10.3 Knowledge management and the dynamic nature of knowledge

10.3 Knowledge management and the dynamic nature of knowledge

McInerney, C

I really connect to the idea of knowledge being dynamic. I have always felt that what you retain in your head is affected by the person you are, your experiences and your feelings. Your knowledge is yours alone and you cannot give that same understanding to anyone else. However, in the world, both in schools and in the workplace, we focus on grasping facts from knowledge. In school, you have to memorize facts. As you get older, you are asked to interpret them and apply your own dynamic knowledge. In a workplace, we are often asked to return to the early school days tactic of performing tasks in specific, set ways. However, the longer you are at one workplace, the more specific the way one completes their own duties. If you begin a project in your own, specific way, and someone else must complete it, it can often be impossible for them to finish. I encountered this in my current job. I am working to create an archive, among other things. When I was given the work the previous assistant had done, I could not figure out her organizational system, and she had not written any of it down. Instead, I had to start over. If you are a responsible employee, when you are leaving a job, you will consider if anyone else can pick up where you left off. I have realized that when I leave my current job for the summer, no one else in the office can really use the Access database in which we keep all of our mailing lists. Because of this, I have created my own knowledge artifacts: tutorials on how to do basic actions in our access database. So far, they have been popular. I was careful to use clear, concise and direct language so that the only possible interpretation of the knowledge was the correct one. I am sure someone will find a flaw in my tutorials, but I hope this will make it easier when it is time for me to move on. In past jobs, I wish others had though about educating their coworkers to their organization processes. As information professionals, it is our job to both organize information and get it to those who are seeking it. It makes it significantly harder to pass on the information if a professional can’t even find it.