Role of Academic Libraries in Knowledge Management in Universities

Academic libraries, and all other types of libraries, have been, will be, are, and will always be in the business of knowledge management. How academic libraries, and all types of libraries, manage knowledge is the subject of this post.

Knowledge can be broadly be classified into two major groups: Tacit and Explicit.  Tacit knowledge is personal knowledge. Explicit knowledge is documented knowledge.

My simple definition of knowledge is total sum of all things you know as a person, and all things known universally. Your experiences, skills you have acquired, and information that has been captured in any accessible format that can be utilized in varies way, is knowledge.

An academic library exists to serve the mission, vision, goals, and objectives of the parent organization, in this case the university.  The library does this by establishing the knowledge needs of the university.  These needs are defined by all activities conducted, and services offered by the university, which will include teaching and research, among others.  

The first role the library carries out in managing knowledge in the university is by conducting knowledge needs assessment.  The main goal of this assessment is to establish the type of knowledge the university requires to achieve its mission, vision, goals, and objectives.

Once the library has known the nature of knowledge required by the university, the library performs the second role of ascertaining the relevant sources of the knowledge.  The sources of knowledge would range from print materials, non-print materials to knowledge workers within and without the university.

Another role an academic library performs in KM in a university is acquisition of the knowledge sources identified. This specifically is geared towards explicit knowledge.  However, tacit knowledge source, taken to mean the knowledge worker, is recruited in conjunction with the human resource department. This will be specific to the library department, in accordance to its human resource needs.

Organization of the knowledge sources is yet an additional   role the library carries out in KM in a university. The organization is meant to enable easy accessibility of the knowledge sources.

Dissemination or sharing or diffusion of the knowledge is one more task the library executes in KM in a university setting. This is done through manual catalogue, on line public access catalogue, and social media.