowledge to improve efficiency -- what is the potential for libraries? And are any of the CRISTAL-ED participants involved in, or aware of, such projects? The following quote is from the The Chronicle of Higher Education May 8, 1998, entitled "Anthropologists in Corporate America: 'Knowledge Management' and Ethical Angst" and provides a rough analogy of what I mean:
"In particular, an emerging focus on 'knowledge management' has generated a new demand for anthropologists to assess the knowledge of working people. Many of the anthropologists employed by corporations find themselves trying to collect the 'tacit' or informal knowledge that workers gain while doing their jobs -- the information that workers have about what they do that has not been made explicit -- so that it can be used more broadly.
"For example, a factory worker may have an informal mental map of the way materials actually flow through a manufacturing process that differs from -- but is more accurate than -- the way the process is shown in an idealized engineering plan. Or a machine operator may discover that a grinding wheel need be sharpened with a diamond only after 100 uses, rather than after 50, as she was instructed.
"While attempts to capture workers' knowledge are not new, management scholars, consultants, and business executives are increasingly aware that tacit knowledge, when captured and taught to other workers, improves the efficiency of business and manufacturing processes. For example, if a grinding wheel needs sharpening only half as often as was thought, and if all workers are trained to sharpen it after 100 uses, productivity increases and costs are reduced, because grinding wheels last longer, and fewer diamonds are needed for sharpening." (I hope these examples don't seem too far off base. Could teams be used as a way of sharing knowledge in libraries?)
The other issue I wanted to re-surface is this:
One of the earlier references to KM I found (I'm sure there are older ones) dated back to a 1975 article entitled "Cybernetics, Professionalization, and Knowledge Management" written by George Frederick Goerl for the Public Administration Review, Nov/Dec 1975. In this article, he equates the politics of knowledge management with knowledge as power. In fact he uses the two terms simultaneously. He questions whether those who possess knowledge, particularly on the policy end, benefit from sharing it.
His argument frames the questions:
And another.
Or any other thoughts you might have. Remember, this discussion only works because of your thoughts and input. Many thanks.
Professor Tom Wilson
Head of Department of Information Studies
University of Sheffield
Sheffield S10 2TN, U.K.
Voice: +44-114-282-5081
Fax: +44-114-278-0300
T.D.Wilson@Sheffield.ac.uk
I've refrained from diving into this discussion because I've made my views known in the past, but, to reiterate:
Librarians and information scientists will be better employed seeking new ways of delivering effective information services than worrying about management consultancy fads - KM has no intellectual foundations.
Ben Speller
North Carolina Central University
SLIS
Durham, NC 27707
Do all of these issues about knowledge management reinforce the importance of the informal social and professional networks in the corporate and political sectors of society?
If so, should librarians examine these known models for ways to improve the business of information counseling and management of libraries.
This is also an example where the profession may have overlooked research and data collection methodologies that are critical to effective management and leadership.
The Schools of Management and Business appear to be ahead of Library and Information Schools in using the disciplines of Anthropology and Sociology to discover ways of harnessing employee's knowledge to improve efficiency of business and operational processes.
Paul B. Wiener
Man of Letters
pwiener@ccmail.sunysb.edu
I hope I don't give the impression of being a dreaded lurker, i.e., one who posts fewer than three times a week. For my money, Mr. Post's answer says it all. If I understand Mr. Piper's accounting of knowledge management, it is basically formalizing the process whereby co-workers share their expertise, experience, complaints and suggestions with one another, only this time in a setting where the bosses can monitor, record, accept, reject, and especially take credit for, everything that is said, changed or developed.
Leaving aside the preposterous redundancy of this process, as well as its pretenses of intellectual thoroughness, as Post points out, it's not hard to imagine libraries here and there jumping on this bandwagon, since it will require busy bees to manage the many new procedures for transferring, copying and distributing information that, while always available before (Powerpoint is only the latest of our faux communications tools) ,was subject to the less controllable whims of office politics and worker autonomy.
Robert Bauchspies
Export-Import Bank of the United States
Washington, D.C.
robert.bauchspies@exim.gov
Regarding some of the previous posts, may I add the following:
Prof. Kulthau's book Seeking Meaning... is a good read but I prefer the integrating efforts of various thinkers along this line as is being done by Prof. Nahl of Hawaii.
Prof. Cox's comment "...but the concepts of wisdom and knowledge really relate more to what our clients do with the information we help them acquire than with anything we can or should do. And, we clearly do not and should not have much control over how these people utilize the information" is quite telling and very much on the mark. Interesting to note that a fellow U. of Pittsburg faculty member represents one of the leading Internet forces on compiling "information about knowledge management" (i.e., Dr. Yogesh Malhotra).
