READIT-2007 - Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research

Conference on
Recent Advances in
Information Science & Technology
(READIT-2007)
July 12 & 13, 2007
Organised by
Madras Library Association
Kalpakkam Chapter
and
Scientific and Information Resource Division
Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research
Kalpakkam 603 102, Tamil Nadu

Foreword
The first decade of the current millennium belongs to knowledge and knowledge
management. Information scientists and technologists are on the look out for the ways
and means to implement the innovative tools and technologies for the betterment of the
facilities to provide better services to the user community. In this context the do’s and
don’ts and the right and wrongs is concern of almost all the library professionals.
The present conference has “Information to Knowledge: Technology and Professionals”
as the theme. We hope the proceedings brought out to do justice to the theme and have
addressed at least some of the relevant topics in the field of interest to the professionals.
Papers have been received in almost all fields covering various topics like knowledge
environment and profession, library as knowledge centre, digital preservation issues,
knowledge a commodity and so on. Also we tried to address many of the issues in the
invited talks.
Conference like this gives an opportunity for the interaction among the participants and
better exchange of ideas and knowledge across a wider cross section. We hope we will
be able achieve this aim during the conference and the participants will be able to make
best use of the forum provided.
The pace of change of the technology is so fast and it is a Herculean task to be abreast
with technology and to make the best use of technology in the field of information
science. It is more so for a library professional and for libraries as it demands the
utilization of the technology on the one hand and the satisfaction of the user community
on the other. This pace can be maintained and kept only if we are able to exchange ideas
and come to know of the application and the implementation of the technology and tools
in different context and at different places. We hope the proceedings will throw some
light on the experience of the participant working in different fields.
I hope the proceedings will serve as a reference document as well as a benchmark of the
technology implementation in various libraries and provide an opportunity for us to adapt
the knowledge base for better utilization.
M. Somasekharan
Convener- READIT-2007

CONTENTS
INVITED TALKS
“Bodhi” : The Institutional Knowledge Repository of IGCAR
E.Soundararajan, C.Jayakumar and M.Somasekharan
Knowledge a Commodity in the New Millenium
A.Amudhavalli
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Technical Session-1: KNOWLEDGE ENVIRONMENT AND
PROFESSIONALS
Capacity Building in the Knowledge Environment: A Human Resource
Development Approach
Satish Kanamadi, Jayadev Kadli and Muttayya Koganuramath
The role of library and information professionals in the knowledge
environment
E.Soundararajan, C.Jayakumar and M.Somasekharan
Opportunities for Librarians/Information Managers in managing explicit
knowledge in the internet era
D.Gayatri
Knowledge Management In Digital Information System And The Role Of
Library And Information Centres With Special Reference To India
Dr. Subarna Kr. Das
Knowledge and Information Management in Libraries: A new challenge for
the library and information professionals in the digital environment
Dr.N.Subramanian
Role of library and library professionals in present knowledge environment
in the field of science and technology
Y. S. Parihar and J. K. Pattnaik
1
9
13
22
30
37
Session-2: LIBRARY AS KNOWLEDGE CENTRE
University Libraries – Metamorphosis to Knowledge Resource Centers
D.R.Samyuktha
44

Industrial Safety Information: a Knowledge Management (KM) approach
Nargund I N; and Joby Thomas
Multimedia Data Mining in Digital Libraries: Standards and Features
Sanjeevkumar. R. Jadhav
Information Resource Management in a knowledge society
V. Rajendran and E. Soundararajan
Using Knowledge mapping to support knowledge management in health
organizations
Sangita Gupta
47
54
61
68
Session-3 : DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT PRESERVATION AND
RESOURCE GENERATION
Fire Detection System: A Device for document preservation in a Library
Environment: Guidance for Selection to Installation of an Ideal System
J.V.M.Joseph, M.Pandurangam and M.Somasekharan
Document Management, Resource Generation & Preservation of Scientific
Source Materials in Physics and Allied Fields: A Special Reference to SINP
A.K. Saha, B.K. Mallick, D. Dasgupta & P. Das
Digital Preservation Issues And Fallacies In Digital Era
K.Vinitha, Dr.S.Kanthimathi,Dr. S.Sampath Kumar, & K.Tharani
Approach Adopted By Npcil For Capturing And Preserving Knowledge
J.P.Moolani , R.Mago, Umesh Chandra
Digital Preservation and Online Access in “Meghnad Saha Archive”
Dipa Dasgupta
73
81
86
93
100
Session-4: DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
INTEGRATION
Library 2.0: Myth or Reality ?
E.Soundararajan and M.Somasekharan
Role Of Electronic Surveillance And Security Systems In Academic
Libraries
L. Rajendran and G. Rathinasabapathy
Internet Usage by Research Scholars and Faculty in Sciences: A study of M
D University, Rohtak
106
111
118

Dr. Sanjay K Kaushik and Vijendra Singh
Information Security: The role of DOI (Digital Object Identifier)
Mrs N. Valarmathy
Cyber Crimes and Information Frauds: Emerging Challenges For LIS
Professionals
Dr. G. Rathinasabapathy and L. Rajendran
Digital Infrastructure And Technology Integration In State Agricultural
University Libraries In South India: A Study
G. Rathinasabapathy and A. Amudhavalli
126
131
143
Session-5: KNOWLEDGE A COMMODITY
Knowledge Management in Academic Institute and Role of Knowledge
Managers
Sanjay Gupta, Vasundhra Kumari and Anukampa Negi
Knowledge Communication in Academic and Research Environment
Dr. D. S. Thakur
IT enabled KM System/ Tools Development in Nuclear Power Corporation
of India Limited (NPCIL)
P.B. Mishra, J.P. Moolani, R. Mago and Umesh Chandra
Nuclear Knowledge Management (NKM) at IGCAR:
A case study on Fast Reactors
A.Narayanan, J.Srinivasan, V.Rajendran and M.Somasekharan
From Management Of Organizational Knowledge To Management Of
Organizational Memory
K.K.Kuriakose, H.Seetha, S.A.V.Satya Murty, S.Athinarayanan and
P.Swaminathan
Knowledge; A Marketable Commodity
A. Chitra Dhavaputhalvi
Role of Libraries in the Knowledge Commodity World
K V Satyanarayana, Sheetal Tare
152
160
169
180
190
200
204

‘Bodhi’ : The Institutional Knowledge Repository of
IGCAR
E.Soundararajan*, C.Jayakumar* and M.Somasekharan*
Abstract
Abstract: The collective acquired information of an organization is called the ‘institutional
knowledge’. The centralized Knowledge Repository uses standard taxonomies to consolidate
information into one place allowing knowledge to be searched and retrieved with maximum efficiency
and accuracy. Many organizations have realized the value of institutional knowledge and already
initiated knowledge management systems that collect, store, redistribute, utilize and ultimately
leverage the institutional knowledge for the benefit of the organization. All the organizations, in
particular the R&D institutions like IGCAR need to build knowledge repository on its specific areas of
interest. Once created, the IKR will act as a vehicle for knowledge dissemination, sharing and
transfer. This paper gives a comprehensive view on building IKR at IGCAR.
Keywords: Institutional Knowledge Repositor, Knowledge Management, Digital Library,
Knowledge Organization
1. THE KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATIONS
Today’s organizations must survive in the environment that is complex and
highly competitive. The tremendous growth of information and communication
technologies has made the organizations to continuously strive to improve their
performance and goals. After the information explosion through Internet,
organizations have become more conscious towards information management and
now they are evolving as knowledge organizations. A significant challenge facing the
modern organizations is how to utilize the information for overall improvement. A
knowledge organization must necessarily become a learning organization so that the
entire institution will learn during the daily routine and be able to adapt quickly to
changing environment
2. CHALLENGES OF KNOWLEDGE SHARING
The challenging barrier for knowledge organization is that of creating a
culture in which knowledge and knowledge sharing are valued and encouraged. R&D
organizations generate knowledge mainly from within the organization. Another
aspect is the tapping of tacit knowledge. The knowledge that resides in expert’s mind
has to be recorded so that when an expert leaves the organization, his knowledge will
be available for the benefit of organization. The issues to be addressed are
• Appreciation of importance of knowledge captured
• Knowledge loss while capturing
• Mechanisms for transferring and transforming knowledge
* Scientific Information Resource Division, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research
Kalpakkam, Tamilnadu –603 102, Email: sound@igcar.ernet.in
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Tacit Knowledge
Contextual
Mental Processes
Difficult to Transfer
Explicit
Knowledge
Tangible
Systematic
Ease of Transfer
Fig 1: Types of Knowledge
3. KNOWLEDGE RESOURCES AND ACQUISITION
Tacit knowledge exists within the research people in either internal or external
form. Internal knowledge resides within the individuals and is based on personal
experience and level of intelligence. External knowledge on the other hand resides
outside and manifested in different platforms. Such a type of knowledge can be
captured and codified into technical reports, images and can be archived as
institutional knowledge repository.
Knowledge acquisition identifies the knowledge resource and transforms it in
to knowledge repository that can be used. It involves the following activities
• Identify knowledge resources
• Capturing identified knowledge
• Organizing captured knowledge
• Transferring the captured knowledge
Use
Share
Organize
Organizational
Knowledge
Collect
Create
Identify
Fig 2. Organizational Knowledge Management Process
There are several issues related to knowledge acquisition. It includes
identifying the relevant knowledge, managing knowledge overload, knowledge loss
while capturing, procedures and guidelines for organizing and transferring knowledge
etc. The particular methodology and the level of desired knowledge depends on the
organizational goals and its activities.
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4. WHY IKR?
Organizations need to gather all the information that they need to know for
their survival and then pool the captured information at a common place as a
repository. The type of information include organization’s accumulated operational
data, its manuals and procedures, research outputs, case studies, contingency
management reports etc. These are essential information that today's management
needs frequently and the same has to be available for future use both in the near and
far. Such an organizational information repository becomes knowledge repository
when it is analyzed, adapted and used effectively for the organizational end. The
repository approach of organizing and consolidating information makes it possible for
all of its potential users to access it easily, and also enables information and
knowledge sharing. The repository approach also makes it possible for management
to organize and access information by specific area of interest, and to make it
available to employees more easily in any situation.
5. TECHNOLOGIES OF IKR
The information technology acts as an enabler for knowledge management.
There are several technologies and each has got a significant role to play in building
institutional knowledge repository.
5.1 Intranet, Internet
Intranets and Internets offer new ways to manage and communicate data,
information and knowledge. Intranets have emerged as one of the most effective ways
of sharing information and knowledge with in organizations.
5.2 Groupware
Groupware provides a means for increased collaboration and information
transfer through e-mail, calendaring, contacts, project management and scheduling
capabilities. It is essentially information sharing. But with IKR, groupware will be
used for knowledge transfer through services like ask an expert, consult etc. Some
common groupware products are Microsoft’s Exchange server, Lotus Notes and
GroupWise.
5.3 Intelligent Agents
The problem of information overload is becoming acute for many
professionals. Intelligent agents can be trained to roam networks to select and alert
users of new relevant information. Additionally they can be used to eliminate less
relevant information from information feeds.
5.4 Mapping Tools
There are an increasing number of tools to develop cognitive maps or ‘shared
mental models’. Companies to develop future scenarios and resolve conflicting
situations have used these cognitive maps. Mapping tools can represent conceptual
linkages between different knowledge resources.
5.5 Document Management
Documents, and especially structured documents, are the form in which more
explicit knowledge is shared. With proper annotations, indexing, highlighting etc, the
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documents can become knowledge repositories. Application of mapping tools and
intelligent agents will help in linking documents for knowledge mapping.
6. BUILDING KNOWLEDGE REPOSITORY AT IGCAR
Knowledge management is the synergetic combination of data and
information processing capacity of information technologies and the innovative
capacity of human beings. The knowledge recorded in procedures, databases, reports
etc are explicit type of knowledge and can be processed by knowledge management
tools. Explicit knowledge can be captured or generated, preserved and disseminated
for knowledge sharing. The Scientific Information and Resource Division (SIRD) has
initiated IGC knowledge resource management project named as “Bodhi”. This will
be a centralized repository of knowledge documents of ICGAR, which will provide
access to the following resources.
6.1 IGC Research Contribution
Fig 3: Home page of IGC Knowledge Resource
The database of articles published by IGC scientists and engineers in various
conferences and journals from year 1973 onwards. Articles are classified based on
major subjects. Full text access is provided to all available articles. A suitable search
interface is available to search publications based on various fields like author, title,
keyword, abstract etc, Author index for every author gives his full set of publication
that are available in this database. Year wise listings are provided with full text link
that gives the summary of publication for each year.
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Fig 4: Year wise Publications Summary
6.2 Image Archive
A comprehensive database is being built to store the metadata of photographs
belonging to various categories like milestones, VIP visits, important events, various
facilities, historical events and experimental setups. All the photo negatives/photos of
both color and black & white from the year 1973 onwards are being digitized and
archived in Server system.The corresponding metadata information is maintained in
database system with required Meta fields such as description, keywords, year, unique
id etc. The image archive can be searched based on any of fields for user convenience
like description, date, event, unit etc. Digitized images are linked to their respective
Meta information.
6.3 IGCAR News Clips Archive
It is a repository of News clips pertaining to DAE and in particular to IGCAR
activities from 1973 onwards. A bibliographic database is being created with required
fields such as date, title, keywords etc. Individual news clips are being digitized and
uploaded to servers and finally linked to their respective bibliographic entry. A search
engine is being developed which can search news clips based on various fields such as
date, year, tiles and source.
6.4 Internal Reports
Digitized versions for ICGAR Internal reports like IGC Reports, News Letters,
Annual Reports, Brochures, Procedure documents and Manuals are made available
and users can search on abstract level information and access the digitized full text of
the internal reports.
7. FUTURE PLAN
Organizing Digital Objects: The distributed digital objects can be organized
based on their subject thesaurus and establish a semantic relationship between the
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objects to form a conceptual network which will act as a semantic network or
otherwise called as knowledge network.
Ask an expert service: Users can get the answers for their questions from a
subject expert through IKR. This provides a means for knowledge transfer and
sharing
8. CONCLUSION
Knowledge management through institutional knowledge repository will
create a learning organization in which knowledge will be shared and transferred
among the employees in more effective manner. Appropriate information technology
tools can be utilized and employees could be motivated for sharing their respective
subject knowledge.
REFERENCES
1. C.W. Holsapple (2003). Handbook On Knowledge Management. New Delhi:
Springer.
2. Malhotra, Yohes(2005). Integrating Knowledge Management technologies in
organizational business processes: getting real time enterprises to deliver real
business performance. Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol.9 no.1 pp.7-28.
3. Dr David J. Skyrme(2005). Knowledge Management Solutions - The IT
Contribution.
http://www.skyrme.com
4. Kiran jude fernandes, Vinesh Raja and Simon Austin(2005). Portals as a Knowledge
repository and transfer tool- VIZCon case study. Technovation, Vol.25, Iss 11, pp
1281-1289
5. Gary Roberts(2005). Groupware as a Knowledge Repository. CIL Magazine. Vol. 25,
Issue 4. pp 29-31
6. Hamilton Mphidi and Retha Snyman(2004). The utilization of an intenet as a
knowledge management tool in academic libraries. The Electronic Library, Vol. 22,
iss 4. pp 393-400.
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Knowledge a Commodity in the New Millenium
A.Amudhavalli ♣
Abstract
One of the first thinkers to posit the coming of the "Information Age" was the economist Fritz
Machlup and his predictions generally included the proposition that information was an important
commodity, which would form the basis of a new economic force. “In an economy where the only
certainty is uncertainty, the one source of lasting competitive advantage is knowledge. When markets
shift, technologies proliferate, and products become obsolete almost overnight, successful companies
are those that consistently create new knowledge, disseminate it widely throughout the organization
and quickly embody it in new technologies and products.” (2). Knowledge is mass-produced,
packaged, distributed, exchanged and sold as discrete objects. Accurate, relevant and timely
information is the key ingredient to effective decision-making. Any individual/institution’s long-term
economic development is dependent on its ability to use information to make decisions that enable
growth, progress and productivity. Therefore, researchers need to learn to critically consume
knowledge products; and the information professionals need to design and distribute knowledge
products as re-usable objects with the aid of object-oriented design and standard knowledge
distribution protocols.
"New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more
truth we have to work with, the richer we become." (1)
1.INTRODUCTION
That information, knowledge and wisdom have financial value has been
acknowledged for many years. If I may quote from the Christian Holy Bible: "Happy
is the man that findeth wisdom and the man that getteth understanding For the
merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver and the gain thereof than
fine gold". This is extracted from the "Book of Proverbs", whose compilation started
eight hundred years before the present era. In spite of this, the idea that information
(as opposed to the information carriers such as manuscripts and books) is something
that should be paid for is not something that has been apparent to the general public,
except in the cases of military and industrial espionage. One of the first thinkers to
posit the coming of the "Information Age" was the economist Fritz Machlup and his
predictions generally included the proposition that information was an important
commodity, which would form the basis of a new economic force.
For quite some time, there have been attempts to identify the information
component of products and to cost out the value of these. Peter Drucker, the
management guru, for instance has pointed out that in new industries information, as
opposed to parts and labour, is increasingly forming inputs to products. The cost of an
automobile, for example, is 40% material and 25% labour, whilst for a silicon chip the
cost is 1% materials 10% labour and 70% information. Even in the case of an
automobile, the proportion of information that is input to its manufacture is rising
rapidly.
Hence, we can say that we are living through another great swing point in
history that has led to the emergence of an economy that is:
♣ Professor & Head, Dept. of Information Science, University of Madras &
President, Madras Library Association, Chennai.
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Global
highly competitive
fast changing
based to a great extent on knowledge as the key asset
“In an economy where the only certainty is uncertainty, the one source of
lasting competitive advantage is knowledge. When markets shift, technologies
proliferate, and products become obsolete almost overnight, successful companies are
those that consistently create new knowledge, disseminate it widely throughout the
organization and quickly embody it in new technologies and products.” (2)
2. WHAT IS A COMMODITY?
The "New Oxford Dictionary of English" defines commodity as:
"a raw material or primary agricultural product that can be bought or sold,
such as copper or coffee a useful or valuable thing such as water or time".
The "Concise Oxford Dictionary" has:
"an article or raw material that can be bought or sold, especially a product as
opposed to a service. a useful thing".
The "Chambers Dictionary" offers:
"an article of trade; (in plural) goods, produce; profit, expediency, advantage,
convenience or privilege (archaic)"
I doubt that any of us here would argue against the idea that information is a
"useful thing". For the purposes of this paper, I intend to define a commodity as "an
item that can be bought or sold". Under this definition, then the answer to the question
posed in the title must be ‘yes - information is a commodity’.
3. CONCEPTUAL DEFINITION
3.1. Information
With the information revolution, communicators need to clearly define
knowledge, re-evaluate the Library & information professionals’ role in the
information transfer chain as both information producers and consumers, and reexamine
how and why we produce information. In the last two decades, the rapid
penetration of desktop publishing and Web technologies not only changed the design
of information but also introduced new power and challenges in its dissemination.
The average user can design information and distribute it via a Web site literally
within minutes. This new power has led to an abundance of information that some
have called the "information overload." Information has become a commodity
because the tools and venues for creating and distributing information are widely
available. Consequently, I argue that the notion of information as we know it is
fundamentally meaningless. The "real value" of information results when creators of
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information can successfully market and brand their products. Hence, Knowledge is
viewed more as a commodity in the new millennium.
3.2. Knowledge
Knowledge is a complex concept, yet the dominant view of knowledge in the
management literature is a dichotomy between tacit and explicit. Even the knowledge
management literature tends to view knowledge on a limited number of dimensions,
whether this is in discussions of knowledge as a commodity or the process of
knowing. A review of knowledge from first principles shows that knowledge has
different degrees of validity, is highly heterogeneous and has complicated temporal
and social aspects. A model of knowledge based on these aspects is presented.
Comparing the four dimensions of knowledge with knowledge as a process opens up
a more holistic view of knowledge management and helps articulate some of the key
differences within streams of research in the field. This holistic perspective is also
compatible with Polanyi's original complex conception of tacit knowledge, which
drew heavily on Gestalt theory, a theory that examines the perception of "wholes".
The dual perspectives of a multi-dimensional conception of knowledge as a
commodity and a holistic perspective on knowledge management expands the
avenues of potential research and improves our ability to put knowledge in action
within organizations(3)
4. KNOWLEDGE AS A COMMODITY
Knowledge is mass-produced, packaged, distributed, exchanged and sold as
discrete objects. Accurate, relevant and timely information is the key ingredient to
effective decision-making. Any individual/institution’s long-term economic
development is dependent on its ability to use information to make decisions that
enable growth, progress and productivity. Therefore, researchers need to learn to
critically consume knowledge products; and the information professionals need to
design and distribute knowledge products as re-usable objects with the aid of objectoriented
design and standard knowledge distribution protocols.
Lyotard (1979), in his classic "Report on Knowledge", already observed that:
"The relationships of the suppliers and users of knowledge to the knowledge they
supply and use is now tending, and will increasingly tend, to assume the form already
taken by the relationship of commodity producers and consumers to the commodities
they produce and consume. Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold"
(4). The world Lyotard was beginning to see taking shape in the late 1970s is now
with us. Like it or not, we now live in an era where data, information, knowledge (and
possibly even wisdom) have become commodified, i.e. packaged and sold (or traded,
or given away) as discrete, easily-manipulated units - like rows of canned goods on a
supermarket shelf.
To operate in a world of commodified knowledge communicators need three
types of skills. First, we need to become adept at using packaged knowledge goods.
This entails knowing when and how to simply make use of the knowledge being
purveyed, just as we already routinely consume convenience foods or instantly "plugand-play"
electronic equipment, and when and how to critically engage with the
implicit message communicated by the packaging in which the knowledge arrives,
just as we already routinely do with other types of consumer product such as mobile
phones or toothpaste tubes (5). There was a time when academically useful
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knowledge would always be packaged in one of a very small range of carefully
graded packages (books, peer reviewed journal articles, and so forth) and when it was
necessary to painstakingly work through the content of each package to extract value
from it. Increasingly, however, the boundaries between academic and popular
products are becoming blurred and it is now often no longer necessary to actually
open the package - simply reading the label (e.g. the title or the abstract) is enough to
see how it can be used.
Second, we need to learn how to package our own knowledge products in
ways that are easily consumable and that allow for their re-use in plug-and-play
knowledge environments. In the world of computer programming it has become
standard practice to design systems in a modular, object-oriented manner so that
programming code can be more easily maintained and re-used (6). In this approach,
programs are not designed as single large systems, but are broken into many
independent objects, each of which appears as a simple, replaceable building block to
the system, however complex the object’s inner workings may be. In the same way, in
the world of information and knowledge management, it has become increasingly
common to "hide" each complex knowledge object behind a set of meta data
(analogous to the label on a soup can), so that it can be easily slotted in or out as
needed, without compromising the stability of the larger system. To build knowledge
objects of this sort, researchers need to learn to think and work in terms of objectoriented
design. What are the main classes of objects making up a knowledge product
one is constructing? How can one ensure that each object is maximally modular so
that it can be easily replaced? Which objects could be more efficiently produced by
outsourcing them to someone else?
Third, we need to become proficient at using the many standard knowledge
packaging standards and protocols already in use in the knowledge economy. These
range from simple conventions which make it easier for humans to select and
consume knowledge products (titles, subtitles, executive summaries, highlighting of
key points) to the many technical protocols (such as HTML, XML and RSS) that
allow for the efficient exchange of information among computer systems and
programs. While few social science researchers will want to know about the technical
specifics of such protocols, understanding their purpose and being able to use them
greatly enhances one’s ability to engage with knowledge networks. RSS (Really
Simple Syndication), for example, is a widely used convention that makes it easy to
automatically include appropriate aspects of others’ work in one’s own knowledge
products, and, conversely, to make one’s own knowledge products freely available in
such a way that others can easily, and automatically, include it in their work.
5. CHALLENGES IN NEW MILLENNIUM
The opportunities of technology are not without their risks. Technological
advances have enabled a greater number of people to provide design, desktop
publishing, Web design, and online content services. As these service providers
proliferate, the value—if nothing else the economic value of information is diluted
and is commoditized. While the supply of information has grown exponentially, it is
difficult to measure the demand for it. By some measure, online content providers
have not been able to generate revenue using a subscription service model. Others
only manage to sustain their business by attracting traffic and advertisers to their Web
site. This is at least an indication that consumers of information are not yet willing to
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pay for the information because free information is readily available. While their
quality is not guaranteed, valuable information is there for the taking if consumers are
willing to dig and filter out the information noise. Practitioners need to reformulate
our identity and rebrand our work.
The value of knowledge decays rapidly in a constantly changing global
environment. Therefore researchers need to learn how to remain up to date with
current developments, to create and deploy knowledge quickly, to manage time
effectively, and to practice the art of just-in-time learning. More than anything else,
the modern era has been characterized by constantly accelerating change -
technological change, political change, and social change - and there is no sign that
things are about to slow down. Even though we are, as Toffler observed, literally sick
of change, we are also addicted to it. In the new knowledge economy things (have to)
happen quickly (7). Fresh perspectives, technological innovations, new products and
services, are what drives the economy, and organisations and individuals who are
unable to keep up, who lack the necessary ‘agility’ (8), are the ones who lose out.
Information is freely and abundantly available. Therefore researchers also
need to learn to dissemble useful information, transform it into knowledge, and pass it
along appropriately. There was a time when there was a shortage of goods and
services in the global economy, but this is no longer the case - enough food is
cultivated every year and enough manufacturing capacity exists to feed and provide
basic comforts for each of the 6 or so billion people on the planet . The fact that
millions of people still go hungry is due to a failure of political imagination and will,
not to any intrinsic scarcity. At the level of information, we now even more clearly
live in an era of ‘post-scarcity’ (9) economics. Information is available in everincreasing
abundance and at ever-decreasing cost. Even though countries and regions
within countries still share very unequally in the spoils of the information era, with
some claiming that the world is split in two by a ‘digital divide’ between rich and
poor, information technologies are spreading through the ‘developing’ world at an
even faster rate than in the ‘developed’ world (10). This over-abundance of freely
available information has however, resulted in a new type of scarcity - that of
information overload. We are now constantly confronted with simultaneously
knowing too much (being overwhelmed by all the bits being piped into our
consciousness) and too little (not being able to extract the important bits from the
rest).
5.1. Skills
To thrive in such an environment and to function effectively, we need to learn
and acquire six types of knowledge and skills. First, we need to learn how to filter out
useless information. Whereas in a previous era the challenge may have been to track
down and secure information as a scarce commodity, now we have to filter out noise
in an effort to detect some kind of signal in the stream of junk data being beamed our
way. At the simplest level this means learning how not to pay attention, how to look
the other way, and how to make liberal use of e-mail programs’ delete buttons. More
profoundly, it involves learning how to make use of filters to prevent unwanted
information from ever reaching us. Effective human filters take the form of favourite
columnists, bloggers, academic authors, and so on whose take on events resonate with
our own. However, in building a defensive wall of human filters between ourselves
and the threat of information overload, it is important that we do not completely
screen out all possibility of being surprised, or of learning fundamentally new things.
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If our human filters are all too much like ourselves in background, if they are all
saying the same sorts of things, then it may be time to risk indulging in a little
overload. In addition to human filters, we also need to learn how to use the
increasingly large and effective array of automated filtering tools. Search engines
such as Google now make it possible, as a matter of routine, to winnow out billions of
pages of irrelevant information in an instant and to home in on the one or two pages
that matter. Similarly, by carefully slicing, dicing and auto-filtering syndicated news
feeds, it is now possible to set up highly focussed streams of incoming news tailored
to one’s particular requirements.
Second, we ourselves need to learn how to act as filters for others. Whether it
is in the context of a money-making business or simply "for the good of the cause",
central to what knowledge workers do is to collect and filter information and pass it
on to others as knowledge. Often, simply sorting bits of disconnected information into
commonly accepted (or novel) classification schemes already adds sufficient value to
count as a desirable knowledge product. In other cases, we need to process the
information in more profound ways to make it into something that others will want to
use in their own knowledge projects.
Third, we need to keep up to date with new developments - tracking both
broad political and technological trends and specific developments in particular fields
of interest. This requires maintaining a constant watch on a variety of ‘popular’ and
scholarly news sources - including academic journals, newsletters, weblogs and
syndicated news feeds - and participating in networking events, such as conferences
where information about the latest advances (and the latest gossip) is exchanged.
Fourth, we need to learn how to rapidly develop and deploy knowledge
products before the window of opportunity within which they can be effective closes.
While there will probably always be a market for painstaking empirical and
theoretical work that unfolds over periods of many months and years, most often the
type of knowledge that matters is that which can be brought to bear quickly. For
example, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek has in the last decade become one of
the most influential and sought after cultural analysts in academia. In part he has
achieved this status as a result of his closely argued and startlingly original academic
writings ♣ , but in part it also results from the constant stream of almost instantaneous
commentaries he provides (via magazines, newsletters, conference presentations,
radio interviews and the like) on unfolding world events. To create and deploy
knowledge quickly we need to learn the skills of rapid knowledge assembly, such as
using ready-made components as building blocks for larger products, collaborating
with others to make projects more manageable, and making use of techniques such as
rapid prototyping (11) to speed development. We also need to learn to resist the
temptation of ‘over engineering’ our products and to recognise when good enough is
indeed good enough.
Fifth, we have to become more skilled and strategic in managing time as the
most valuable resource available to us. For some, this might mean careful project
♣ Zizek, S. (1992). Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan In Hollywood And Out.
London: Routledge.
Zizek, S. (2001). Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? Five Essays in the (Mis)Use of
a Notion. London: Verso.
I-12

