Paper presented at SIS 2012 Conference held at NIT Silchar organised by Dr. K C Satpathy

1. Knowledge management and Knowledge
Workers in the Digital Era: Challenges
and Issues
Presented by:
Sehnara B. Choudhury
Dept. of Library and Information Science
Assam University, Silchar

2. Introduction
 In the present information and
knowledge era, knowledge has
become a key resource. Faced with
competition and increasingly dynamic
environments, organizations are
beginning to realize that there is a vast
and largely untapped asset diffused
around in the organization –
knowledge

3. What is Knowledge
 Information is all about knowing that
occurred or happened. Information becomes
knowledge once it is processed in the mined
of an individual.
 Knowledge is information interchange with
experiences, reflected upon and interpreted
in a particular context.
 Knowledge is all about acquiring
information and utilising it in a similarly
placed situation so that latest action gives
value addition over the earlier action.

4. Focus on Knowledge
 Strategic use of Knowledge
 Nurture knowledge workers
 Quality of people (knowledge workers).
 Generating new knowledge & accessing valuable
knowledge from outside sources.
 Using accessible knowledge in decision making.
 Embedding knowledge in processes, products and/ or
services.
 Representing knowledge in documents, databases, and
software.
 Transferring existing knowledge into other parts of the
organisation.

5. Radical Transformation
 Knowledge is vital for growth and survival
 Continuous innovation is impossible without
knowledge assets.
 Nothing but knowledge can generate
originality of service.
 It needs knowledge to leverage all
organisational capabilities.
 Knowledge is the only core competence for
coping with challenge and change.

6. Knowledge management (KM)
 A systematic and integrated coordination of
organisation-wide activities of acquiring, creating,
storing, sharing, dissemination, developing and
deploying knowledge by individuals and groups in
pursuit of organisational goals.
 KM is essentially about getting the right knowledge
to the right person at the time.
 Knowledge Management is all about management of
intangibles to deliver tangible results.

7. KNOWLEDGE IS INTANGIBLE ASSETS
Knowledge Ideas
VALUE
ADDITION
IS
REALISED
THROUGH
Creativity Relationships

8. Need for Knowledge Management
• Creating and populating a repository of
in-house knowledge
• Valuation of Knowledge
• Facilitating the transfer of knowledge
• Creating a knowledge sharing
environment
• Building an organisational culture
focused on innovation and knowledge
creation

9. Impact of Information and Communication
Technology
 Seamless access within organization
and globally;
 Scholarly communication made easier
and global;
 Virtual team research and discussion
forum; and
 Digital library products and services.

10. The Challenges and Issues
Changing senario
 Worldwide shift to information economy to knowledge
economy
 Rapid growth in knowledge and information-intensive
product and services.
 Manual production workers being substituted/ replaced
by information/ Knowledge workers
 The significant impact of the rapidly evolving ICTs on
enterprises.
Challenges
 Multiple formats of information
 Changing user needs
 Organisational structures
 Changing role of librarians

11. Role of Librarians/Information
Professionals
 Historically the librarians/information
professional have been knowledge
managers.
 They have information content domain
expertise, as well as knowledge and
expertise in knowledge transfer.
 Enhance transferable skills including
information retrieval and information fluency
skills.
 Access to electronic resources for on-campus
and remote users, internal and remote
database support, library’s digital content
management system, e.g. resource discovery
tools (link resolver, meta-data & federated
search services).

12. Preparing Knowledge workers
of the Digital Era
 The required paradigm shift is for librarians/information
professional to become facilitators/content managers of institutional
communities of practice, as well as identified processes/services:
 create knowledge repositories, portals, “hubs” of information in
identified areas of institutional processes to enhance quality and
efficiency.
 engage in knowledge networks and discussions.
LIS professional need to:
 expand their horizon and their potential clientele, and
 extend interaction and collaboration-across discipline and user
groups of different interests and service requirements.

13. Conclusion
 KM is introduced to help an organization of
whatever nature to create, share, and use
knowledge effectively.
 In the digital era Knowledge workers
attempt to meet the information overload
problem by analyzing, filtering, selecting and
synthesizing products in which the
information is maximally relevant, organized
and available for users. So, KM will be very
important, knowledge has crossed the
boundaries as the concept library without
walls become popular and so online
databases, OPAC, web server and browsers,
etc tools are important to satisfy the diverse
information need of the clientele.

14. THANK
YOU