8. Libraries/information centers and Knowledge Management Application:

8. Libraries/information centers and Knowledge Management Application:

Knowledge Management will allows:

• Better accessibility to information is a key, including enhanced methods of access and reuse of documents (hypertext linking, databases, full-text search, etc.)
• Networking technology in general (especially intranets), and groupware in particular, will be key solutions.
• In general, technology and sheer volume of information will make it work.

Prior Knowledge Management application in the library and information Centers, the following important tasks will be seriously taken into considerations:

Best Practices - Sharing prior work and experiences using technology to archive written work in repositories. Also creating opportunities to capture tacit knowledge - this may require collaborative environments to help share that experience that is so hard to capture.

Collaboration - Technology is permitting people to easily share ideas, work together, brainstorm, collaborate.  People just need to be educated that the technology is available and easy to use. 

Culture - How do you get people to share and use knowledge instinctively? How to overcome the hoarding, and trust issues.  These issues can mean the difference between success and failure.

Filtering, Notifying, & Collabration - On-going additions to institutes wide databases and document management is particularly difficult to manage.  End users will grow frustrated without the ability to learn about additions that could be of interest to them, helpful in their work.  But, they don't want to have to hunt for the information.  They want it delivered to them.  These tools are designed with that in mind. 

Knowledge Management - Information or data management with the additional practice of capturing the tacit experience of the individual to be shared, used and built upon by the organization leading to increased productivity. 

Tacit Knowledge - Innovation, creation of new knowledge often comes from collaboration and interaction with experts.  These are some of the many ways to create a culture where there is greater collaboration, teamwork and sharing of ideas.

Value - Knowledge is the key differentiator between competing companies today.   That knowledge, or intellectual capital, can be very difficult to measure.   You'll want an inventory before and after initiating a KM project for evaluation purposes and to determine what projects to take on to maximize intellectual capital down the road.