planning to ensure that deadlines will be met. For others, it might simply mean
finding a suitable rhythm of, for example, focussed work interspersed with periods of
rest and reflection.
Lastly, we need to learn the skill of just-in-time learning. In a fluid, constantly
changing environment it is the norm not to have the right knowledge and skills in
one’s repertoire. What is needed then is the ability to recognise the gaps in what one
knows and to become committed to being a ‘lifelong learner’ (12).
6. CONCLUSION
I have come to the sad conclusion that knowledge is a commodity that can be
traded and can, in fact, be bought and sold to make profit. It is still, however, also
provided for free even in established organisations. For instance, a beneficent
management purchases information from the providers and then makes that
information available, free of charge, to its staff. I would say, in passing, that the
dictum "Knowledge is Power" is only true, if that knowledge is shared and put to use,
knowledge that is hoarded is useless. My main concern in closing this brief talk is to
ask myself if there is any information that should remain free of charge and to which
there should be easy and ready access. To this, my answer is a very firm "Yes!” There
has been much debate about electronic communication making worse the division
between the Information Rich and the Information Poor and I have no doubt that this
is very possible. At the very minimum, every person should be guaranteed, free of
charge, all the information that they need to make their everyday life decent, happy,
efficient and as prosperous as they are able. This calls for both Information
Professionals and Governments to bend every effort to identify what information is
needed to ensure this (and I would suggest that we still do not know definite answers
to this) and to then make sure that this information is provided. In connection with
making charges for material that is currently for free, it is interesting to note a
warning given by the senior vice president of Warner Brothers On-line to the
Hollywood production industry: "Entertainment companies are mortgaging their online
future. They're giving away their content in exchange for exposure. But the
entertainment companies are basically underwriting these Internet companies by
throwing away their intellectual currency". When it is realised how few Internet
companies are really making money, as opposed to having their share prices pushed
up, then one can expect that in the fairly near future there will be a change in policy
on free information.
REFERENCES
1. Buckland, M. (1991). Information as thing. Journal of the American Society for
Information Science, 42, 351-360.
2. Capurro, R., & Hjøørland, B. (2003). The concept of information. Annual Review of
Information Science and Technology, 37 (ARIST)(pp. 343-411). Washington, D.C.:
American Society for Information Science and Technology.
3. Casselman R M and Samson D. System Sciences, 2005. HICSS '05. Proceedings of
the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on (2005), pp. 243b-243b.
4. Bressler, S., & Grantham, C. (2000). Communities of Commerce. London: McGraw
Hill.
5. Bannister, P. (1994). Discourse Analysis. In Bannister, P., Burman, E., Parker, I.,
Taylor, M. & Tindall, C. (Eds.), Qualitative Methods in Psychology:A Research Guide.
London: Open University.
I-13

6. Booch, G. (1993). Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications (2nd
Edition). Addison-Wesley.
7. Toffler, A. (1970). Future shock. New York: Random House.
8. McCarthy, M.P., Stein, J., & Brownstein, R. (2002). Agile Business for Fragile
Times : Strategies for Enhancing Competitive Resiliency and Stakeholder Trust.
McGraw-Hill.
9. Ashford, R., & Shakespeare, R. (1999). Binary Economics: The New Paradigm.
Lanham: University Press of America.
10. Shirky, C. (2002). Half the world. Downloaded from
http://shirky.com/writings/half_the_world.html 2, May 2007.
11 Jones, M. K., Li, Z., & Merrill, M. D. (1992). Rapid prototyping in automated
instructional design. Educational Technology Research and Development, 40(4), 95-
100.
12. Edwards, R., & Nicoll, K. (2001). Researching the rhetoric of lifelong learning.
Journal of Education Policy, 16(2), 13-24.
I-14

Capacity Building in the Knowledge Environment:
A Human Resource Development Approach
Satish Kanamadi * , Jaydev Kadli ** and Muttayya Koganuramath ∗
Abstract
The ICT has brought in a paradigm shift in the information handling activities during the last
few years. Because of the emergence of knowledge as the most crucial asset responsible for the
economic and social developments of the present society, the present society has come to be known as
knowledge society and the environment that contains the entire gamut of knowledge management
processes has come to be known as knowledge environment. The librarianship has evolved and found
itself new roles and responsibilities in this knowledge environment. This article discusses the
knowledge management process in libraries and outlines the responsibilities that are expected of
librarians to function as knowledge managers. The various avenues available for librarians to acquire
these skills for their professional development are discussed. Finally, article also mentions how the LIS
professionals should move away from thinking about their employment security and start thinking
about employability.
Keywords: Knowledge Management, Professional Development, ICT Competencies, Staff
Training
1. INTRODUCTION
Through the ages, the society has passed through several ages. First it was
agricultural society where agriculture was the dominant force for development. This
was followed by industrial age as there was a sudden spurt in industrialization. Then
came the revolution in information technology which made the society to surge
forward and was called in as information age. Today we live in a society which is
known as knowledge society, because it is being driven by knowledge management
processes. The role of libraries in providing widespread and inclusive access to
knowledge is widely acknowledged. In today’s context, library has to play two
distinct roles-to serve as a local centre of information and knowledge and to be a
gateway to national and global knowledge (Pitroda, Sam 2006).
2. KNOWLEDGE ENVIRONMENT
As the society moved towards becoming Knowledge society, it also acquired a
new terminology to define its presence. Knowledge Environment is nothing but the
work environment where the whole gamut of activities like knowledge innovation,
knowledge application , human resource management and finally use of ICT for
knowledge management takes place.
Knowledge environment involves management of knowledge by effectively
identifying, acquiring, developing, resolving, using, storing and sharing knowledge, to
create an approach to transforming and sharing of tacit and explicit knowledge, and to
raise the emergency and innovation capability by utilizing the wisdom of the team.
The significance of knowledge environment has increased manifold due to the
fact that knowledge has become the driving force for economic and social
∗ Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Deemed University), Sion-Trombay Road, Deonar,
MUMBAI- 400088, kanamadi@gmail.com, koganuramath@rediffmail.com
**
Lala Lajpat Rai College of Commerce and Economics, Mahalaxmi, MUMBAI – 400 034
Email: jhkadli@gmail.com

development (Balyan, R.K. 2007). This has provided boost for the importance of
library. It has also raised an important question like how to manage knowledge in the
libraries in the near future. Knowledge management in libraries should be focused on
effective research and development of knowledge, creation of knowledge bases,
exchange and sharing of knowledge between library staffs (including its users),
training of library staff, speeding up explicit processing of the implicit knowledge and
realizing of its sharing.
3. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN LIBRARIES
For many of us in the academic world, knowledge management is an old
concept, a function historically performed by librarians. However, in the digital
information age this term has taken on new meanings. Knowledge management is the
process of transforming information and intellectual assets into enduring value. It
connects people with the knowledge that they need to take action, when they need it.
The key to knowledge management is capturing the knowledge of process - how
organisations get their work done - and how various elements of information connect
to this.(Hawkins, Brian 2000) The literature defines two different types of information
necessary to accomplish this: explicit and tacit. Explicit information is packaged,
easily codified, transferable, and communicable. Tacit knowledge, on the other hand,
is personal, context-specific, difficult to formalize, and difficult to communicate and
transfer.
The core process of Knowledge Management in libraries includes the
following:
i) Knowledge Creation:
Measures and instruments that promote the creation of knowledge in libraries
are acquisition of external knowledge, setting up of interdisciplinary project teams for
specific tasks and their findings, etc.(Mertins, Kai et al, 2001) In this step,
management plans are formulated to coordinate all knowledge management related
activities. Secondly, it requires establishment of special leading groups of knowledge
flow for accomplishing all tasks relating to knowledge management activities.
Electronic resources committees are established composed of various types of
specialists to take charge of evaluating, procuring and creating the electronic
resources on the one hand, and coordinating activities of business departments and
spurring them on to close cooperation in such fields as procurement and organization
of the electronic information resources as well as providing services on the other
hand.
ii) Knowledge Storing:
The stored knowledge in manuals, databases, case studies and even processes
and rules of thumb makes up of for an important aspect of Knowledge management.
By capturing and storing the skills and knowledge of an employee, the deterrence to
the processes when he leaves the organization can be minimized because these
processes can be carried on by any other person.
2

iii) Knowledge Distribution/Dissemination:
Provision of the right knowledge to the right person at the right time is core of
knowledge management process. Therefore, libraries will have to use diverse media
and channels to disseminate new knowledge created. There are several methods and
tools like Internet and intranet are available for dissemination. Other aspect of
dissemination of knowledge is the transfer of experiences to new employees and
others by training on-the-job, mentoring and other coaching techniques (Shanhong,
Tang, 2000)
The process of knowledge dissemination at libraries can be strengthened by
• Continuous strengthening the creation of libraries' own document resources
• Continuously raising the quality of libraries' staffs
• Ensuring utilization of all IT applications such as Internet, Intranet and other
KM tools like groupware, retrieval tools, data warehousing, etc.
• Ensuring the security of KM operations
iv) Knowledge Application:
According the survey conducted by Martins (2001), the application of
knowledge is the most essential task of knowledge management. Libraries are
attaching importance to acquire knowledge and achieve maximum functions and
efficiency of knowledge information. This is needed for providing value added
services to the people Therefore, knowledge services based on high-speed information
networks are of significance to the library users. These can be achieved by:
• Setting up virtual libraries or information centers for enterprises, governments,
public organizations and scientific research institutions
• Setting up ICT enabled knowledge services which is actually a 24X7 any
where anytime access model for information services
• Digitizing all print resources into digital information and its integration with
the mainstream digital information
v) Human Resource Development for KM
To run a complex process like knowledge management, library staff needs to
have high quality specialized talents. They need to imbibe certain skills like
information management using ICT skills and use of certain knowledge management
tools. (Jain, K.K. 2005) There has to be a complete paradigm shift from how things
were managed to doing things in a completely different manner. In practice, there is a
need to pay full attention to diversity and variation of library staffs' requirements in
this knowledge environment (Bansal, Alka 2000).
3

