The Education and Development of Knowledge Managers: Out of the Stacks and Into the Jungle

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The Education and Development of Knowledge
ManagersOut of the Stacks and Into the Jungle
Dr. José-Marie Griffiths Information Innovators
Institute March 3-5, 1998
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The Web is Changing Knowledge Management

• rapidly becoming an ubiquitous information source
  
• millions of people are using the Web as if it
  were a library for information retrieval,
  validation,discussion

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The Web is Changing Knowledge Management

• The Web has an almost bewitching attraction
• It makes rare resources available anywhere

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The Role of the Library in the Electronic Age

• Roles that will continue
• long-term preservation collections and
  secondary resources
• access to collections of recorded knowledge
• physical access
• intellectual access
• instructional services

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The Role of the Library in the Electronic Age

• purposefully identified collections
• metadata or content descriptions
• preservation of collections and their associated
  metadata
• access and instructional services
• analysis and interpretation

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The Role of Knowledge Managers

• Knowledge managers have always had
• two overriding imperatives
• knowledge of the users they serve
• knowledge of recorded knowledge domains
• These will not change

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Knowledge Managers Will Evolve
Out of traditional roles into new roles with
new challenges Its a jungle out there!
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Guidebook Publisher

• From classifiers, catalogers, indexers
• to metadata developers and
• guidebook publishers
• Provide tools that contain
• intellectual content
• structural and procedural information
• greater level of disaggregation and discrimination

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Knowledge Prospector

• From collection builder to knowledge
• prospector
• find those nuggets which contribute to
  particular knowledge domains on the Web
• Knowledge Prospector has to find
• validated collections of digital materials
• relationship of digital materials to validated
  non-digital materials

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Expedition Guide

• From information retrieval specialists
• to knowledge navigators and
• expedition guides
• knowledge of finding tools
• need to identify more useful, relevant materials
  in less time
• pioneers exploring new knowledge frontiers
  physical guides, procedural guides, intellectual
  guides

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Knowledge Interpreter

• From reference librarian to information
• analysts/ knowledge interpreters
• information content expanding rapidly users
  need help to extract and interpret information
• must be close to the user(s) in understanding the
  context for analysis/interpretation

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Collaborator

• Knowledge managers will need to
• become effective collaborators as
• well as teachers
• will have to deal with unfamiliar people, remote
  users, about whom they have no prior knowledge
• collaborations will be initiated quickly, will
  be transient

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The Future of the Future

• everyone needs skills in information searching
  and retrieval
• collaborations will be initiated quickly
• not just an issue for higher education
• or libraries

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The Future of the Future
Lawrence Wilkinson scenario model Given the
impossibility of knowing how the future will
play out, a good decision or strategy is one
that plays out well across several possible
futures.
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Individual vs. Community
Community
Individual
Will the energy of democratization and the
ascendance of the ultimate individualized I
continue to prevail?
Neither the I nor the We will ever
disappear, but it is a question as to which will
become the prevailing influence in our society
or the portion of society which we support or
with which we identify.
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Coherence vs. Fragmentation
Will social and political structures (either new
or traditional) provide a society-wide coherence
and order? Will there be a state to impose
order, level the playing field, and unify a
commonwealth?
Coherence
Or will society shatter into shards, the jagged
edges of which do not mesh into a coherent
whole? Will permanent fragmentation, increasing
plurality, and unfettered free-marketism bring us
to bottom-up functioning anarchy?
Fragmentation
Will society be the center that holds and
provides stability, or will it fragment?
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Information as a Good
If a focus on the individual defines the future,
then information will turn into a market good,
and the future of our present model of public
libraries and universities does not look rosy.
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The emphasis of society
Coherence






I
IV





III
II



Fragmentation
Individual
Community
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The characteristics of work
Coherence

I


IV
Information as
a Common Good


III
II



Fragmentation
Individual
Community
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The role of knowledge managers
Knowledge worker guidebook publisher
Knowledge worker knowledge prospector, collabora
tor
Coherence
I
IV
Knowledge worker expedition guide
Knowledge worker knowledge interpreter

III
II



Fragmentation
Individual
Community
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The future of knowledge managers
Many areas of our world are already strongly
aligned with one of the four quadrants.
Knowledge managers must become fluent in the
skills necessary for some aspect of any and all
of these roles as they move Out of the
Stacks and Into the Jungle
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Dr. José-Marie Griffiths University of
Michigan 5080 Fleming Administration Building Ann
Arbor, Michigan 48109 E-mail jmgriff_at_umich.edu