With regard to Prof. Wilson's comments I must state my full agreement. I would add however that fad or not, it's existence (i.e., knowledge management as a concept) cannot be dismissed outright due to its hold on business and government thinking.
Prof. Speller's comment regarding social issues again brings the theme full circle in terms of communication and culture.
In a nutshell, knowledge management is business school/consultant smoke and mirrors with the recognized success of telling corporate managers and CEOs the obvious. What we are witnessing is yet another permutation of the trendy nature of buzz words or catch phrases which attempt to capture evolving conceptualizations of information management and behavior in the workplace and more importantly how these can be translated into net gains (no pun). And where there is money, attention follows such that the new "buzz entity" takes on a life of its own.
While we talk about corporate knowledge or intellectual capital on the one hand and the management of such on the other -- from an individual perspective, we all are compelled to be "knowledge managers." For as Tom mentions, knowledge is an internal process (and one which I might add can be recognized externally). One could say that what we are talking about here is applied learning. That of using the grey matter inside your head to think your way through external stimuli which collectively we can (for this illustration) call "information." Taken in this light, knowledge management follows the lines of continuing education or professional development. Moving back up the scale we then gravitate back to Senge's "learning organization" which remains built on reasonably solid ground conceptually. Hence, we arrive at conversions of new information for new and/or expanded knowing. The application of such "knowing," however, does not follow the same simplicity. It is imbued and influenced by the collective set of variables inherent in the individual which make up a person's personality, cultural identity and so forth. Add the collective, that of organizational culture for example, and you are back to where we were ten years ago on this theme. We are just that much more excitable about "information" by way of improving (?) technologies. And remember the "Panda Syndrome" article for forecasts of the influence of heavy weight players in the information sector?
Check out Michael Schrage's review in the September/October ('97) Harvard Business Review entitled "The Real Problem with Computers" of Tom Davenport's Information Ecology: Mastering the Information and Knowledge Environment and Paul Strassman's The Squandered Computer: Evaluating the Business Alignment of Information Technologies. Consider the IT/information access/information processing/new knowing trajectory that is implied.
Managing someone else's knowledge (or your own for that matter) is all about information and learning. When the book comes out on how to get the horse to drink the water it has been led to as well as how to enable the horse to "pass it on" let me know.
Then again isn't Redford's new movie about a guy who does this already... :)
Information is the created, created by the knowledge of people (the creators). Both information and people require management. Management, not as a means to control, but for the best use of resources. I agree with what Tom Wilson is saying.
As we zoom into the next century, both resources are caught up in a sea of turmoil. For the sake of the argument, both the creator and the created need consideration to maximize effectiveness. But, it is the knowledge-bearer that needs to decide how to use the information. So what's going on?
Justin Hibbard in his article, "Knowledge Tools Debate," describes knowledge management as a software-industry fad of 1998. The term is being applied to "anything that moves," complains Mike Gotta, a Meta Group analyst. Tech-industry vendors have become "knowledge brokers," viewed by many users and analysts with skepticism.
It amazes me that some are appalled at the idea of capitalism, the "American Way," birthed during the Industrial Revolution and adopted by Americans and then spoiled. "Buyer Beware" soon shadowed the little Capitalist. If there's a market, then there will be a marketer.
Industry is market-driven. If there is a need then someone will provide for that need for a profit. When I go to the grocery store, I don't buy everything because it's available in the store, I work from a shopping list so I can provide what I need according to my menu.
Decide what you need as a information user, make up a shopping list, then shop for what suits your needs. I don't send anyone else to buy my groceries, nor would I expect anyone else to pick my services. I think it would be beneficial to build a floodgate to manage the flow of information -- before I drown.
Paul S. Piper
Librarian
The Western Libraries
Western Washington University
Bellingham, Washington
piper@cc.wwu.edu
I want to thank everyone who was involved in this discussion, and hope that the ideas reflected here resonated beyond the contributors to those reading (and thinking) along. I think this is a rich area for discourse, and a highly relevant one to our field. In what follows I had intended to sum up the thoughts of contributors, which I have done, but I also find myself with more questions. Like the end result of most good discussions, there is still much grist for the mill.
As a student of popular culture I am most interested in the subtext of these phenomena. Again I add the suspicions of James Billington to the comments of Prof. Cox "We clearly do not and should not have much control over how these people utilize the information."
Thank you all very much.
You may join the discussion and look over the list of past and future topics.
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