4. NEW FOUND ROLES / RESPONSIBILITIES OF LIS PROFESSIONALS
Increasing applications of ICT and rapid developments happening in
knowledge environment have put lot of pressure on LIS professionals to perform and
deliver results. At the same time, these developments have also created new
challenges and opportunities for them. In this dynamic environment, LIS
professionals are facing complex challenges to meet the ever-changing diverse
information needs. They need to upgrade their skills for implementing new practices
and technologies and for sustaining the demands of knowledge environment (Halkar
G.G., 2005). As knowledge managers, LIS professionals need to be aware of the use
and implementation of these changes and develop technological, managerial and
communication skills. Only such attitude can help LIS professionals in realizing their
full potential.
The review of related literature, study of several books and journals in the
related areas helped authors in identifying several significant skills needed by library
professionals to succeed in this knowledge environment. They are discussed briefly
below
i) Librarianship Skills
No matter how drastically the information environment has changed the
relevance of traditional librarianship is still felt. In the light of ICT, the LIS
professionals must revisit and refresh their knowledge about traditional skills like
Classification, Cataloguing, Reference Services, Indexing, Abstracting, User
Education, Collection Development and Resource Sharing activities (Mestri, Mamata
et al. 2006)
ii) Information Communication Technology skills
ICT has revolutionized the information handling activities in library &
information centre. It involves entire gamut of technology involved in information
processing, consolidation, repacking, communication and retrieval. It is necessary that
LIS professionals have a comprehensive understanding of Library automation,
Networking, hardware and software involved. Though knowledge about Internet and
its usefulness is a must, Knowledge about online databases, digital library softwares,
search engines, portals, content management is very much essential. In a nutshell, LIS
professionals will have to keep themselves up to date with any developments in ICT
that has any implication for knowledge management process.
There are various tools available for Knowledge management process. Some
of the tools for knowledge Capture are PC Pack, Clementine Data mining, and
Intelligent Miner. Similarly some of the tools used for knowledge sharing process are
ART Enterprise, GrapeVINE, PKM (Personal Knowledge Manager), Knowledge
Exchange, etc.(Bansal, A. 2000). It is essential to get adequate training and mastery
over such tools for effectively handling knowledge management activities.
iii) Managerial Skills
Continually changing knowledge environment poses new and unexpected
challenges from all perspectives. In day to day administration librarians faces many
challenges and it is more essential for Librarians to demonstrate highest level of
managerial skills. Hence, Librarians are also forced to perform as managers managing
multifaceted tasks. Some of the managerial skills are knowledge organization and
management, interpersonal and human relation skills, scientific management of
4

knowledge process, optimal utilization of resources, performance evaluation and
enhancement of performance of team members etc. (Das, Kshirod et al 2006).
iv) Leadership Skills
Leadership is a process of influencing and supporting others to work
enthusiastically towards achieving objectivities of organization. Integration of
advanced technology, multidisciplinary research and complex user information needs
of institutions of higher learning demand that libraries provide cutting edge
information support to them. Hence, Libraries are employing large number of persons
with different skill sets. These employees create an efficient knowledge environment
conducive for research. Managing a huge library and resource centre with all its
complexities require librarians with good leadership skills. Some of the essential
leadership skills are intelligence, self confidence, tact and diplomacy, will power &
flexibility, excellent human relations, judgment, integrity etc.
v) Information Skills
With information being made available in several formats, retrieving
information has become a tedious task. This difficulty is compounded by the
availability of too much of information. In this scenario, it is necessary for Librarians
to have mastery over tools & techniques, strategies, engines and technologies related
to information search process. They must develop ability to evaluate information and
select and disseminate the most suitable information according to users needs.
vi) Communication Skills
In this knowledge environment, Librarian is the facilitator of access between
knowledge and the user. No matter how much professional competence a librarian
has, he will fail to deliver and satisfy users if he lacks communication and
presentation skills. The information professional will command respect and
acceptance among users only through the strength of his communication skills. It is
directly proportional factor. Librarians needs to be as emphatic listener to user
demands and needs. He needs to communicate the importance and usefulness of
information services to the users. Librarian also needs to have a trusted
communication with team members to achieve organizational goods.
5. CAPACITY BUILDING FOR KM: TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT
AVENUES IN LIS
Libraries, just like businesses, need to focus on building their capacity if they
want to maximize their effect on the research and development community. LIS
professionals need to dedicate themselves to raising capacity building to the same
level of importance as that of their organization’s critical functions. There are some
libraries like University of Hyderabad, IIT Madras, ISB Hyderabad, etc which have
achieved capacity building to the maximum level. What propelled these libraries to
new levels of effectiveness was not any single initiative, but rather a deliberate
programme to enhance its capabilities at all levels, from its strategy to its systems and
structure.
Capacity Building of the whole organization (Libraries) certainly makes for an
interesting topic. However, it is a vast and complex topic which needs to be
deliberated in a comprehensive manner. So, this article is limited to studying the
5

human resource development in the knowledge environment where in various training
and development avenues available for LIS professionals are discussed
Professional development is an important manifestation of capacity building
and it is also a necessary response to a rapidly changing environment. Although
professional development is an individual responsibility, it thrives on partnership with
the associations and the institutions that share common goals and values with
librarians. Though a lot depends upon the individual’s attitude and interest in
acquiring skills, institutes do fare better when they have an institutionalized approach
for preparing their human resources for the knowledge environment.
Some of the possible avenues for training and development for LIS
professionals are listed below.
i) Refresher/Orientation Courses: The University Grants Commission has
made it mandatory for all academic librarians in the college and university setup to
attend them, by linking its participation to career advancement. Since these
programmes are of 3 to 4 week duration, capacity building can be achieved at the
maximum level by carefully including most of the key roles/responsibilities of
librarians in the knowledge environment into the programme content. These
programmes should also make an activity based training programme where more
emphasis is also on practical.
ii) Workshops: Workshops offer another effective mode of imparting training.
Here the emphasis is more on providing hands on experience to the participants.
National Institute of Rural Development, Hyderabad and Documentation Research
Training Centre Bangalore, NISCARE, New Delhi are some institutes which conduct
several training programmes and have been found to be quite useful.
iii) Conferences/Seminars: Professional Associations like Indian Library
Association (ILA), Indian Association of Library and Information Center (IASLIC),
Bombay Science Librarians’ Association (BOSLA), Madras Librarians Association,
(MALA), Society for the Advancement of Library and Information Science (SALIS),
Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET), etc. are few associations which are
active in organizing annual conferences/seminars on topics on knowledge
environment. Participants actively participate by publishing and presenting their
papers and also actively involving in the deliberations. However, one drawback of
such conferences is that they impart theoretical knowledge and lack the practical
training which is the need of the hour. This has been overcome by organizing the preconference
tutorials for the interested participants.
iv) Courses at Universities/Institutes: National Centre for Science Information
(NCSI) conducts a one year advanced course in knowledge management for
librarians. INFLIBNET at Ahmedabad also conducts training courses of different
duration. DELNET and NISCARE at New Delhi are some other institute which
conducts training courses of different duration. These are quite contemporary and are
designed to the specific needs of the profession and hence are highly successful.
v) Distance Education Programmes: University of Hyderabad and IGNOU
offer Post Graduate Diploma in Library Automation and Networking. Several
universities are offering the PG Diploma in Computer Applications under distance
mode. These courses are usually of one year duration with practical and theory classes
being conducted twice for three to four weeks. However, its is observed that
practically it is not possible to offer a thorough hand on practical and training to the
6

candidates and they are expected to exercise and gain practical knowledge by relooking
what is being taught at these courses.
vi) Online Training Courses: This is a concept of e-learning where the lessons
will be delivered and the candidates learn the subjects’ though desktops. One such
example is IMARK. This is an e-learning initiative in information management and is
developed by FAO and partner organizations. (http://www.imarkgroup.org). Similarly
UNESCO also has its portal on ICT education. World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO) offers online courses in the area of Intellectual property and
copyrights in digital environment.
vii) Assigning Special Projects: Challenging projects can instill new
enthusiasm in the staff and make them learn new skills in order to complete the
project. This also makes one staff to share his knowledge with others. By having a
team of mixed skills, organizations are providing training to the less talented staff by
work shadow (Observation and trying) methods.
viii) On the job training: Consultants can be hired in order to determine the
training needs and then actually deliver the training. By structuring the content and
delivery of training process, every library can be in control of the capacity
development programme and effectively monitor the progress as well.
ix) Self-learning: Some staff members are very enthusiastic and interested in
expanding their skill set in this knowledge environment. Such staff should be
encouraged by providing those facilities like computers, internet access, literature to
read and then possibly having an effective liaison with the computer department in the
organization
6. CONTINUOUS LEARNING: EMPLOYMENT SECURITY VS
EMPLOYABILITY
Developments in the Information Communication technologies are reshaping
the world of learning and of scholarly communication. The way teachers teach, the
way a student learns has been influenced by these developments. The influence of the
same is also profound on LIS professionals.
Suddenly, the traditional skills evolved and practiced in a manual manner like
gathering, organizing, storing and retrieving information are becoming less relevant in
this knowledge environment. Knowledge environment challenges librarians are to
manage an ever exploding body of information, integrating electronic, print and nonprint
resources into a seamless highway of services. Librarians now find themselves
on the leading edge in the delivery of scholarly information. The availability of
information resources marketed directly to the end-user is unprecedented. The same
skills like gathering, organizing, storing and retrieving, which were done in a manual
manner now needs to be done in a more complex ICT enabled knowledge
environment.
In this competitive environment, it is futile for LIS professionals to think
about job security. Present job market is performance oriented and if one does not
upgrade his skills to suit the knowledge environment, he/she will find it difficult to
see progress in one’s career. Unless LIS professionals develop those skills related to
new found responsibilities/roles discussed earlier, their category may decided as mere
support staff and not crucial and to be retrenched at the first available opportunity.
This dreadful situation has also given rise to several challenges to LIS professionals.
7

Those librarians who have the needed set of knowledge management skills are in
great demand and are employable all the times. The strategic position of librarians in
the knowledge environment has never been more promising.
7. CONCLUSION
When we compare the role of LIS profession in those traditional days to their
role expected in this knowledge environment, what we see is that the roles have
remained same. What has changed is how these roles are performed. Today’s LIS
profession relies heavily on ICT tools for knowledge management activities.
Knowledge environment has posed several challenges which are no doubt staggering.
While the great core of principles, practices and values they espouse remains relevant,
the skills and knowledge required to perform their jobs are constantly changing.
These developments require increased technological skills to ensure appropriate and
effective action on the part of information professionals.
REFERENCES
1. Balyan, R K; Knowledge management and human resource development. Indian Journal
of Training and Development, 2007,35(1), 125-137.
2. Bansal, A; Knowledge management: A review. DESIDOC Bulletin of Information
Technology, 2000, 20(4), 3-9.
3. Das, K; Chauhan, K and Jena, S; Skill, competency and development of professional
staff in challenging dynamic web environment. In H. Chandra (Ed.), Initiatives in
Libraries and Information Centers in the Digital Era. Proceedings of the National
Conference Papers, Coimbatore: SALIS , 8-10, Jul 2006, pp225-229.
4. Halkar, GG and Gupta, S; Knowledge management: A challenge for the 21st century.
Indian Journal of Training and Development, 2005, 35(1), 53-61.
5. Hawkins, B; . Libraries, knowledge management, and higher education in electronic
environment, 2000. Retrieved May 11, 2007, from http://conferences.alia.org.au
/alia2000/proceedings/brian.hawkins.html.
6. Jain, KK; Knowledge sharing: Role of human resource development. Indian Journal of
Training and Development, 2005, 35(4), 5-18.
7. Mertins, K; Heisig, P and Vorbeck, J; Knowledge management: Best practices in Europe.
Berlin: Springer, 2001.
8. Mestri, M; Kumbargoudar, P; and Gobbur, DS; Design of training programmes for LIS
professionals in emerging ICT environment, 2006. In H. Chandra (Ed.), Initiatives in
Libraries and Information Centers in the Digital Era. Proceedings of the National
Conference Papers, Coimbatore: SALIS 8-10, Jul , pp230-237.
9. Pitroda, S; National Knowledge Commission – Report to the Nation 2006. New Delhi:
National Knowledge Commission, Government of India, 2006
8

Role of library and information professionals in the
knowledge environment
E.Soundararajan*, C.Jayakumar* and M.Somasekharan *
Abstract
Today we live in a knowledge society where the information is available to the users as they
require regardless of physical boundaries, formats, time etc. The revolutionary innovations of information
and communication technologies have changed the ways in which people think, communicate and share
knowledge. Libraries play a vital role in the knowledge dissemination process and management. In this
context, the library and information professionals have great challenges before them. Library professionals
started migrating to become knowledge professionals. The Internet technologies coupled with the
infrastructural advancements are helping the professionals in serving users better. This paper highlights
the new generation library, library users and the challenges before the library professionals.
Keywords: Knowledge Management, Information Management
1. INTRODUCTION
Libraries are facing the major transformational changes due to the advancements
of information and communication technologies. The technological changes has
challenged and made obsolete many current practices of providing library services. The
role of the library has always been to provide the best of possible services to all patrons,
possibly at all times. With competition from the World Wide Web, there is a sheer need
for the librarians to provide a ‘face-lift’ to their current outlook and services. In the
digital era, librarians, system persons, and record managers must be able to work with
digital media as easily as they have worked with paper. They must be able to curate
electronic collections, including the ability to select, acquire, describe, organize,
reference, and preserve these digital works.
2. KNOWLEDGE ENVIRONMENT
Knowledge environment facilitates the collaborative knowledge building,
decision making, and knowledge discovery depending upon the knowledge society.
Knowledge management is the process of transforming information and intellectual
assets into enduring value. It connects people with the knowledge that they need to take
action, when they need it. In the corporate sector, managing knowledge is considered key
to achieving breakthrough competitive advantage. The key to knowledge management is
capturing the knowledge. Two different types of information are necessary to accomplish
this: explicit and tacit. Explicit information is packaged, easily codified, transferable, and
communicable. Tacit information, on the other hand, is personal, context-specific,
difficult to formalize, and hard to communicate and transfer. Combining these two types
* Scientific Information Resource Division, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam -
603102, Tamilnadu, Email: sound@igcar.gov.in
9

of information using formal and informal information provides the perceived value of
knowledge management.
3. NEW FACES OF LIBRARIAN
Librarians are forced to adapt with the fast growing technology. We witness the
tremendous changes that took place in the library services such as infrastructure, content
creation, collection development, user interface, information and knowledge management
strategies etc. Digital libraries are the library without physical boundaries. Patrons could
access the information at any place, any time, anywhere and in any format. The
expectations from the users have gone up into a high level that the librarians are trying to
meet with continuous learning
Information
Manager
Network
Manager
Knowledge
Manager
LIS Professional
Facilitator Trainer Innovator
3.1 Information Manager
Fig 1: Multifaceted LIS Professional
The work of librarians is increasingly varied as it expands to keep up with the
flow of information. Librarians work with the computer experts to create and manage
web sites and intranets for the library. Librarians have to analyze, describe and organize
the digital resources such as e-books, scanned images etc for efficient retrieval by the
patrons. The librarian is responsible for managing the information resources, the
infrastructure and staff to meet the information needs of the users.
10

