Knowledge management—if only you knew what you knew

A paper given at STRAIT to the future, 8th Asia-Pacific Specials, Health and Law Librarians Conference, Hobart, 22–26 August 1999Knowledge management (KM) is becoming a hot topic for many organisations in the public and private sector in Australia, yet there is no generally accepted industry-wide definition, making it a difficult concept to grasp. Knowledge comes in many shapes and sizes. It can be stored in databases, printed on paper, integrated into an organisation's policies, procedures and reports, or contained within an employee's memory. Generally, knowledge management is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, managing and sharing all of an organisation's information assets, regardless of how or where they are located. It is strategic in nature and involves the careful interaction of people, process and technology. This paper examines the nature of knowledge management and provides a framework for definition, using client examples to illustrate the issues.The drivers that have led to its increasingly rapid adoption are discussed, specifically addressing the three key issues: environmental (globalisation of business and the mobility of our workforce), organisational (the result of downsizing) and technical (the convergence of technologies). The process of developing a knowledge management strategy is then examined in detail, outlining the nature of the knowledge audit, the identification of information and knowledge hot spots and the identification of ‘quick wins’ as part of the knowledge road map. The paper then addresses the very difficult issue of measuring the return on investment of a KM strategy and outlines the short—and long-term strategies for assessing knowledge management. Finally, the critical role that information professionals can play in knowledge management is outlined, and the paper concludes by encouraging special librarians to play a much more active role in this area or else run the risk of being marginalised.