National Conference

on
“ICT IMPACT ON THE   KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT”
on
14 September 2010
Organized by
Library Accman Institute of Management ,Greater Noida.U.P.

Nadeem Sohail
Asstt. Librarian, IRC, INMANTEC
Asstt. Editor, Gyanodaya:
Nadeemsohail.mlisc@gmail.com
7503586565 1
 LIBRARIAN’S ROLE AS A KNOWLEDGE MANAGER IN
DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT: A CRITICAL STUDY

Librarian as

KNOWLEDGE MANAGER
Library Blog:
a best way to Knowledge Management by Librarian

2
 LIBRARIAN’S ROLE AS A KNOWLEDGE MANAGER IN
DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT: A CRITICAL STUDY

Components of KM
 The knowledge management environment
centered round three components [*] :
 People : Technology experts, Knowledge
professionals, Knowledge managers
 Process:Creation,
Process: capturing, storing,
sharing, application, &
 Technology:Hardware
Technology and software
packages
* Robertson, Shaunagh and Brun, Caroline De (2005):
Developing the Knowledge Management environment. NLH
Knowledge Management. Specialist Library (Jul-2005)
http://viewResource.aspx?

3
 LIBRARIAN’S ROLE AS A KNOWLEDGE MANAGER IN
DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT: A CRITICAL STUDY

Essential Activities by Library/ Librarian for

Knowledge Management
Knowledge innovation management
Knowledge dissemination management
Knowledge application management
Virtual libraries
Digitizing library Resources
Digitized knowledge services

4
 LIBRARIAN’S ROLE AS A KNOWLEDGE MANAGER IN
DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT: A CRITICAL STUDY

Librarian as Knowledge Manager

James D. Markeen and D. sandy staples (1998) conduct a survey under the titled
‘KnowledgeManagers: Who they are and what they do’. They covered 41 US and Canadian
companies. According to this study, the subject background of the Knowledge Managers
was as follows [*]:

Aswath, L and Gupta, S. (2009), Knowledge Management Tools and Academic Library Services, Vision and Roles of the
Future Academic Libraries, ICAL, available at: http://crl.du.ac.in/ical09/papers/index_files/ical-31_249_724_1_RV.pdf
(access on 12/08/2010)

5
 LIBRARIAN’S ROLE AS A KNOWLEDGE MANAGER IN
DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT: A CRITICAL STUDY

Principle Responsibilities as Knowledge Manager

Understanding the End-User’s Information Needs

Coordinating who is responsible for each knowledge

assets

Where appropriate, communicating knowledge

requirements to service providers
Planning and managing the delivery of knowledge
projects
Monitoring the use of the knowledge assets and measuring
the organizational value of the knowledge
6
 LIBRARIAN’S ROLE AS A KNOWLEDGE MANAGER IN
DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT: A CRITICAL STUDY

What makes librarians ideal for Knowledge Management?

 A PG Degree in specialized branches of knowledge.
 A conventional librarian’s specializations include knowledge
classification, subject indexing, information storage and retrieval,
abstracting, information consolidation coupled with technical writing
and editing.
 Thorough knowledge of publishing world and they are rich with
information searching skills.
 Librarians are more familiar with their holdings that most of the
information resources, but are also aware of that which is available
elsewhere. They also know how to procure such information from
remote sources.
Thomos Davenport, though not a librarian himself, argues strongly in favour of
librarians as front runners in Knowledge Manager.

7
 LIBRARIAN’S ROLE AS A KNOWLEDGE MANAGER IN
DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT: A CRITICAL STUDY

The New Roles of Librarians

Librarianship has really gone beyond to take on new role of information or knowledge
centre. Libraries have witnessed many changes, chief amongst them being the
availability of information from to an electronic form. This one change itself means too
many minor changes. Besides the users are becoming more demanding as the research is
becoming more interdisciplinary. If a library does not cater to their needs, the customers
will opt for some other information provider. Thus, there is neck-to neck existing roles,
they need to take on the following new roles:[*]
 Knowledge mediator
 Information architect
 Hybrid librarian
 Knowledge preserver

* Deegan, M and Tanner, S (2002), digital futres: Strategies for the Information Age, London, Library
Associastion Publishing, pp. 217-20.

8
 LIBRARIAN’S ROLE AS A KNOWLEDGE MANAGER IN
DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT: A CRITICAL STUDY

Library Blog: a best way to Knowledge Management by Librarian

LibraryBlog
A blog can be used to disseminating information about new
materials, services, databases, and more allowing librarians to focus
more on content than coding is Library Blog. A Library Blog helps to
broadcast useful information to end-user, in order to promote
awareness of library programs and services in digital environment. In
other word, it is a communication agent or new publishing media to
library materials.

9
 LIBRARIAN’S ROLE AS A KNOWLEDGE MANAGER IN
DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT: A CRITICAL STUDY

Librarians need a Library Blog

There are some of the services where library blog can put made use of it:
 Announcement of New Services
 New arrivals list
 Book/Website Recommendations
 Recommended Research sources
 Library Notice/ News
 Publishing Book Reviews
 Announcement of Exhibition, Conferences
 Offering Trail Services for resources from open access repositories.
 Publishing Library Quotes for interact the users

10
 LIBRARIAN’S ROLE AS A KNOWLEDGE MANAGER IN
DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT: A CRITICAL STUDY

Lets create a Library Blog

Consider purpose with targeting the audience

Selection of software & hosting
Blogging Policies
Consider Maintenance Issues
Market your Blog

11
 LIBRARIAN’S ROLE AS A KNOWLEDGE MANAGER IN
DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT: A CRITICAL STUDY

Market your Blog

Announce in library newsletter

Email users directly
Share by word of mouth
Include URL on Library publications
Seeks links from other Websites & blogs
List with search engines and blog directories
Issue a press release to local news

12
 LIBRARIAN’S ROLE AS A KNOWLEDGE MANAGER IN
DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT: A CRITICAL STUDY

Conclusion
Librarian played a key role in building information system to
classify and archive published information as a Knowledge
Manager.
The contribution of librarians to Knowledge Management has
been significant areas of systems management, end-user
support and Collection Management.
 Development of Web 2.0 (wiki, blog, flikr) added new
dimension to Knowledge Management Process. A Library Blog
helps to broadcast useful information to end-user, in order to
promote awareness of library programs and services in digital
environment.

13
LIBRARIAN’S ROLE AS A KNOWLEDGE MANAGER IN
DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT: A CRITICAL STUDY

thanks
14