3.2 Facilitator/ Trainer
Librarian also play the role of information facilitator / trainer. Their main business
is to enhance the information literacy among the users of an organization. In addition to
training, other activities (e.g. the development of support tools and services) would be
incorporated to help facilitate the ease with which users can access information more
efficiently and effectively.
3.3 Network manager
The library and information professionals must often be network specialists. This
includes not only the physical networking technology to connect computers, workstations
and peripherals with the central institutional computer , with CD-ROM and other
physical information servers at the institutional level and also the integration of various
computer technology within an institutional network. It also includes the networking
technology of the Internet Protocol (TCP-IP) and various other aspects of virtual
connections with the world wide network of information sources. In smaller institutions,
the librarian may be required to setup or maintain the web server, produce HTML-pages
both for the library and the institution itself, and set up Internet services like training
sessions, trouble-shooting, and specialized information services like RSS and blogs. A
close interaction with organizational network administrators will help to enhance the
knowledge and ensures sustained information services to the users.
3.4 Frontier of latest technology
Information resources from the Internet influence the content of the library's
collection policy and require inclusion of electronic journals, current awareness services,
document delivery and even ephemeral information resources from the Internet.
Librarians and information professionals will have to be familiar with key Internet
resources and even provide their own content. Library 2.0 has become the buzz word.
Librarians have to start migrate to become Librarian 2.0, This require them to know
several web 2.0 technologies such as RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Wikis, Blogs,
Web tools, Technology standards and protocols.
3.5 Knowledge Manager
Identification, Verification, Acquisition, Organization and Dissemination - these
are the traditional services provided by librarians since the emergence of the library
services. In the last few years librarians have again had to expand their area of expertise
to include digital information, including areas of the World Wide Web. And they are
expected to redefine themselves again. This time, as knowledge managers to manage the
knowledge of the organization. Knowledge is people, content, practices or processes and
intellectual capital. The Librarian will be the idea person to manage the knowledge of the
support organization. He can be the knowledge manager for training organization who
can take the complete responsibility for training content, delivery model and so on. Being
the Knowledge Manager means that creating value to the firm by facilitating access to
11

high quality information and by networking people and their ideas together using the
technological infrastructure. The emphasis will shift from technical skills in the library to
communication, facilitation, training and management skills (e.g. strategic and marketing
management).
4. THE LIBRARIANS OF FUTURE
The transformation from librarian to knowledge manager is clearly underway;
however, a deeper look at the direction that the Internet is taking research reveals the
possibility of more far-reaching changes. As many business processes move to the
Internet, the use of information will become integrated with the systems and services. In
this environment, information as a distinct function or resource may no longer exist. To
adjust to these more far-reaching changes, information professionals must search beyond
current bounds (e.g. librarian, information, knowledge management) and think in terms
of benefits to their organizations. Right now, information can be used to enhance
competitiveness and productivity. If information is to be seamlessly integrated with
transaction processes, then someone must scope out work-related behaviors to ensure that
it is done in the most efficient and effective manner. And, if equal information and
technology is available to everyone, then competition rests on the ability to interpret and
apply these tools. Clearly the impending shift to knowledge management (and beyond)
represents an exciting change for library and information professionals. However, it's an
opportunity that requires a great deal of preparation, and a new way of thinking.
5. CONCLUSION
Thus, the role of the librarian is evolving to network specialist, information
broker, systems designer and knowledge manager to mention only a few directions. In
essence, an overall intensification of specialization both in the technological aspects of
library and information services, as well as stronger subject-oriented competencies and
evaluative abilities are being demanded from the information professionals and should be
taken into consideration both in the training and education of professionals as well as in
in-service continuing education to meet the changing technological demands at the
organization.
REFERENCES
1. Wendy Jordan and Victoria Ward. The Role of the Librarian in a Knowledge Society,
The proceedings of a lecture/workshop at Sultan Qaboos University, 19 February 2001.
2. Diann Rusch-Feja, New Roles for Librarians in Supporting Researchers in the Social
Sciences: The Impact of New Technology, 62nd IFLA General Conference - Conference
Proceedings - August 25-31, 1996.
3. Olivia Crosby. Librarians: Information experts in the information age. Occupational
Outlook Quarterly, 2000-01.
4. Beyond ‘Library 2.0 and “Library 2.0”’ URL:
12

Opportunities for Librarians/Information Managers
in managing explicit knowledge in the internet era
D.Gayatri *
Abstract
The development of knowledge management in recent years has become the key concern for
librarians and libraries. Powerful new technologies for capturing,storing,retrieving and sharing
information are fast becoming the building blocks of a new knowledge infrastructure. In this paper a
knowledge management approach for a research institute is presented. It will also examine the role of
librarians/libraries in knowledge management and suggests that librarians/libraries in the digital and
knowledge age should be in charge of knowledge management in their respective organizations in
order to leverage the intellectual assets and to facilitate knowledge creation.
1. INTRODUCTION
The concept and name--“Knowledge Management”--was started and
popularized in the business world during the last decade of the 20th century. It was
the business world that first recognizes the importance of knowledge in the “global
economy” of the “knowledge age”. The applications of knowledge management have
now spread to other organizations including government agencies, research and
development departments, universities, and others. Managing knowledge has become
increasingly important in research organisations. By the process of knowledge
management (KM),companies organise the way in which they create and use their
institutional and collective knowledge.
Christine Tindall, Technical Director of KM in Ernest and Young Co.,
highlighted that “ One good librarian is worth 100 databases”. Her statement
emphasizes that, KM is about more than technology and databases. It is about
connecting people to experts, people to inform and the utilization of that information.
It is also about understanding how people learn and make it possible for them to do
so, how organizational structures and infrastructures affect the building of knowledge
and how organizational procedures, rewards and values affect the sharing of
knowledge. But at the heart of every organization is its need to manage the
information it owns and acquires, to utilize it for competitive advantage to interpret it
in a way that assists decision making to build a secure information based organization
to underpin the KM environment.
The skills of library and information professional are becoming a vital part of
the process. Information management can be leveraged to achieve a "knowledge
environment". Information professionals associated typically with IM have the
theoretical basis and practical skills to provide the essential elements of a knowledge
environment. However, they are rarely seen as relevant to creating a knowledge
environment
The management of information has long been regarded as the domain of
librarians and libraries. Librarians and information professionals are trained to be
experts in information searching, selecting, acquiring, organizing, preserving,
repackaging, disseminating, and serving. However, professionals in information
technology and systems have also regarded information management as their domain
because of the recent advances in information technology and systems which drive
* IMA, IICT, Hyderabad. Email: gayatri.divakaruni@gmail.com
13

and underpin information management. One of the clearest evidences of this is that
the positions of “Chief Information Officer” (CIO) in many organizations are
generally held by information technologists instead of librarians. In fact, most of the
work of CIO’s has to do with developing and managing the IT infrastructure and
systems, not the managing of information per se.
With the growing interest in knowledge management, many questions have
been raised in the minds of librarians regarding: the difference between information
and knowledge; between information management and knowledge management; who
should be in charge of information and knowledge management; would librarians and
information professionals with appropriate education and training in library and
information science be most suitable for the position of “Chief Knowledge Officer”
(CKO) in their organizations; and what libraries can do in implementing knowledge
management.
2. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE
Data transforms into information, information transforms into knowledge and
knowledge drives and underpins behavior and decision-making. Below are simple
definitions of Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom—all of them are available
within every organization:
Information and knowledge can be as:
Information is visible, independent from action and decision, different in
format after processing, physical product, independent from existing environment,
easily transferable, and duplicable.
Knowledge is invisible, closely related to action and decision, different in
thought after processing, spiritual product, identified with existing environment,
transferable through learning, and not duplicable.
In the business world, two types of knowledge have been noted. They are explicit
knowledge and tacit knowledge. Jan Duffy defines explicit knowledge as
“knowledge that is documented and public; structured, fixed-content, externalized,
and conscious” and tacit knowledge as “personal, undocumented knowledge;
context-sensitive, dynamically-created and derived, internalized, and experiencebased;
often resides in the human minds.
3. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
What is knowledge management?” Jennifer Rowley definition is Knowledge
management is concerned with the exploitation and development of the knowledge
assets of an organization with a view to furthering the organization’s objectives. The
knowledge to be managed includes both explicit, documented knowledge, and tacit,
subjective knowledge. Management entails all of those processes associated with the
identification, sharing and creation of knowledge. This requires systems for the
creation and maintenance of knowledge repositories, and to cultivate and facilitate the
sharing of knowledge and organizational learning. Organizations that succeed in
knowledge management are likely to view knowledge as an asset. These
organizations will develop norms and policies for fostering knowledge creation and
sharing activities.
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4. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN LIBRARIES
While the business world is changing in the new knowledge economy and
digital age, libraries of all types are undergoing drastic changes also. The new role of
libraries in the 21st century needs to be as a learning and knowledge center for their
users as well as the intellectual commons for their respective communities where, to
borrow the phrase from the Keystone Principles, “people and ideas interact in both
the real and virtual environments to expand learning and facilitate the creation of new
knowledge.
As a learning organization, libraries should provide a strong leadership in
knowledge management. Unlike those business organizations whose goal for
knowledge management is for competitive advantage, most public, academic, and
research libraries, with the exception of company libraries (which may be known or
called corporate libraries, special libraries, or knowledge centers), have a different
orientation and value. Instead of competition, internal use only, and little sharing of
knowledge with others outside, the most important mission of public, academic, and
research libraries is to expand the access of knowledge for their users and stated
below what libraries can do to improve their knowledge management in all of the key
areas of library services.
5. KNOWLEDGE RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
Because of the exponential growth in human knowledge in a variety of
formats, libraries need to develop their resources access and sharing strategies from
printed to electronic and digital resources. Restricted by limited funding, technology,
staff, and space, libraries must carefully analyze the needs of their users and seek to
develop cooperative acquisition plans to meet these needs. The changing concept
from “ownership” to “access” and from “just in case” to “just in time” should be the
goal of a sound resources development strategy.
An integrated online public access catalog (OPAC) with both internal and
external resources as well as printed and other formats of knowledge should be
developed and maintained. Useful websites and knowledge sources should be
regularly searched and selected from the Internet and included in OPACs by hard
links. A system for the reviewing and updating of these resources should be
performed.
Going beyond explicit knowledge, libraries should also develop means to
capture all that tacit knowledge that is of importance to their users, their
organizations, and to the internal operation of libraries. The web site of each library
should serve as a portal for all sources of selective and relevant knowledge and
information whether explicit or tacit, whether on site or remote, and in all formats.
6. THE INTERNET
The Internet can provide comprehensive information in a diversity of subjects
for a variety of needs and to various categories of users at any point of time. The
Internet is the largest single resource of information available on a network of
computers, which can be accessed anytime through any Internet-connected computer
irrespective of its location. The Internet is changing the roles of information
professionals and way we process and transfer information. Information is
15

everywhere on the Internet, existing in large quantities and continuously being
created, revised and updated. This information exists in several formats and is created
for multiple purposes. Various kinds of information exist on the Internet which
comprises different levels of quality or reliability. It ranges from very high quality to
low quality and includes every shade in between. Identification, location and selection
of worthwhile and useful digital collections have become one of the important jobs of
modern professional librarians.
7. WORLD WIDE WEB
With the digital revolution, data and information can now be transmitted to all
corners of the world, and that is significant for almost all humanity, and it is
significant for libraries. The World Wide Web has many of the features of a digital
library, and if the web did not exist our conception of digital libraries would be very
different. The web is undoubtedly the means via which most digital libraries are
accessed, but it is not a digital library itself as it lacks characteristics of a digital
library. It is not a managed environment, it has no collection development principles
and most significant of all, the digital objects are not perceived as having durable
value. Librarians are always at the forefront of the latest technologies in order to find
new ways to optimize the management of libraries and resources, and to provide
improved services.
8. INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
The creation of large amounts of separate digital documents, which are then
stored in a document repository, has created an additional market for archiving and
retrieval systems. With the user community in mind the information retrieval
pathways should be designed. Search engines that can deal with unstructured data are
an important part of a KM solution. An organization be able to reach across
application boundaries to find information by using an integrated search tool.
Information retrieval plays an important role in knowledge management. The
issue is how a user can locate relevant information effectively and sufficiently high
quality to help in performing the task. The acquisition of knowledge can be got not
only by gathering existing knowledge within the organization, but also by acquiring
various sources, to fulfill a precise demand. The Internet has reduced the distances
between the providers and consumers of knowledge. It has opened up multiple
avenues for library and information centers to storage and organization of explicit
knowledge. The dissemination of such knowledge to the necessary point of action in
an organization is possible through multiple methods of electronic delivery systems.
Another form of information retrieval could be initiated by the system than by a user.
This is often called “Push technology”. Users can subscribe to areas of interest and
receive updated via email delivery.
9. IMPLEMENTATION
Intranet network based is accessible only by the organisation’s members,
employees allowed to interact with information. An intranet site often looks and acts
just like an Internet site.
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Intranets offer several facilities that aid knowledge sharing:
• Easy-to-access and use – The use of WWW browsers give a low cost and
easy to use interface to information and applications.
• Universal access to information – Information can be kept on any ‘server’
on the network, and can be accessed from anywhere within the intranet.
• Person to person interaction – Intranets simplify interaction between
people in different locations through electronic mail and computer
conferencing.
• Informal networks – Publishing information and making contact is quick
and informal on an Intranet.
• Access to external information and knowledge – Intranets usually has
gateways to the external Internet, which give access to rapidly growing
global information resources.
Security and personalization
As different users need different views of knowledge base, Personalization
taps into user profiles to control what content is offered. After checking the security to
view a page, personalization can apply the user’s preferences for how and what to
present on the page.
In the current digital and networked knowledge age, the size of information
resources on the Web is growing exponentially. No one really knows exactly how
many Web pages are on the Internet because new Web pages are added every second.
For examples, according to the November 11, 2004 report of the Search Engine
Watch, Goggle claimed to have indexed 8.1 billion Web pages; MSN: 5.0 billion Web
pages; Yahoo: 4.2 billion Web pages; and Ask Jeeves: 2.5 billion Web pages.
Universities and research organizations are themselves knowledge reservoirs.
These highly valued intellectual assets, regardless of whether they are explicit or tacit,
should be inventoried, archived, indexed, frequently updated, and made accessible in
digital form.
10. TIMELY DELIVERY OF INFORMATION
Dr. S.R.Ranganathan’s philosophy of information management has long been
“ the right information to the right person at the right time”. Add to this “ in the right
format” and you have a summary of the role of information professionals.
The information skill helps us to know how and when information is used, its
significance to a process, the most relevant sources and the best means of delivery.
The consolidated from diverse information inputs and delivered at the most
appropriate time is key to leveraging information to build knowledge.
The use of information and explicit knowledge resources becomes
increasingly in research techniques, sources and internal KM tools will become key.
The modern library and information skills play an important part in facilitating
desktop delivery of information and in managing mediated information services, their
utilization across the range of information within the organization, increasing the
value derived from their employment.
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11. RESOURCES SHARING AND NETWORKING
Libraries have had a long tradition of resources sharing and networking. These
have been greatly expanded by the rapid development of computer,
telecommunication, networking, and digital technologies since the 1960s. In the U.S.
it is very common for libraries to be a member of several consortia at the same time
for various types of cooperative work and resources sharing. The best examples of
these are the OCLC Online Computer Library Center and OhioLINK (Ohio Library
and Information Network).
12. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT
To facilitate the implementation of knowledge management, a well-designed
and operational knowledge management system should be in place. Latest
information technology should be used as an enabler. In this regard, the library
director should consider him/her self as the chief knowledge officer of the entire
organization and should work together with the CIO, heads of the planning
department, the computer and information technology center, the human resources
management department, the finance department, etc. to design and develop such a
system. Such a knowledge management system should be built on existing computer
and information technology infrastructures, including upgraded intranet, extranet, and
Internet, and available software programs to facilitate the capture, analysis,
organization, storage, and sharing of internal and external information resources for
effective knowledge exchange among users, resource persons (faculty, researchers,
and subjects specialists, etc.), publishers, government agencies, businesses and
industries, and other organizations via multiple channels and layers. In recent years,
many of the newly developed information technologies for database and
information/document management can be utilized in knowledge management; such
as, data warehousing, data mining, text mining, content management, knowledge
extraction, knowledge mapping, groupware, and information visualization, etc.
13. USER SERVICES
The utmost goal of knowledge management is to provide users with a variety
of quality services in order to improve the communication, use and creation of
knowledge. As much as possible these services should be tailored to the interest and
needs of each user. Information about each user can be obtained by analyzing the
records of user registration, surveys, circulation and interlibrary loans, frequently
asked reference questions, and the use of e-journal and digital resources, etc. User
satisfaction and needs should be collected through periodic users’ surveys. The
findings should be used for the planning and redesign of library services. It is very
important, however, that user’s privacy should always be protected.
Some of the manual services such as “new publication alert” and “selective
dissemination of information,” which libraries have been providing, can now be done
automatically by employing the “push technology” with great efficiency and
convenience.
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14. HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
Library staff and users, both in and outside the libraries, possess a great
amount of expert knowledge. In university and research communities such expertise is
abundant and should be inventoried, indexed, and updated regularly and be made
searchable and accessible through electronic databases created and maintained by
libraries. The knowledge and accumulated experiences of library staff members form
the intellectual assets of any library and should be valued and shared. An
organizational culture for sharing of knowledge and expertise should be established
with appropriate rewards and incentives. Those staff members who share their tacit
knowledge and experiences through writing, publishing, lecturing, tutoring, or
mentoring should be appropriately recognized and rewarded. An organizational
culture which emphasizes cooperation, sharing, and innovation can only be
established by strong leadership and commitment from the library director and a
shared vision by the library staff. As a learning organization, libraries should allocate
annual funding to provide continuing education and staff training to all staff members.
Knowledge must be renewed and expanded to prevent it from becoming stagnant.
Libraries should also encourage the transfer of knowledge and experience from
experienced staff to new staff members Special interest groups and chat rooms can be
created through intranet. Since many valuable experiences have been accumulated
over time, libraries should pay attention to favorable working conditions and
environment, which will contribute to better staff retention.
Education and Training of Library and information Professionals
Clearly, an aspiring Library and information Professional needs to know the
basics of IT, particularly in the area of computer, communication and networking
technologies. The professional also needs to know the principles and techniques of
how one structures and organizes information and knowledge so that the right
information can be retrieved and so routed at the right time. This would include all the
traditional core skills of library and information science, specifically indexing,
cataloguing and authority control, and the creation of synthetic structures to reach the
information.
The Internet, in particular, as an information service/system will have a
multiple impact on several areas of LIS as an educational program. Hence present
curricula of LIS should specifically be updated with:
• The impact of the Internet on society and Libraries.
• The Internet as an information sources Channel of communication
• Organization information through Internet.
• Information retrieval through the Internet.
• Design of information services using the Internet
• Internet databases and interfacing
• Web page design and authoring
15. CONCLUSION
For any library to succeed in implementing knowledge management will
require a strong leadership and vision from the top administration, which can
19

influence the organization’s knowledge sharing efforts in a positive way. As libraries
enter the knowledge age of the 21st century, we should not take a back seat in the
development of knowledge management. Instead, armed with our professional
knowledge and experiences, we should be in the driver’s seat.
Librarians have plenty of opportunities of helping their users, that too in their
search for information and knowledge of the human experience of the past,
information about the present and a vision of the future Some new learning
components are needed to be included in the user education programmes in recent
years in libraries as the libraries of Today is not the same of libraries of yesterday
The presence of the Internet, Intranet & Extranet have unquestionably and
permanently altered the library environment. The technology has dramatically altered
how libraries interact with one another, and how information of all types is managed.
However, the ease with which an Intranet is created and the power it enables
organizations to easily and inexpensively share information there is a price, and that
price is the problem of organizing the information so that its intended audience can
benefit. The challenge of the Intranet for librarians is the opportunity to continue to do
what we've always done - take a leadership role in the management of information in
the new age. Actual use of the extranet shares many properties with intranet use. It
may even be reasonable to assume some amount of training on the part of the users,
since they will be motivated to improve the efficiency of their services by making
better use of library extranet. Through email, groupware, one can point to people with
knowledge and connect people who need to share knowledge over a distance. If
networking technology is fully exploited within a library, a transformation would take
place in the organizational structure of the library itself; a constant dynamic structure
would be evident, and the recognition of the library's intellect and knowledge base
amongst it users would be seen.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The author is thankful to the Director, IICT, Hyderabad with permission for
placing the paper in the conference and is also greatly thankful to Mr.SJD Varaprasad,
Head, IMA.
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20

