What, How and Why

of
Knowledge Management?
Rajendra Kumbhar, Ph.D.
Professor, Dept. of Library & Information Science,
Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune

What is knowledge?
q

Generally:

Knowledge = Data / Information / Experience / Wisdom / Understanding /

Expertise

In IT context:

Data Information Knowledge

In industry context:

Knowledge is an asset, Intellectual Property

Actionable information is knowledge (relevant, available at right time and
place)

What is knowledge?

In KM context knowledge is personal:

Experience/ lessons learnt/ errors committed during

a programme,

project, event, calamity, etc.

Know-how or skills (TKDL)

Intuition/insights

Types of knowledge

Implicit (tacit) knowledge

Explicit knowledge

What helps knowledge creation?

q

Imagination or thinking of possibilities

Critical thinking

Discussions

Workshops

Research

Field visits

Characteristics of Knowledge:
q

Rests in the human brain

Reflected through individuals skills or competencies

Difficult to extract

Can be lost with an individuals exit

It is an asset, which may be wasted if not used

Principles of saleable commodity does not apply to

knowledge

Examples of (tacit) knowledge and its

use:
q

Experience of burning finger, crop rotation

Maintenance of Deorai

Information: Sale of ice-cream : Vanilla, Chocolate, Vanilla,

Strawberry, Vanilla, Vanilla,
Vanilla,
Strawberry, Vanilla, Vanilla, Vanilla,
Knowledge:

Order 10 extra packets

200 ml rain in a particular area: need to rehabilitate people from

that area
People usually hold knowledge about:
(a) Type Trees and their water/soil holding capacity
(b) Temperature and diseases

What is Knowledge Management

(KM)?
It is a process that:
1. Identifies persons who have knowledge
2. Captures knowledge

2.1 Brainstorming
2.2 Best practices
2.3 Storytelling
2.4. Recording

What is Knowledge Management (KM)?

It is a process that:
3. Evaluates and validate
4. Stores knowledge in servers/folders/files (Data
warehouse or KR)
5. Prepares metadata:
5.1 Adds details such as person, dept. section, activity,
date etc.
5.2 Adds tags

Tools for tagging

q

Thesaurus/taxonomies/folksonomies
Example of an entry in a thesaurus

Climatology
Science of climate
UF Science of climate
BT
Meteorology
NT
RT

Seasons
Weather forecasting

Meteorology
BT
Earth science
NT Atmospheric pressure
Climatology

USE Climatology

Importance of tagging tools

q

Standardization of terminology

Problems due to synonyms, (cell phone/mobile)

Problems due to homonyms (Mercury)
Problems due to word forms (organization/organizations)
Useful for knowledge storage and retrieval

Solving problem of multilingualism

Need to develop taxonomies in regional languages

What is Knowledge Management (KM)?

It is a process that:
6. Updates knowledge (Add, modifies, deletes)
7. Takes care of knowledge security
E.g. File and network security, use of intranets

What is Knowledge Management (KM)?

It is a process that:
8. Searches / retrieves knowledge: (Data mining)
8.1 Uses suitable search strategies
8.1.1 Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT)
For example: Climate OR Weather AND India
NOT Maharashtra)
8.1.2 Truncations (Use of * or ? Mark )
For example: Edu* will retrieve

What is Knowledge Management

(KM)?
It is a process that:
9. Makes available/ share knowledge
10. Uses of technology for most of these processes
KM is process to develop a culture of knowledge creation
and sharing

Uses of Knowledge Management

q

In large companies knowledge is managed by CKO

to :

Develop new product/procedure /service

Improve a product/procedure /service
Gain competitive advantage, to file patents, to increase
sales
Help in decision making

Uses of Knowledge Management

In government organizations knowledge should be

managed:

To formulate new policies, norms

To initiate new programmes
To improve a system

Challenges in KM
q

Human psychology

Multilingualism

Thanks