By Guest Blogger Tori Robertson, San Jose State University Graduate Student
Knowledge management was not a subject that I previously knew much about, until I was able to take a class all about it from a Knowledge Manager (my professor, Crystal Megaridis). Knowledge management is important as an information professional of course, but it can also apply across the board in any and all organizations. The definition of Knowledge Management as I learned it from Professor Megaridis is: “the disciplined approach to solving business problems by leveraging information assets and employee knowledge.” What all that means is that using the collective knowledge of current leadership, employees, and important organizational information to create a space where all of those things can be found in one place and used by the company is invaluable to current and future staff. Current staff because they would be able to access information readily rather than running around trying to find it in different places. Future staff because it would be easier for them to train for a new position with this information available at their fingertips.
A knowledge manager is someone who takes all this relevant organization information and creates a space within the company, whether it be an information center or a library, where all of it is accessible to employees and leadership. It not only needs to contain and parse out this information, but also make it relevant to the employees as well. If they do not know how to use it or it does not serve them in a way that makes sense, it will not work, and will therefore make it irrelevant. So, knowledge managers also work with the employees in the organization to make sure it is tailored to them, and that leadership will lead by example so that employees will inevitably follow and utilize the knowledge management system put in place.
Honestly, I could go on about knowledge management, but this is a crash course and not a college course, so this is some of what I learned in a nutshell. Currently, I am a graduate student at San Jose State University in California, and I am getting my master’s degree in library information sciences in the winter. Learning this information in this one-unit course was invaluable in knowing how knowledge management relates to most organizations for me, and I hope that it will help you a little in figuring out what it means as well! Thanks for reading.
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