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21

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN DIGITAL
INFORMATION SYSTEM AND THE ROLE OF LIBRARY
AND INFORMATION CENTRES WITH SPECIAL
REFERENCE TO INDIA
Subarna K. Das *
Knowledge management is emerging as a key concern of organizations, particularly those
who have already redesigned their business processes and embedded a total quality approach into
their practices. Knowledge management may mean management of knowledge, both explicit and tacit
knowledge. Knowledge Management provides access to experience, knowledge and expertise that
create new capabilities, enable superior performance, encourage innovation, and enhance customer
value. Present paper attempt to highlights the growth and development of knowledge management in
the changing context of digital environment as well as current and common challenges in knowledge
management and its probable solution as well as role of library and information professionals
Keywords: Information, Knowledge, Knowledge Management, Digital Environment, Common
Challenges, and Knowledge Management Solutions
1. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
Knowledge economy is a knowledge-based economy. In the knowledge
economy era, the management refers to effectively identify, acquire, develop, resolve,
use, store and share knowledge, to create an approach to transforming and sharing of
tacit and explicit knowledge, and to raise the emergency and innovation capability by
utilizing the wisdom of the team. Since knowledge has become the driving force for
social development, the attention of the society to information and knowledge is
rising and people's demands for information and knowledge are increasing step by
step. This has provided a good environment for library development. Moreover, as
information and knowledge has become an important productive factor for the
modern economic system, the society will inevitably require intensified management
of information and knowledge. How to manage knowledge will become an important
subject facing libraries in the near future. Knowledge management in libraries should
be focused on effective research and development of knowledge, creation of
knowledge bases, exchange and sharing of knowledge between library staffs
(including its users), training of library staff, speeding up explicit processing of the
implicit knowledge and realizing of its sharing. KM has emerged today as a
multidisciplinary subject. As a discipline , it draws from a broad spectrum of
disciplines and technologies such as follows:
1. Cognitive Science, which provides insight into learning and knowing that
ultimately helps in improving the tool and technique for gathering and
transferring knowledge.
2. Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems which help in automating the
process of cognition.
3. LIS which has a rich body of research and practice to contribute to KM
4. Organizational Science which explicitly deal with the need to manage
knowledge[3]
* Sr. Lecturer, Dept. of Library and Information Science, Jadavpur University, Kolkata-700032
E-Mail: skd_ju2002@yahoo.co.in
22

5. Technical Writing, which is concerned with effectives representation and
transfer of knowledge
6. Decision Support system which provides insights to knowledge in the
performance of cognitive tasks [5]
7. Computer Supported Collaboration work(Groupware) which has immense
potentialities for KM
8. Relational and Object Databases, which provide useful ideas to represent and
manage knowledge resources[6]
9. Simulation which is becoming a component of KM for learning and creation
of knowledge;[11]
10. Other Technologies, which include hypertext, web technology, full text search
and retrieval, performance support systems, object-oriented information
modeling, help desk technology, electronic publishing technology, multimedia
technology, etc. [16]
2. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: MEANING
Knowledge management is an upcoming field of management, which focuses
on maximizing business performance by making the most of the synergy between
people, processes and technology. Knowledge management is all about establishing
the link between an organization’ s obvious and implied intellectual property and
positive business outcome. In practice, however, it involves an organization
recognizing and mapping its intellectual assets, creating knowledge for competitive
advantage, making large amounts of business information available, and allocating the
best practices and technology that facilitates all of the above, including groupware
and intranet [1]. Knowledge management is not easy to define precisely or simply. It
is a complex domain, like management itself. However, there are noteworthy
connections between knowledge management and many popular management
practices and strategies, including best practices, change management, benchmarking
and risk of business process reengineering. Most recent business strategies accept and
recognize that information and management, to mention a few. Largely, the business
community also sees knowledge management as an accepted extension knowledge are
its assets, and policies, strategies and tools are needed in order to manage those assets
[2]. The need to manage knowledge cannot be denied, but not many have acted upon
that need. Wherever knowledge management is being implemented, it may stretch
from technology-oriented methods of gaining access to, managing and delivering
information, to substantial efforts at changing the organizational culture [11]. Four
steps in getting started in knowledge management are described by Boynton:
1. Making knowledge visible
2. Building knowledge intensity
3. Developing a knowledge culture
4. Building knowledge infrastructure [16]
Secondly
Knowledge Management (KM) caters to the critical issues of organizational
adaptation, survival and competence in face of increasingly discontinuous
environmental change….essentially, it embodies organizational process that seek
synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information
processing capacity of information technologies, and the creative and innovative
capacity of human beings[7]
23

Thirdly
Knowledge Management promotes an integrated approach to identifying,
capturing, retrieving, sharing, and evaluating an enterprises information asset [8].
These information assets may include databases, documents, policies, procedures,
as well as the un-captured tacit expertise and experience stored in individual's
heads." [ 9]
Fourthly
KM may simply be defined as doing what is needed to get the most out of
knowledge resources. In general, Km Focuses on organizing and making available
important knowledge. Km is also related to the concept of intellectual capital.
3. CHARACTERISTICS OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN LIBRARIES
The role of knowledge management in libraries will become more and more
important along with the development of knowledge economy. It is a new
management mode, boasts the following superiority and characteristics incomparable
with conventional management: Human Resource Management Is the Core of
Knowledge Management in Libraries .The most important resource in the knowledge
economy system is the talents who grasp knowledge. The talent competition has
become the focus of market competition in the knowledge economy era. In the
knowledge economy era, the libraries will attach importance to vocational training
and lifelong education of library staffs to raise their scientific knowledge level and
ability of acquiring and innovating knowledge.
They also will and fully respect the human value, guide and bring into play
wisdom potentialities of library staffs, take developing knowledge resources in the
brains of library staffs as an important way for rising work efficiency. An all-round
improvement of library staff's quality and positioning of the human value will become
important objectives of knowledge management in libraries. The Objective of
Knowledge Management in Libraries is to Promote Knowledge Innovation
.Knowledge innovation is the core of the knowledge economy society. As bases for
collection, processing, storage and distribution of knowledge and information,
libraries represent an indispensable link in the scientific system chain, an important
link in the knowledge innovation. Secondly, libraries take part in scientific research
process directly. The library work is a component of knowledge innovation. Thirdly,
libraries must pay attention to diffusion and conversion of knowledge. They act as
bridges for turning the results of knowledge innovation into realistic productive
forces. Knowledge management in libraries is to promote relationship in and between
libraries, between library and user, to strengthen knowledge internetworking and to
quicken knowledge flow. In the knowledge economy era, libraries will carry out
researches on development and application of information resources, construction of
virtual libraries, protection of intellectual property rights in the electronic era etc.,
thus founding the base for knowledge innovation .Information Technology Is a Tool
for Knowledge Management in Libraries .Knowledge acquisition is the starting point
of knowledge management in libraries. The application of information technologies
enlarges the scope of knowledge acquisition, rises knowledge acquisition speed and
reduces knowledge acquisition cost. It is impossible to accomplish such important
tasks by using man's brains only in the modern society in which the knowledge
changes with each passing day. It will be possible to link closely knowledge sources
and knowledge workers by computer networks, thus constructing knowledge
24

networks in libraries based on realization of single-point informatisation .The
knowledge acquired must be accumulated and converged into knowledge warehouses
of libraries. The priority of information technologies in the field of knowledge storage
not only finds expression in quantity, but also in retrieval, sorting and security of the
knowledge. Information technology is also indispensable in the application and
exchange of knowledge and other fields. It functions as a source and tool for
knowledge innovation.
4. TOOLS FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Hoffman describes the following technologies , which are being used for the
knowledge management systems. – Intranet/Extranet
- Groupware
- Electronic Document Management
- Information Retrieval Tools
- Workflow Management System
- Data Analysis
- Data Warehousing
- Agent Technologies
- Helpdesk Technologies
- Machine Learning Computer-based training
- Geographic Information systems
- Meta data/Meta-information/Profile information
- Ontology
5. WHY KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IS NEEDED IN DIGITAL
ENVIRONMENT
• Service areas are increasingly competitive and the rate of innovation is rising.
• Reductions in staffing create a need to replace informal knowledge with
formal methods.
• Competitive pressures reduce the size of the work force that holds valuable
business knowledge.
• Early retirements and increasing mobility of the work force lead to loss of
knowledge.
• Changes in strategic direction may result in the loss of knowledge in a specific
area.(Ms. Macintosh’s observations,2004)
• Most of our work is information based.
• Organizations compete on the basis of knowledge.
• Products and services are increasingly complex endowing them with a
significant information component
• The amount of time available to experience and acquire knowledge has
diminished.
• Competitive marketplace;
• Accelerating rate of innovations that need to be assimilated at an even faster
rate
25

6. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: COMMON AND CHALLENGES
Most of the challenges in knowledge management primarily stem from the
types of knowledge reuse situations and purposes. Knowledge workers may produce
knowledge that they themselves reuse while working. However, each knowledge reuse
situation is unique in terms of requirements and context. Whenever these
differences between the knowledge re-use situations are ignored, the organization
faces various challenges in implementing its knowledge management practices. Some
of the common challenges resulting due to this and other factors are listed below.
1. Data Accuracy: Valuable raw data generated by a particular group within an
organization may need to be validated before being transformed into normalized or
consistent content.
2. Data Interpretation: Information derived by one group may need to be mapped to
a standard context in order to be meaningful to someone else in the organization.
3. Data Relevancy: The quality and value of knowledge depend on relevance.
Knowledge that lacks relevance simply adds complexity, cost, and risk to an
organization without any compensating benefits. If the data does not support or truly
answer the question being asked by the user, it requires the appropriate meta-data
(data about data) to be held in the knowledge management solution.
4. Ability of the Data to Support/Deny Hypotheses: The organization could cleanse
the system of very old files, thus diluting its own knowledge management initiative.
Alternatively, it could set up another team to cleanse the database of redundant files,
thus increasing its costs substantially. Apart from these, the real challenge for an
organization could be to monitor various departments and ensure that they take
responsibility for keeping their repositories clean of redundant files.
5. Legitimacy: In the print-only world, there has been a complex but well-defined
system of content validation and description that involves librarians, referees,
reviewers and publishers. After going through the various defined processes, its
selection gave that material a legitimacy that students and scholars came to depend
upon. Furthermore, technological advances and collaborative efforts have allowed the
costs of this process to be reduced through shared electronic cataloging (e.g. OCLC)
and through the purchase or licensing of abstracting and indexing electronic
databases. Librarians recognized ages ago that the only scalable and affordable
approach to such processes was to take advantage of leveraged and shared resources.
6. Electronic Information Resources: The rise of electronic information resources
freely accessible through the Internet has disrupted this relatively efficient system in a
number of ways. There is no clear and defined role for libraries with regard to the
selection, preservation and provision of access in regard to the digital resources
accessible through the net. Additionally, students and faculty have a need to learn
how to evaluate these new information resources, and it is far more difficult to do so
on the Web than it has been in a traditional library. With a traditional library, the very
fact that a book or a journal was held by a library represented a conscious set of
decisions about the validity of the information, and implied a filtering process that
suggested a reasonable level of legitimacy. This is not true when one surfs the Web.
26

7. Lack Of Scalability: Another problem is that of scale, as some libraries, academic
departments, and even individual scholars are creating their own collections of Web
sites, selecting and describing network resources they find useful and credible. In
some cases these resources are even added to centralized databases, but the
combination of the growth of the web, and the lack of scalability of these individual,
highly labour intensive approaches do not make such efforts a viable or affordable
means of addressing this important challenge. There is some hope on the horizon in
dealing with some of these issues, as there are some newly emerging, shared (and
hence leveraged) cataloging resources such as OCLC's Cooperative Online Resource
Catalogue (CORC) project, and the subject gateways being established by the
ROADS project in the UK.
8. Reality: Currently, scholars trying to thoroughly research an area have to go to a
library to do the traditional search process and then do an electronic search of the web
and other electronic resources. This also implies that these people doing this searching
have the ability to discern the quality, authenticity and validity of the information that
they find on the web. Of greatest concern, is that a student might go just to the Web,
either assuming that the information available there is complete and accurate, or
assuming that the Web alone provides an adequate search. There is plenty of reason to
believe that students today and in the future will fall into this trap, because their
preferred method of working is to do everything online. While everything possible
should be done to educate students and others that each of these two different
approaches has its own respective merits, it is unrealistic to think that such
educational efforts will be successful with the vast majority of students who have
grown up with the Web.
9. Search Engines: Another problem with the Web today is the nature of the various
search engines such as Yahoo! and AltaVista. While such services offer far wider
coverage than any traditional cataloging approach can possibly match, they do so with
far less quality, filtering and a very different, often less powerful, level of description.
A search using one of these engines may yield half million or more hits. These search
engines are also tainted by a bias in the selection process rooted in their commercial
advertising relationships, rather than solely on the search parameters [12]
10. Evaluation: There is no clear and defined role for libraries with regard to the
selection, preservation and provision of access in regards to the digital resources
accessible through the net [13]. Besides, Academic information seekers should have a
need to learn how to evaluate these new information resources, and it is far more
difficult to do so on the web than it has been in a traditional library.
11. Use Of Information: Most of the users do not use or know how to use their
advanced features and the more sophisticated search algorithms embedded in these
highly used applications[14]. Consequently, they search virtually the entire web.
12. Choice Of Online: A student might go just to the web, either assuming that the
information available there is complete and accurate, or assuming that the web alone
provides an adequate search. There is a plenty of reason to believe that users today
and in the future will fall into trap, because they preferred method is everything they
want to do through online[15].
27

7. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION IN DIGITAL
INFORMATION SYSTEM
• People Aspects: Training development, recruitment motivation, retention,
organization, job design, cultural change and encouraging thinking and
participation
• Process Aspects: Process innovation, re-engineering both for radical and
continuous improvement
• Technology Aspects: Information and decision support systems, knowledgebased
systems and data mining systems.
• Knowledge Management In An Academic Setting: It must encompass the
community of scholars in a given discipline and must be able to integrate
publications, data sets, tools for manipulating such data, connections to
databases of pictures and images and much more [3]
• Systematic Approaches To Knowledge Management: It retains the
traditional faith in rational analysis of the knowledge problem. The problem
can be solved, but new thinking many kinds is required some basic
assumptions:
a) A resource cannot be managed unless it is modeled, and many aspects of
the organization’s knowledge can be modeled as an explicit resource.
b) Solutions can be found in a variety of disciplines and technologies and
traditional methods of analysis can be used to re-examine the nature of
knowledge work and to solve the knowledge problem [10]
c) Cultural issues are important, but they too must be evaluated
systematically. Employees may not have to be “Changed” but policies and
work practices must certainly be changed and technology can be applied
successfully to business knowledge problems themselves.
d) Knowledge management has an important management component, but it
is not an activity or discipline that belongs exclusively to managers. [16]
8. CONCLUSION
Knowledge has become important productive factor for the modern digital
information system. The society Will inevitably require intensified management of
knowledge .How to manage knowledge will become an important subject facing
libraries in near future. Knowledge Management in Libraries should be focused on
effective research and development of knowledge, creation of knowledge bases,
exchange and sharing of knowledge between library staffs including its users, training
of library staff, speeding up explicit processing of the implicit knowledge and
realizing of its sharing. Economic environment and information environment is
changing quickly today. Since Knowledge management has become a powerful tool
for promoting innovation and realizing reengineering the various walks of life, it
occupies very outstanding position in the creation of the knowledge innovation
systems of a country. Hence it is very essential to focus on Knowledge Management
systems in Libraries and information centres by which the timely information service
can be provided to the online user society.
28

REFERENCE
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Americas Conference in Information Systems, 293-295.,1997
2. Y, Malhotra, . Role of Social Influence, Self Determination and Quality of Use in
Information Technology Acceptance and Utilization: A Theoretical Framework and
Empirical Field Study. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Katz Graduate School of Business,
University of Pittsburgh.,1998
3. Y, Malhotra, . “Knowledge Management and New Organization Forms: A
Framework for Business Model Innovation”. Information Resources Management
Journal, Vol 13,No.1, 2000
4. Y, Malhotra (Ed.) Knowledge Management and Virtual Organizations. Hershey: PA,
Idea Group Publishing, 2000
5. Y, Malhotra. “Expert Systems for Knowledge Management: Crossing the Chasm
Between Information Processing and Sense Making”. Expert Systems With
Applications, Vol 20, No.1, 2001
6. Y, Malhotra, (Ed.). Knowledge Management and Business Model Innovation.
Hershey: PA, Idea Group Publishing, 2001
7. Y, Malhotra. Is Knowledge Management Really an Oxymoron? Unraveling the Role
of Organizational Controls in Knowledge Management. In White, D. (Ed.),
Knowledge Mapping and Management. Hershey, PA Idea Group Publishing, 1-
13,2002
8. Y, Malhotra. Information Ecology and Knowledge Management: Toward Knowledge
Ecology for Hyper turbulent Organizational Environments. In Kiel, D.L. (Ed.),
UNESCO Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS). Paris, France: EOLSS
Publishers, 2006
9. L, Prusak, L. “Where Did Knowledge Management Come From?”. IBM Systems
Journal,Vol 4 ,2001
10. Oracle Magazine. “Knowledge Management in the Information Age.” May, 1998
11. Sreekumar,M.G and others(Eds).Digital Libraries In Knowledge Management. New
Delhi. ESS ESS Publishers. 2006
12. www.media-access.com/whatishtml
13. www.aiai.ed.ac.uk
14. www.sveiby.com.au
15. www.computerworldcom
16. http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla66/papers/057-110e.htm
17. NACLIN 2003 [Proceedings]
29

Knowledge and Information Management in
Libraries: A new challenge for the library and
information professionals in the digital environment
N.Subramanian *
Abstract
Development of Information Technology (IT) and its applications in Library and Information
Centers, the concept of document management has been changed to information management and
again the entire scenario of information management has started its change to Knowledge
Management (KM). This paper mainly focuses on the concept of Knowledge Management and the role
of library and information professionals in managing the knowledge and information in the digital
environment. It also highlights the importance of library and information professionals in the
organizations such as knowledge creation, acquisition, preservation and sharing knowledge and
information. This paper also describes the development and use of Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT) in the library and information centers.
Keywords: Knowledge Management; ICT; Information Management; Digital Library;
Library and Information professionals
1. INTRODUCTION
This is the era of knowledge and information explosion. The unprecedented
growth of knowledge and information has impacted all organizations including the
libraries. The conventional functions of libraries are collect, process, disseminate,
store and retrieve information to provide better services to the end users. In the digital
environment, the role of libraries is changing to provide the competitive advantage for
its users. The success of library and information centre depends upon their ability to
utilize information knowledge of its staff to serve the user community. The ICT has
played a significant role in this dynamics which has not only made access across the
globe easier, but has facilitated integration of thought processes, synergy in working
methods and places, team learning and in enhancing organizational transparency.
With the development of IT and its applications in libraries, the concept of document
management has been changed to information management and again, the entire
scenario of information management has started its change to knowledge
management.
2. KNOWLEDGE
Knowledge is an intellectual capital when people out of creation, add value to
information. It is generated.
Knowledge is classified and modified. It may be indexing. It is shared.
Sharing of knowledge is a core element of knowledge management. IT has provided
with number of possible solutions for sharing via e-mail, intranet etc.
Davanport (1998) defined knowledge as follows: Knowledge is fluid framed
experiences, values, contextual information as expert insights that provides a
framework for evaluation and incorporating new experiences of information.
* University Librarian, Periyar University, Salem-636 011, Tamil Nadu
Email: nsmaniyan@rediffmail.com
30

Daniel Bell defines knowledge as a set of organized statements of facts or
ideas, presenting a reasoned judgment or an experimental result, which is transmitted
to others through some communication medium in some systematic form.
3. INFORMATION
Marc Porat states that “Information is data that has been organized and
communicated”.
Stehen Abram sees the process for knowledge creation and use as a continuum
where data transforms into information, information transforms into knowledge and
knowledge drives and undergoing behaviour and decision making.
Information is visible, independent from action and decision, different in
format after processing, physical product, independent from existing environment,
easily transferable and duplicate.
Knowledge is invisible, closely related to action and decision, different in
thought after processing, spiritual product, identified with existing environment,
transferable through learning and not duplicate.
4. TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE
Knowledge is classified into three types.
1. Explicit knowledge
2. Tacit knowledge
3. Cultural knowledge
Explicit knowledge
It is formal and easy to communicate to others. It is the knowledge of
rationality. That is, policies, rules, specifications and formulae. It is also known as
declarative knowledge.
Tacit knowledge
It is complex form of knowledge. It has two dimensions namely technical and
cognitive. This is personal knowledge, which is in human mind and difficult to
formalize and also difficult to communicate.
Cultural knowledge
B.B.Chand describes the cultural knowledge as knowledge which includes
assumptions and beliefs. It is used to understand, describe and explain the reality as
well as conventions. It is also useful to form the framework among organizational
members, recognize the new information and evaluate alternative interpretations and
actions.
5. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Knowledge management is generally understood to mean the sharing of
knowledge inside or outside of an organization. Knowledge sharing has been greatly
facilitated by modern computer based technology. There is no agreed definition of
Knowledge Management, even among practitioners. The term is used loosely to refer
31

to a broad collection of organizational practices and approaches related to generating,
capturing, and disseminating know-how and other content relevant to the
organization’s business. Knowledge is no just an explicit tangible “thing”, like
information, but information combined with experience, context, interpretation and
reflection. Knowledge involves the full person, integrating the elements of both
thinking and feeling.
Knowledge management is the process of creating, capturing and using
knowledge to enhance organizational performance. It is most frequently associated
with two types of activities.
• to document and appropriate individual’s knowledge.
• to disseminate it through such venues as a company vide database.
• Knowledge management is a
• method of gathering information and making it available to others
• process of systematically and actively managing and leveraging the stores
of knowledge in an organization
• process of transforming information and intellectual assets into enduring
values
• a system or framework for managing the organizational processes that
create, store and distribute knowledge as defined by its collective data.
Jennifer Rowlay stated, “Knowledge management is concerned with the
exploitation of an organization…. Organizations that succeed in knowledge
management are likely to view knowledge as an asset and to develop organizational
norms and values, which support the creation and sharing knowledge”.
Galagan proposed the following knowledge management processes.
• Generating new knowledge
• Accessing knowledge from external sources
• Representing knowledge in documents, databases and so on
• embedding knowledge in processes, products or services
• transferring existing knowledge
• using accessible knowledge indecision making
• facilitating knowledge through culture and incentives
• measuring the value of knowledge assets and the impact of knowledge
management.
Knowledge management in library and information centers
Business world is changing in the new knowledge economy and in the digital
age, libraries of all types are undergoing drastic changes also. The new role of
libraries in the 21 st century needs to be as a learning and knowledge center for their
users. As a learning organization, libraries should provide a strong leadership in
knowledge management. Unlike the business organization, the learning organization
should sharing of knowledge with others outside. Libraries should improve their
knowledge management in all of the key areas of library services.
The exponential growth in human knowledge in a variety of formats, libraries
need to develop their resources, access and sharing strategies from printed to
electronic and digital resources. Restricted by limited funding, technology, staff and
32

space, libraries must carefully analyze the needs of their users and seek to develop
cooperative acquisition plans to meet the needs of users.
Libraries should be developed and maintained an integrated online public
access catalogue (OPAC) with both internal and external resources as well as printed
and other formats of knowledge. Useful websites and knowledge sources should be
regularly searched and selected from the internet and included in OPACs. A system
for the reviewing and updating of these resources should be performed.
Going beyond explicit knowledge, libraries should also develop to capture all
that tacit knowledge that is of importance to their users, their organizations, and to the
internal operations of libraries. The website of each library should serve as a “portal”
for all sources of relevant knowledge and information whether explicit or tacit,
whether on site or remote and in all formats.
In the current digital and networked knowledge age, the size of information
sources on the web is growing exponentially. No one really knows exactly how many
web pages are on the internet, because new web pages are added every second.
Universities and research organizations are knowledge reservoirs. These
highly valued intellectual assets, regardless of whether they are explicit or tacit,
should be inventoried, archived, indexed, frequently updated and made accessible in
digital form, Libraries should use the new approach to capture web information by
cooperative efforts such as Dublin core metadata and the cooperative online resources
catalogue (CORC).
Other new methods such as data mining, text mining, content management,
search engines, spidering programs, natural language searching, linguistic analysis,
semantic networks, knowledge extraction, concept of yellow pages, and such
technologies in information visualization as two dimensional or three dimensional
knowledge mapping etc., have been a part of recent developments in knowledge
management systems.
6. RESOURCES SHARING AND NETWORKING
Traditionally, libraries have a long practice of resource sharing and
networking. These have been greatly expanded by the rapid development of
computer, telecommunication networking and digital technologies.
The sources of the cooperative work and resources sharing of OCLC (Online
Computer Library Center) and Ohio LINK (Ohio Library and Information Network)
in US, is the best examples in resource sharing and networking with the result of the
full cooperation and participation of all member libraries without selfishness. Large
and major libraries must take the lead in such an Endeavour.
7. CHARACTERISTICS OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN LIBRARIES
The role of KM in Libraries will become more and more important along with
the development of knowledge economy. It is a new management mode. The
following superiority and characteristics are incomparable with conventional
management.
1. Information technology is a tool for KM
2. Human resource management in KM
3. User Services in KM
33

Information technology is a tool for KM
To facilitate the implementation of knowledge management, a well-defined
and operational knowledge management system should be in place. Latest
information technology should be used in the libraries. In this regard, the library
director / librarian should consider himself as the chief knowledge officer of the entire
organization and should work together with the chief information officer, heads of the
planning department, the computer and information technology center, the human
resource management department, the finance department etc., to design and develop
such a system. Such knowledge management system should be built on the existing
computer and information technology infrastructure including upgraded intranet,
extranet, internet and available software programs to facilitate the capture, analysis,
organization, storage and sharing of internal and external information resources for
effective knowledge exchange among users, resource persons (faculty, researchers,
subject experts etc.,), publishers, government agencies, business and industries and
other organizations via multiple channels.
In recent years, many of the newly developed information technology for
databases and information / document management can be utilized in knowledge
management such as data warehousing, data mining, text mining etc.,
Human resource management in KM
The most important resource in the knowledge economy system is the talents
who grasp knowledge. The talent competition has become the focus of market
competition in the knowledge economy era. In the knowledge economy era, the
libraries will attach importance to vocational training and lifelong education of library
staff to raise their scientific knowledge level and ability of acquiring and innovative
knowledge. They also will respect the human value, guide and bring into play wisdom
potentialities of library staffs. It is an important way for raising work efficiency of
library staff. An all round improvement of library staff’s quality and positioning of the
human value will become important objectives of knowledge management in Library
and Information centers. The library staff members of Universities and research
committees should be inventoried, indexed regularly and be made searchable and
accessible through electronic databases created and maintained by libraries. The
expertise should be appreciated with appropriate rewards and incentives. As a
learning organization, libraries should allocate annual funding to provide continuing
education and staff training to all staff members. Knowledge must be renewed and
expanded to prevent it from becoming stagnant.
Libraries should also encourage the transfer of knowledge and experience
from experienced staff to new staff members. A mentoring system should be in place
to help new comers to learn from experienced library staff. Informal seminars,
discussion sessions for staff can interact and exchange “lessons learned” “best
practices” and other experiences should be scheduled at regular intervals and at
convenient times sit and chat rooms can be created through intranet libraries should
be attending to favorable working conditions and environment, which will contribute
to better staff retention.
User services in KM
The utmost goal of knowledge management is to provide users with a variety
of quality services in order to improve the communication, use and creation of
knowledge. Information about each user can be obtained by analyzing the records of
34

user registration, surveys, circulation and inter library loan, frequently asked reference
questions and the use of e-journals and digital resources etc., User satisfaction and
needs should be collected through periodical user’s surveys. The findings should be
used for the planning and redesign of the existing library services.
Some of the manual services of the library such as “new publication alert” and
“dissemination of information” should be done automatically by employing the “push
technology” with great efficiency and convenience. Each library user can also set up
his virtual “my library / portal” for new information / resources provided by the
library.
8. TECHNOLOGIES FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Library and information centres should be developed / modified based on the
perfect environment for new media applications. Due to impact of globalization,
economic competition and revolution of ICT, the libraries are under going tremendous
change its environment. ICT tools and techniques, knowledge management systems,
internet, web resources, digital libraries have made a significant change in the existing
library systems and services. It is a major challenge for the library professionals.
Knowledge acquisition is the starting point of knowledge management in
Libraries. The application of IT, enlarges the scope of knowledge acquisition, rises
knowledge acquition, speed and reduces knowledge acquisition cost. It is impossible
to accomplish such important tasks by using man’s brain only in the modern society
in which the knowledge changes with each passing day. It will be possible to link
closely knowledge sources and knowledge workers by computer networks, thus
constructing knowledge networks in libraries based on realization of single point
informationalization.
Data wise technologies developed the following list of technologies for the
knowledge management.
• Intranet within an organization
• Document management systems
• Information retrieval systems
• Relational and object databases
• Electronic publishing
• Groupware and work flow systems
• Push technologies
• Help desk applications
• Brain storming applications
• Data warehousing and data mining
9. CONCLUSION
KM is an emerging field, much tooted or hyped since late 1990s. Due to the
complicated nature of knowledge and its management, it is often difficult to estimate
or demonstrate the value of the Knowledge Management. In the business world,
knowledge management has been regarded as strategically important for
organizations to gain a competitive advantage over their competitions, to add value
their products, to win greater satisfaction from their customers.
35

In the library world, there is a lesson to be learned from the business world.
For any library to succeed in implementing knowledge management will require a
strong leadership and vision from the top administration. Information Technology and
systems can provide effective support in implementing knowledge management.
Libraries should work together with Information Technology Professionals and others
to develop the appropriate knowledge management systems. Libraries, with limited
budget and human resources, should utilize the current management structure and
technology to implement KM, either bottom-up or top-down. With an effort, KM will
help to increase libraries operational efficiency and later to the ever increasing needs
of our clientele.
REFERENCES
1. Denning, S.(2001).The Strategy of Knowledge. http://www.stevedenning.com/
stategy_knowledge-sharing.html
2. Kantor, R.M.(2001).Evolve!: Succeeding in the Digital culture of tomorrow, New
Haven, Harvard Business school press.
3. Peacock, J and Middleton, M (1999). Mixed mode education: Implication for library
user services. New Library World. 100(1146) 11-19pp
4. Stratigos, A.(2001). Knowledge management meets future information users. Online,
Jan2001
5. Dearstyne, B.W.(2000). Greeting and shaping the future: Information professionals as
strategists and leaders. Information Outlook. Aug 2000
6. Wag Yunbua(1999). Knowledge Economy and the development of the Library.
Library work and Research.1999 (6) 17-19pp.
7. Shanhong, Tang(2000). Knowledge Management in Libraries in the 21 st Century. In
the 66 th IFLA Council and General Conference, held at Jerusalem, Israel 13-18 Aug
2000.
36

Role of library and library professionals in
present knowledge environment in the field of
science and technology
Y. S. Parihar* and J. K. Pattnaik *
Abstract
This paper discusses some of the changes that have taken place in production, growth and
distribution of knowledge sources in the field of science and technology. It describes how the
information needs, information seeking behavior and expectations of the users have changed due to
the change in the media and access tools for retrieving the knowledge sources. It also discusses the
role of the library and library professionals in this changing knowledge environment.
Keywords: Knowledge environment, Knowledge sources, knowledge users, Information
seeking behavior, Information need, Access tools, Library professionals
1. INTRODUCTION
Knowledge is defined in Oxford English Dictionary as facts, information, and
skill acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical
understanding of a subject. Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive
process: perception, learning, communication, association, and reasoning. Knowledge
is basically of tree type 1. Tacit knowledge that people carry in their mind, and is , -
therefore, difficult to access 2. Descriptive knowledge that is the know-how or
procedural knowledge of how, and especially how best, to perform some task 3.
Explicit knowledge that has been or can be articulated, codified, and stored in certain
media. Explicit knowledge is externalized.
Knowledge in science and technology has been created by the scientists by
attempting to gain knowledge through the scientific methods such as assumption,
hypothesis and theory. This knowledge has been stored as intellectual properties in
different information sources such as manuscripts, journals, patents standards, and
reports. Though many organizations are trying to capture the tacit as well as the
descriptive knowledge through the institutional portal, and knowledge bases but in
practice these are still gray areas and do not have bibliographical control. Libraries
and information centers have been responsible for management of this knowledge
mainly the explicit knowledge which is encrypted in the information resources.
Within a generation rapidly evolving computer technology has transformed the nature
of publishing, the nature of libraries and the nature of scientific communication itself.
With the emergence of ‘electronic publishing, relevance of libraries and librarian are
questioned as a key stroke can now bring virtually any publication to the users
desktop and print journals may disappear and evolve into a key component of the
network .
Not only the role of libraries and librarians are questioned, science and
technology publishers may be challenged due to the open access movements in
electronic publishing. The debate over free access to electronic scientific journals and
other knowledge sources is going on globally. People have backed efforts to put
* Library, Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore-451013
E.mail: ysparihar@cat.ernat.in
37

more science in public domain. Several groups have responded with free web
journals financed by page charges paid by authors. The UK government has given
biomed central a major boost by agreeing to pay article fee for academic researchers
who published in its open access journals, following the researchers to save the usual
fee of $ 500/- per articles [2]. The traditional scientific publishers launched a counter
offensive arguing that the future of scientific communication-as well as their 3 billion
Pounds European publishing industries-is at stake. The European Union (EU) failed
to enact mandatory open access policy for self archiving (researchers to make a copy
of each paper freely available online perhaps through their institutes website). Though
EU did not endorsed a mandate to self archiving, it ask for more study and debate,
however the commission agrees, for now in the 14 th February policy statement that it
acknowledge that data from publicly funded research should be accessible to all by
publishing in public library of science (PLoS) in which authors pay to publish and
access is free [3].
This shows that a drastic change has already occurred and the change will
continue slowly and steadily in knowledge environment in the area of science and
technology. The change in knowledge environment is going to affect many including
science and technology libraries and their services, library and information
professionals, traditional scientific publishers, the researchers etc. We are concern
about the areas that may affect the library services and library and information
professionals.
Mainly changes in production, growth and distribution or dissemination of
information sources have affected library services and role of library and information
professionals.
2. CHANGES IN KNOWLEDGE SOURCES IN SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY
The major source of knowledge in the field of science and technology are
explicit and are available as different types of information sources. Due to change in
electronic publishing most of the knowledge sources are available in the form of e-
information resources, which is also termed as electronic information or on-line
information resource or on-line resources or e-resources and is defined as a broader
term that encompasses electronic journals and other full-text materials, indexing and
abstracting services, the information of information aggregators, article delivery
services etc [7].
Changes in types information resources
• Books to e-books: Books are gradually shifting to e-books. A few e-book
such as e-books from Springer, Elsevier, Willy etc, SPIE proceedings, AIP
proceedings, IEEE proceedings etc are already prevailing in the field of
science and technology and many more science and technology publishers
are coming up with e-book option.
• Journals to on-line journals: Current issues(of limited rolling years) are
free with print subscription. Access to Elsevier Science Direct, IEEE
journals, Springer journals, Wiley journals is possible through Consortia.
Back Issues(on-line archives) of the journals such PROLA(All APS
journals), AIP journals, IOP(All IOP Journal before 10 years),OSA
38

journals, Science Direct(Elsevier Physics, Materials Science &
Mathematics back file) are accessible on subscription basis.
• Standards from print to CD: BIS standards, ASTM Standards, ASME
standards, IEC standards etc are available mainly on stand alone or
network version of CD. IEEE standards are accessible on-line through
IEEE E-Library.
• Research Reports from print to on-line: Research report of CERN, KEK,
DESY and other important research organization are available on-line.
• Patents from print to on-line: Patents are accessible on-line through
INPADOC or the issuing authorities such as US Patent House, IBM Patent
Office etc.
Changes in media of information resources
The media has smoothly transformed from print to microform to
electronic(CDs and On-line). But interesting thing to note is during the
metamorphosis the print part has prevailed with the other forms such as microforms,
CD and On-line.
Advantages and disadvantage of e-resources
• Advantages of e-resources over print are: i) Remote access from desktop
ii) Simultaneous access by many users iii. Timely access without any time
lag iii) Supports different searching, citation link & reference linking
through DOI facility iv. Integrated v. Saving of storage space vi. Lower
cost compared to print, though the myth of e-journals being cheap except
the old archive is not necessarily true. vii. No damage or loss in transit vii.
No maintenance such as kardex entry, system entry, binding etc.
• Disadvantages of e-resources such as 1.Dependency on technology and
equipments such as computers, networks, current and printer etc. 2.Less
portable compared to print 3. Less aesthetic compared to print 3. Chances
of health hazard because of constant watching at the glaring monitors.
Changes in access tools to retrieve information sources
Literature Search is defined as “A systematic and exhaustive search for
published material on a specific topic” Or “Systematic search, utilizing various
indexes and catalogs, for materials on a specific problem or topic, often done with an
aim to be comprehensive” Or A thorough exploration of all information published
about a given topic. Retrieval tools have changes from printed library catalogue cards
and printed indexing and abstracting journals to Web-OPAC, search engines and
online databases with lot of value additions such as full-text linking (through DOI and
Crossref), references linking and Citations etc.
Access tools prevailing in the field of science and technology are:
• Indexing and abstracting database: On-line indexing and abstracting
services with full-text linking through DOI or Crossref, prevailing in the
field of science and technology, are:
39

Web-of Science which covers Science Citation Index, Current Contents
and Physics Abstract(INSPEC)
Engineering Village which covers EI-COMPINDEX, INSPEC etc.
Other aggregators (some also act as document delivery services)
J-Gate, Infotriev, INGENTA, EBESCO, PUBMED CENTRAL,
BIOMEDNET, MEDLINE, OVID, JSTOR
• Publishers journal databases
Most of the publishes provide features like full-text linking(through DOI
and Crossref), references linking and citations in their own journals.
Important databases( also known as info-bases or knowledge bases) in the
field of science and technology are SCIRUS(Science Direct
Database(Elsevier), CITATION(AIP & APS and Pub-Med), IOP,
OSA(Optics Infobase), IEEE Electronic Library etc.
• E-print archives
E-Print Archives gives access to preprints from world wide. “ArXiv” of
Los Alamo National Laboratory and “SPIERS” of SLAC & DESY
laboratory are two popular e-print archive in the field of science and
technology.
• Search engines
In the field science and technology “Google Scholar” is one of the best
search engines that provides contextual search facility for most of the
publishes scientific information with full text link, reference link and
citation.
3. CHANGES IN LIBRARY SERVICES DUE TO THE CHANGES IN
KNOWLEDGE SOURCES IN THE FIELD OF SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY
Science and technology libraries have started providing following services due to the
change in the knowledge environment
• Link to relevant web resource (licensed and free) through library portals
and electronic resources registry databases
• Photocopying to digital photocopying to network printing
• Translation service from manual to automatic
• Citation analysis through Web-of Science
• Library web-services
-Web based interlibrary & photocopy request and digital document
delivery service
- Web based newspaper clipping service
- Web based conference announcement
- Web based CAS
-Web-OPAC etc.
• Digital archives
- Journal articles, research report, thesis, project reports and other
internal publications through the institutional repository
40

• Reference Help Desk to “Ask a librarian on-line”
4. ROLE OF LIBRARY AND INFORMATION PROFESSIONALS IN THE
CHANGING KNOWLEDGE ENVIRONMENT
Information policy development
There is range of information policy issues for which immediate and ongoing
attention is needed. Present professionals may have to give continuing attention and
leadership in information policy development.
Professional has to play important role in developing information policy for
the institution. They have to play a role in the contractual, legal and ethical aspect of
information use. Information policy should be developed with the help of high level
authority, project heads and other users of institution. Other concern of information
use such as confidential, open, censorship, piracy should also be kept in mind during
information policy development.
Function of the science and technology librarians in license agreement as a part of
Information Policy Development
With the change of the media from print to on-line the concept of acquisition
has also changed to licensing. In stead of fixing terms and condition for the supply of
the document by the vendor the present professionals may have to negotiate a license
agreement with the vendor or publisher. Cost of accessing electronic information and
other terms and conditions related to the purchase of E-information needs to be set.
They may consider the following points while negotiating the agreement for licensing
the electronic information individually for their library or combinedly for the
consortium:
• Access fees
• Price cap
• Access restrictions
• Unlimited downloading
• Usage statistics and data mining
• Additional titles and acquisition
• Back volumes access
• Historical archive
• Permanent right to access
• Option for only on-line
Details about the above guidelines have been discussed separately in another paper on
guidelines for licensing e-information.
Organization of networked information sources
Information professionals may have to act as a shifter to provide semantic
web-resources by creating library website, library portals, digital libraries, e-resources
registry database etc. Professionals has to take initiative in organizing the chaotic
information available on the Internet. It could be possible by cataloguing using
catalogue codes or metadata standards, classifying using classification standards and
proving subject terms(key words) using subject thesaurus to, the web-resources.
41

Creation of digital contents and institutional repository
Digitization of the internal publication such as e-articles of the scientists,
internal reports, thesis, project report etc may be a part of the regular routine job of
the information professionals.
Providing access to the electronic resource
The information professionals may have to provide access to the digital
contents through the digital library and library Web-OPAC or they may have to
provide access to the on-line resources by creating on-line resources registry
databases
Electronic publishing
For the internal publications such as newsletters, research report etc, the
librarian who serves as a member of the editorial board may have to play an
important role by offering their resources-technological and human-to provide a site
for developing, testing and archiving electronic publications
As a search intermediary
The vast amount of information available in a networked environment suggests that
there is a role for trained intermediaries who have search skills, abilities to analysis
and evaluating information resources and match needs with sources. Large amount of
information and easier ways to access sometimes posed problem for users. This may
develop a chance of not locating the exact information. Accuracy and authenticity of
information may be at question. The role of librarian and information professional as
both user-educator and intermediary is most important in this environment.
Information literacy and user orientation on on-line resources and digital library
Education of the users in the science and technology community is an essential
service the information professional has to provide in the present information
environment. They have to provide instructions about information resources and assist
the users in acquiring skill in locating and evaluating information using variety of
methods and locations for teaching (e.g. Training School classes of the scientists,
interactive networks, multimedia presentation and computer instruction)
5. CONCLUSION
Library professionals cannot ignore the changing shape of knowledge environment.
Redefining and reengineering of library and information systems for the modern era is
the need of the moment. Informational professionals must change and adapt to the
new electronic knowledge environment. Creating web pages to promote library
services and providing automated library management systems are most appropriate
way to this changing knowledge environment. In addition to this proper information
organization and providing Intranet services according to users and institution needs
and objective and will also be necessary. Professional should act as technology
application leader. They should be a part of information system access tools. They
should provide instructions and support to users to cope-up with the changing
knowledge environment, so that optimum use of information sources become possible
for users. The transition of traditional collection to digital or virtual collections
presented the library professionals with new opportunity to play a new dynamic role
and serve the information base society in better way than hitherto, specially in the
field of science and technology which is very sensitive to the changes. A science and
42

technology librarians may have to act as a facilitator, intermediary and end user
trainer. They may have to provide a semantic web by searching, controlling, filtering
and sense making the chaotic information resources. This can be achieved by strategic
and operational planning, acquiring new knowledge, skill, ability and doing
partnership with the researchers as well reshaping and strengthening their relationship
with the computer specialists and technologist in their institutions.
REFERENCES
1. Wald M. Mitchell: Creating the future of electronic publishing, Science, 251, 1 st
March 1991, p. 1021-1022
2. Malakoff David, Bachtold Daniel: Who owns, who pays? U.K., U.S. Offer answer for
journals, Science, 301, 4 th July 2003, p. 29
3. Enserink Martin: European Union steps back from open-access leap, Science, 315,
23 rd February 2007, p. 1065
4. Satpathy Kishor S.: The information professional at crossroads, Library and
Information Services in Astroomy IV, Czech Republic, 2-5 July 2002, p. 379-382
5. Rao Nageswara K., Babu K.H.: Role of librarian in internet and world wide web
environment, Information Science, 4, 2001, p. 26-34
6. Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org
7. International Coalition of Library Consortium http://www.library.yale.edu/
Consortia/statement.html
8. Follett Lectures Series: Slouching toward the future or creating a new information
environment by Creth Sheila D http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/papers/follett/
creth/paper.html
43

University Libraries – Metamorphosis to Knowledge
Resource Centers
R.Samyuktha *
Abstract
The emerging ecology of information landscape with virtual learning environment is
demanding on the academic library scenario. The University Libraries with their traditional
framework are metamorphosing into hybrid centers with print and electronic forms co-existing.
Furthermore, their roles have changed in becoming “Knowledge Resource Centers” to keep pace
with innovations in technology and realize the change in being customer driven without being customer
led. The paper discusses the changes in University Library infrastructure, resources, services and the
library professionals in the new knowledge environment.
1. INTRODUCTION
The traditional University Libraries being repositories of precious information
resources are driven forward to change their garb in terms of all their dimensions of
infrastructure to services to evolve as Knowledge Resource Centers.
Expansion of internet has created the misconception that libraries are no
longer needed as much of the content required is available on the web. Users are
indeed able to surf across digital resources of multiple or varied collections. They
greatly rely on a combination of enhanced resources, user friendly interfaces and
improved search tools (University Library Services, 2000). As a result two key
measures, namely the statistics of visits and circulation in a traditional library has
dwindled down (Bertrot et al 2004).
The shift in the ecology of information needs and information handling and
management with users in distributed environments are posing tremendous impact on
the role of services rendered by University Libraries. They have tided over in
changing roles and emerge as ‘Knowledge Centers’ with their Librarians to crusade
as Knowledge Engineers’
2. SCOPE
Paper attempts to illustrate the metamorphosis or change in University
Libraries as “Knowledge Resource Centers” in terms of Infrastructure, Resources,
Services and Personnel.
Infrastructure for Knowledge Environment
University Libraries mostly established in a traditional way cannot be done
away, with the advent of technology and modernity. Hence they try to supplement to
encompass the new spaces and equipments to combat the new roles envisaged.
Grants from funding agencies such as the UGC support modernization of the
University Library infrastructure; thus creating online information zones,
procurement of hardware such as Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices, large
* Deputy Librarian, University of Madras. E-mail: ravikvallat@hotmail.com
44

capacity database servers (MS SQL Server 2000) multiprocessor workstations,
scanners, printers, data analysis software, security gadgets and applications…
Knowledge Resources and Services
University Libraries usually known for their archives of print collection are
slowly building up their digital backfiles to cater to their clientele needs. The concept
of serving as Knowledge Centers has warranted them to acquire electronic resources
of e-books, e-journals, e-databases, e-theses, e-reference works… organize them to
track specific information to provide reference for researchers and others who do not
have time to do the work themselves.
They also design, compile and build up value-added services such as Subject
Gateways on specific themes such as eg: Research funding and writing proposals,
Nanotechnology Gateway and so on.
The Library besides being used in the traditional sense is used more as a
Center where the researcher looks up for resources made available at one’s desktop
24x7. The center also faces the challenge of furnishing e-modules of information
literacy catering to users in the virtual environment with distributed learning in
process.
Another challenge is planning to reach out to users in new ways. Interacting
with the users face to face has been dwindling down, as many a time transactions
occur over the web. With the website becoming the library for many of the patrons if
has become crucial to redouble its efforts to disseminate knowledge through various
access methods. Major role of the center is to sieve through the ‘infoglut’ gathered
not only from internal but external sources stored at other library locations and
organize the knowledge resources in the required format.
The Knowledge Commission of India also proposes to create/identify
Knowledge Centers with the support of Govt. of India and state governments and
network these knowledge Gateways which could become the National Knowledge
Gateway in future.
3. KNOWLEDGE ENGINEERS OR KNOWLEDGE WORKERS
Traditional capabilities and training to be custodians of books and maintaining
them have changed the librarians to compete in today’s Knowledge economy
increasingly warranting mastery of complex skills.
The level of “information skills” with the ability to filter out information may
be one of the primary ingredient of a successful knowledge worker. He/She requires
varying depths of knowledge in particular areas (Skyrme 1998) such as
• Technical Skills - information (resources) management,
information technology skills.
• Business Knowledge - industry, markets, customers,
competitors and general
business context.
• Interpersonal skills - networking, listening, interpreting,
challenging, teamwork,
communications.
45

• Management skills - motivating, coaching, faciliting,
influencing.
• Company/organization knowledge - knowledge of procedures and culture.
• Personal characteristics - integrity, confidence, openness, trust,
supportive, honesty, willingness to
learn.
With all these characteristics in mind the University libraries have taken
measures to not only train their professionals to equip them to suit the new roles but
also recruit personnel who could work as Content Managers or Knowledge Portal
Managers. There is a new genre of library professionals to server the knowledge
environment being generated by various library schools or ‘I’ schools.
4. CONCLUSION
It could never be forgotten that University Libraries are store-houses of
knowledge and repositories of archival to current research resources. Industries and
small time businesses look up to these institutions for their most required resources.
The University Libraries transforming to Knowledge Centers serve as treasure hunts
and propagate methodologies of making its clientele independent and life long
learners across the knowledge environment.
REFERENCES
1. Aldrich, Duncan M and Stefanelli, Greggory (2006). Library services for Digital
Future. Educause Quarterly, No.1, pp.70-73.
2. Materska, Katarzyna (2004). Libraries in the Knowledge age. New Library World,
105 (1198/1199), pp.142-148.
3. Omekwu, Charles Obiora and Eteng, Uwem (2006). Roadmap to change : emerging
roles for information professionals. Library Review, 55(4), pp.267-277.
4. Parker, Kevin R at al. (2005). Libraries as knowledge management centers. Library
Management, 26 (4/5) pp.176-189.
5. Skyrme, D. (1998). Knowledge management-a fad or a ticket to ride? available at
www.skyrme.com/pubs/iis0298.htm
6. University Library Services (2000). ULS Strategic Plan 1999-2000: Integrating the
Library and the University, University Library Services, available at
www.library.vcu.edu/admin/stratplan/draft1/SP3.html
7. Zhou, Qian (2005) The development of digital libraries in China and the shaping of
digital libraries. The Electronic Library, 23(4), pp.433-441.
46

Industrial Safety Information:
A Knowledge Management (KM) approach
I.N. Nargund * and Joby Thomas *
Abstract
Information flow is an important factor in the minimisation of hazards to health and ensuring safe
working conditions. Industrial Safety information is needed by a wide spectrum of people in an industry.
They need information that is appropriate, relevant, up-to-date, usable, conveniently available and directly
applicable to their specific circumstances. In this situation, Knowledge Management will play an essential
role. Knowledge Management is an initiative undertaken to harness the knowledge and experience of its
people. Sharing the best practices and experiences are very important in Industrial Safety Management.
KM tools could give rise to Industrial Safety knowledge management systems that use knowledge to
improve safety performance. The present paper highlights the need, objectives and importance of KM
initiatives in industries and gives a brief account of how KM principles can be applied to Industrial Safety
Information Management.
Keywords: Knowledge Management; Information Services; Industrial Safety; Industrial Libraries
1. INTRODUCTION
Knowledge Management (KM) is more a concept than a technology. KM is more
about best practices and procedures rather than pure technology. Consequently, it
requires support from the employees of an organisation and effective use can happen only
when all of them are actively involved. KM is a practice that addresses the need for
information that is required for making effective decisions.
In an industrial perspective, Knowledge Management is an art of creating value
from intangible assets. It involves an integrated approach to the creation, capture,
retention, accessing, sharing and leveraging of an enterprise's information assets for
business gain. Knowledge Management is an initiative undertaken to harness the
knowledge and experience of its people. It encompasses a very massive task of
integrating the vast resources of an organisation. Knowledge management focuses on
information systems that can help people use more information more effectively.
Knowledge management (KM) has the goal of providing the right information to
the right person at the right time. KM practice should let an organisation provide relevant
information to each and every user. A proper flow of information is essential for the
growth of every organisation.
Information flow is an important factor in the minimisation of hazards to health
and environment. Industrial Safety information is needed by a wide spectrum of people in
an industry. Industries need information that is appropriate, relevant, up-to-date, usable,
conveniently available and directly applicable to specific circumstances. In this situation,
* RMP, BARC, Mysore. inn@rediffmail.com
47

KM will play an essential role, and those organisations that deploy it early on will have
an edge.
The integration of industrial safety objectives with KM tools could give rise to
Industrial Safety knowledge management systems that use knowledge to improve safety
performance by lowering the information barrier that prevents organizations from
realizing highest safety standards.
2. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN INDUSTRIES: NEED
The objectives of knowledge management in an organization are to promote
knowledge growth, knowledge communication and knowledge preservation in the
organization (Steels, 1993). It entails managing knowledge resources in order to facilitate
access and reuse of knowledge (O'Leary, 1998a).
Knowledge Management is highly essential in industries because
• Too much information impedes decision-making.
• For managers, relevant information is more important than "information
anywhere".
• Knowledge based working environment is as important as IT for effective
knowledge management.
• Effective knowledge management pays.
• Knowledge management is a vital tool for competitive advantage.
Knowledge Management delivers benefits like:
• Increased productivity by managing information assets better
• Improved access to information
• Make organisation more knowledge oriented
Knowledge Management in an industry allows its employees to learn about new
technologies, have discussions, get technical queries answered and even draft project
proposals. This may result in a reduction in training time and a boost in productivity due
to better sharing of knowledge among its employees.
Knowledge Management addresses the issues effectively like:
• Ignorance of what knowledge exists, or of where to find it; and
• Keeping a regularly updated record of who knows
3. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: ROLE OF LIBRARY
In knowledge based economy, libraries functioning in industrial establishments
always referred to as Knowledge Centres. The prime objective of libraries is to serve the
users with ample information using tools, techniques and methods of Knowledge
Management. Libraries play a major role in the production, diffusion and utility of
48

knowledge. Libraries must be proactive to take leadership in formulation of policies,
strategies and implementation of new KM techniques.
Here are some of the features of the Technical Library attached to an industry,
which play a vital role in managing knowledge:
• It contains information about the quality management system, information
related to different projects, best practices and lessons learned, technologyrelated
white papers and tutorials;
• Most relevant and regularly up-dated content according to industry verticals
and technologies;
• A helpdesk for facilitating process consulting to projects;
• A role based access privilege model that ensures that every user has access
only to information pertaining to his department.
Increase in the number of industries and the use of complex technologies &
methods have necessitated the formulation and implementation of effective methods for
providing safe working conditions in work places. The effectiveness of planning and
execution of programmes on Industrial Safety is substantially related to the relevant
information.
Library must survey its user information needs, identify sources and define
processing systems and distributing channels. It should play an active role to support the
use of available knowledge. Knowledge infrastructure can be regarded as the sum of all
sources and means available to find relevant new knowledge for problems at hand. It is
necessary that Librarians formulate requirements for a knowledge infrastructure. Those
who play a major role in knowledge creation hardly get time to disseminate it or to look
for knowledge users. It is here library work as a facilitator to channel the knowledge
created. Libraries disseminate the knowledge using diverse media and other channels.
High speeds network, setting up of a digital library, establishing web portals to
provide effective web based information services are some of the ways libraries must use
to disseminate the knowledge effectively.
Substantial amount of knowledge about the profession of safety comes from the
web sites of various professional organisations. For example the NIOSH web site
(National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health –www.cdc.gov) features many
different types of databases and information resources. CCOHS web site (Canadian
Centre for Occupational Health and Safety –www.ccohs.org) is also one of the highly
reliable resource. So the libraries should focus on developing effective ways for users to
efficiently navigate the web. One of the solutions to achieve this gaol is through Web
Portals.
An institutional depository with an objective to provide access to research
publications and other documents of respective institution also helps in knowledge
sharing.
49

4. INDUSTRIAL SAFETY AND HEALTH INFORMATION
Industrial Safety and Health information is supplementary to the basic knowledge
of materials and processes and it leads to the scientific and methodological approach
towards the control of work and environment. Information on Industrial Safety is an
essential ingredient for improving working conditions. Industrial Safety information can
be grouped as Predictive information that is the primary management need and
Preventive information, which is the need of designers, planners and safety professionals.
The information is needed by a wide spectrum of people--managers, engineers,
supervisors, technicians, professionals, researchers and others. Industrial Safety in a
workplace involves a vast array of issues. The information required to fulfil these needs
is constantly changing and the demand for information is expanding. (Lal, A B and Rao,
Chinna Rao)
1. Industrial Safety information is needed by the Safety Professionals to:
2. Conduct or co-ordinate worker training in areas such as safety laws and
regulations, hazardous condition monitoring, and use of safety equipment like
PPEs
3. Inspect facilities, machinery, and safety equipment in order to identify and correct
potential hazards, and to ensure safety regulation compliance.
4. Maintain and apply knowledge of current policies, regulations, and industrial
processes.
5. Report or review findings from accident investigations, facilities inspections, or
environmental testing.
6. Compile, analyse, and interpret statistical data related to occupational illnesses
and accidents.
7. Recommend process and product safety features that will reduce employees'
exposure to chemical, physical, and biological work hazards.
8. Conduct or direct testing of air quality, noise, temperature, and/or radiation levels
to verify compliance with health and safety regulations.
9. Provide technical advice and guidance to organisations on how to handle safety
related problems and make needed changes.
10. Write and revise safety regulations and codes.
11. Plan and conduct industrial hygiene research.
12. Design and build safety equipment.
5. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT & INDUSTRIAL SAFETY INFORMATION
SERVICES:
KM initiatives like capturing documents and creating a context sensitive
repository and focusing on converting unstructured data into structured data and
50

warehousing the same have to be taken up scientifically to provide an information
support to the industrial safety measures.
The training of technicians, the sharing of experiences and the analysis of
accidents and near misses are a few areas in which KM has an essential role to play.
There are number of instances where knowledge management had a direct role in
preventing an industrial accident.
KM approach to Safety Management means urging the industry to take prompt
actions to improve industrial safety and health such as
• Activation of R&D in Safety and Health Technology
• Enlarge technical Information Service Expansion on Safety and Health
• Support of Advanced Safety and Health Management System
• Make Safety and Health essential
• Support of Industrial Accident Prevention Projects
To enlarge technical Information Service Expansion on Safety and Health one should
1. develop and distribute technical information data sheet to meet the demand
from diverse prospective users;
2. secure information infrastructure and expand safety and health community
boundaries and distribute safety and health practice handbook;
3. structure high-speed telecommunication service infrastructure;
Following a systematic and logical approach to capture both explicit and tacit
knowledge can enlarge Safety Knowledge base. The recorded knowledge, which is
explicit, helps immensely the safety professionals to implement and ensure the safe
working conditions. However, the role of tacit knowledge in safety management system
cannot be under estimated. Managing and disseminating tacit knowledge helps an
organisation to establish internal benchmarks and create a motivated environment.
As the saying goes “Safety is everybody’s business”, it is essential to put a
concerted effort to achieve the safety goals. Employees participation is paramount
importance to achieve the best safety results. To capture the intellectual capital is an
important step in this process. For example getting safety suggestions and ideas from the
employees is considered to be a effective method to capture the tacit knowledge. Any
safety suggestion, which contributes, directly to ease of operation, safety and
environmental protection can be recorded. These suggestions can further get an
authentication by an expert group.
51

Safety Knowledge
Management System
Explicit Knowledge
Tacit Knowledge
Documentary Resources
Human Resources
Manuals, Guidelines
Standards, Reports
Safety Data sheets
Handbooks
Databases
Web-Resources
KM TOOLS
Safety Suggestions
Best Practices
Safety meetings
Accident analysis
Safety Audits
Highest Safety Standards
Effective Decision-making
Enhanced Productivity
Innovation
Zero Accidents
There are many knowledge management issues and practices that have significant
implications on Industrial Safety. For example:
1. How well are minor accidents and near-accidents analysed and discussed
2. During a crisis, how easily can relevant information be accessed?
3. How well is essential knowledge transferred from retiring experts to the
younger generation?
Safe working condition depends on safe plant operation right from project site and
technology selection to plant commissioning and regular operation. Knowledge, while
widely collected and held by individuals throughout the firm, is strategically valuable
only when shared, synthesized, and used in unique ways.
6. CONCLUSION
A firm's success in today's dynamic and fiercely competitive environment
depends largely on the ability to use knowledge to develop new products, services and
processes that outperform the products, services, and processes of rivals. It is important to
52

use available knowledge to ensure safe working conditions. Knowledge Management
helps libraries in capturing, collecting, organizing and disseminating the collective
knowledge assets of an organization. KM can also helps libraries to improve their image
and play a leadership role in helping to capture the institutional memory. KM initiatives
succeed in organizations that have strategic goals, knowledge-sharing culture, try
different approaches and use ICT tools effectively.
Knowledge Management principles will help to make an overall evaluation of
opportunities and risks in terms of knowledge management for the mitigation of
industrial risk. Regular studies of industrial organizations identify the ways in which their
management of information and knowledge is helping safety. Knowledge Management
initiatives support the nation's safety, health policies, and accident prevention projects by
ensuring timely and accurate information.
REFERENCES
1. Dijik Van, et al: Knowledge management in occupational health, consequences for
structures and functions. International Congress Series 1294 (2006) 23-26
2. Gandhi, Smiti: Knowledge Management and Reference Services. The Journal of
Academic Librarianship Vol 30 (5) Sept 2004, pp.368-381
3. Lal, A B and Rao, Chinna Rao: Safety Information System. 13 th World Congress on
Occupational Safety and Health 4-8 April, 1993, New Delhi, pp.546-550
4. Nargund I N, et al: Web Resources for Chemical Safety Information: an overview.
READIT-2005, IGCAR, Kalpakkam, 2005
5. O'Leary, D. E.: Enterprise knowledge management. Computer, 31 (1998)., 54-61.
6. Shaker A. Zahra et al: Knowledge sharing and technological capabilities: The
moderating role of family involvement. Journal of Business Research 20 (2007)
7. Steels, L. : Corporate knowledge management. Proceedings of ISMICK193, Compiegne,
8. France, (1993) pp. 9-30.
9. http://www.lntenc.com/lntenc/e-enabling/ (As accessed on 20 th April, 2007)
10. http://www.networkmagazineindia.com/200502/coverstory09.shtml (accessed on 24-4-
07)
11. http://www.tcs.com/0_media_room/releases/200507july/knowledge_mgt.htm (accessed
on 13 th April, 2007)
12. http://www.datamatics.com/internationalorganizations.html (As accessed on 1 st May,
2007)
53

Multimedia Data Mining in Digital Libraries:
Standards and Features
Sanjeevkumar R. Jadhav * , and Praveenkumar Kumbargoudar *
Abstract
The digital library retrieves, collects, stores and preserves the digital data. For this purpose,
there is need to convert different formats of information such as text, images, video, audio, etc. The data mining
techniques are popular while conversion of the multimedia files in the libraries. The present paper attempted to
define the term data mining. It also covered different data mining features and standards. The paper explained
about the Architecture of data mining, which contains the stages of the data mining such as (1) domain
understanding; (2) data selection; (3) cleaning and preprocessing; (4) discovering patters; (5) interpretation;
and (6) reporting and using discovered knowledge. It is emphasized that there is need to develop multimedia
data mining techniques and standards in the library for conversion of multimedia information.
1. INTRODUCTION
Over the past few decades, rapid changes in information technology have drastically
changed the functions and activities of the libraries. The Information and Communication
Technology created a new type of work culture, new forms of information storage, and new
means of communication and dissemination of information. The advent of electronic
resources and their increased use in libraries has brought about significant changes in Storage
and Communication of Information.
As a Result, the Conventional libraries are transforming into digital libraries.
Majority of the libraries have computerized already and digitizing their printed collection. In
India, the process of digitization is slow compared to other developed countries. This is so
because, only 21% of the Indian population is computer literate and only 14% of the Indian
Population is using Internet. Due to the development in digitization, many of the libraries
are digitizing their collection by transforming their printed materials into digital form.
A fully developed digital library environment involves the following elements 1 :
1. Initial Conversion of Content from Physical to Digital form.
2. The extraction or creation of metadata or indexing information describing the content
to facilitate searching and discovery, as well as administrative and structural metadata
to assist in object viewing, management and preservation.
3. Storage of digital content and metadata in appropriate multimedia repository. The
repository will include rights management capabilities to enforce Intellectual Property
Rights, if required. e-commerce functionality may also be present if needed to handle
accounting and billing.
4. Client Services for the browser, including repository querying and workflow.
5. Content delivery via file transfer or streaming media.
6. Patron access through a browser or dedicated client.
* Gulbarga University, GULBARGA: 585 106. Karnataka. E-Mail: kumbargoudar@rediffmail.com
54

7. A private or public network.
2. DIGITIZATION AND DATA MINING
Digitization refers to the conversion of an item – be it printed text, manuscript, image
or sound, film and video recording – from one format (usually print or analogue) into digital.
The process basically involves taking a physical object and essentially making an ‘electronic
photograph’ of it. An image of the physical object is captured- using a scanner or digital
camera – and converted to digital format that can be stored electronically and accessed via a
computer 2 .
It is noted that the data and information available in different formats. These formats
include Text, Images, Video, Audio, Picture, Maps, etc. It is noted that in case of text
information, there is needed to scan the printed text through scanners and provide different
links to access it. But in case of multimedia formats like images, Audio, Picture, Maps,
Video etc, the conversion and systematic presentation is not easy. Further, there is needed to
make automatic search for easy accessibility. The easy search, effective and systematic
presentation of the data is essential in case of multimedia information. For this purpose, there
is need to adopt data mining techniques in the library. Data mining techniques are basically
from logic, Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence techniques.
Data mining is the automatic extraction of patterns of information from historical
data, enabling companies to focus on the next important aspects of their business—telling
them what they did not know and had not even thought of asking 3 . Data mining is that it “is
the process of automating information discovery” 4 , which improves decision making and
gives a company advantages on the market. Another definition is that is “is the exploration
and analysis, by automatic or semiautomatic means, of large quantities of data in order to
discover meaningful patterns and rules: 5 Data mining is an applied discipline, which grew
our of the statistical pattern recognition, machine learning, and artificial intelligence and
coupled with business decision making to optimize and enhance it. Initially, data mining
techniques have been applied to structured data from databases.
Recently two branches of data mining, text data mining and Web data mining, have
emerged 6&7 . They have their own research agenda, communities of researchers, and
supporting companies that develop technologies and tools. Unfortunately, today multimedia
data mining is in beginning stage and still there is need for developments to make effective
presentation of multimedia information.
There are four types of multimedia data: audio data, which includes sound , speech,
and music; image data (black-and-white and colour images); video data, which include timealigned
sequences of images; and electronic or digital, which is sequences of time aligned 2D
or 3D coordinates of a stylus, a light per, data glove sensors, or a similar device. All this data
is generated by specific kind of sensors.
The concept of mining in multimedia is also referred to as automatic annotation or
annotation mining. There appears to be three main pattern discovery approaches that have
been used for automatic annotation in multimedia data mining. These approaches primarily
differ in terms of how external knowledge is provided to mine concepts. The first approach
includes assigning key words or classifying the data. The second approach for automatic
annotation is through clustering and here multimedia documents are clustered first and then
the resulting clusters are assigned keywords by annotator. The third approach does not rely
on manual annotator and it tries to mine concepts by knowing the contextual information.
55

The Multimedia Data Mining (MDM) is a part of multimedia technology, which
covers the following areas 8 .
‣ Media compression and storage.
‣ Delivering streaming media over networks with required quality of service.
‣ Media restoration, transformation, and editing.
‣ Media indexing, summarization, search, and retrieval.
‣ Creating interactive multimedia systems for learning/training and creative art
production.
‣ Creating multimodal user interfaces.
3. MULTIMEDIA DATA MINING ARCHITECTURE
The data mining process consists of several processes and stages, which are related to
each other and interactive. The main stages of the data mining process are (1) domain
understanding; (2) data selection; (3) cleaning and preprocessing; (4) discovering patters; (5)
interpretation; and (6) reporting and using discovered knowledge. The domain understanding
stage requires learning how the results of data-mining will be used so as to gather all relevant
prior knowledge before mining 9 .
Figure: Multimedia Data Mining Architecture
The data selection stage requires the user to target a database or select a subset of
fields or data records to be used for data mining. A proper domain understands at this stage
56

helps in the identification of useful data. This is the most time consuming stage of the entire
data mining process for business applications; data are never clean and in the form suitable
for data mining. For multimedia data mining, this stage is generally not an issue, because the
data are not in relational form and there are no subsets of fields to choose from.
The next stage in a typical data mining process is the preprocessing step that involves
integrating data from different sources and making choices about representing or coding
certain data fields that serve as inputs to the pattern discovery stage. Such representation
choices are needed because certain fields may contain data at levels of details not considered
suitable for the pattern discovery stage. The preprocessing stage is of considerable
importance in multimedia data mining, given the unstructured nature of multimedia data.
The pattern discovery stage is the heart of the entire data mining process. It is the
stage where the hidden patterns and trends in the data are actually uncovered. There are
several approaches to the pattern discovery stage. These include association, classification,
clustering, regression, time-series analysis and visualization. Each of these approaches can
be implemented through one of several competing methodologies, such as statistical data
analysis, machine learning, neural networks and pattern recognition. It is because of the use
of methodologies from several disciplines that data mining is often viewed as a
multidisciplinary field.
The interpretation stage of the data mining process is used to evaluate the quality of
discovery and its value to determine whether previous stage should be revisited or not.
Proper domain understanding is crucial at this stage to put a value on discovered patterns.
The final stage of the data mining process consists of reporting and putting to use the
discovered knowledge to generate new actions or products and services or marketing
strategies as the case may be.
According to Myatt 10 any exploratory data mining project should include the
following steps:
1. Problem Definition: The problem to be solved along with the projected deliverables
(information products) should be clearly defined, an appropriate team should be put
together, and a plan generated for executing the analysis.
2. Data Preparation: Prior to starting any data analysis or data mining project, the data
should be collected characterized, cleaned, transformed, and partitioned into an
appropriate form for processing further.
3. Implementation of the Analysis: On the basis of the information from steps 1 & 2,
appropriate analysis techniques should be selected and often these methods need to be
optimized.
4. Deployment of Results: The Results from Step 3 should be communicated and/ or
deployed into a pre-existing process.
4. FEATURES AND STANDARDS FOR MULTIMEDIA DATA MINING
It is noted that different image attributes such as Colour, edges, shape, and texture are
used to extract features for mining. Feature extraction based on these attributes may be
57

performed at the global or local level. For example, colour histograms may be used as
features to characterize the spatial distribution of colour in an image. Similarly, the shape of
a segmented region may be represented as a feature vector of Fourier descriptors to capture
global shape property of the segmented region or a shape could be described in terms of
salient points or segments to provide localized descriptions. Global descriptors are generally
easy to compute, provide a compact representation, and are less prone to segmentation errors.
However such descriptors may fail to uncover subtle patterns or changes in shape because
global descriptors tend to integrate the underlying information. Local descriptors, on the
other hand, tend to do generate more elaborate representation and can yield useful results
even when part of the underlying attribute, for example, the shape of a region is occluded, is
missing. In the case of video, additional attributes resulting from object and camera motion
are used.
In case of audio, both the temporal and the spectral domain features have been
employed. Examples of some of the features used include short-time energy, pause rate,
zero-crossing rate, normalized harmonicity, fundamental frequency, frequency spectrum,
bandwidth, spectral centroid, spectral roll-off frequency and band energy ratio. Many
researchers have found the cepstral based features, Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients
(MFCC) and Linear Predictive Coefficients (LPC), very useful, especially in mining tasks
involving speech recognition. The MPEG-7 standard provides a good representative set of
features for multimedia data. The features are referred as descriptors in MPEG-7. The
MPEG-7 Visual description tools describe visual data such as images and videos while the
Audio description tools account for audio data. The MPEG-7 visual description defines the
following main features for color attributes: Color Layout Descriptor, Color Structure
Descriptor, Dominant Color Descriptor and Scalable Color Descriptor. The Color Layout
Descriptor is a compact and resolution invariant descriptor that is defined as YCbCr Color
space to capture the spatial distribution of color over major image regions. The Color
Structure Descriptor captures both color content and information about its spatial
arrangement using a structuring element that is moved over the image. The Dominant Color
Descriptor characterizes an image or an arbitrarily shaped region by a small number of
representative colors. The Scalable Color Descriptor is a color histogram in the HSV Color
Space encoded by Haar transform to yield a scalable representation. While the above
features are defined with respect to an image or its part, the feature Group of Frames-Group
of Pictures Color (GoFGoPColor) describes the color histogram aggregated over multiple
frames of a video 9 .
MPEG-7 provides for two main shape descriptors; others are based on these and
additional semantic information. The Region shape Descriptor describers the shape of a
region using Angular Radial Transform (ART). The description is provided in terms of 40
coefficients and is suitable for complex objects consisting of multiple disconnected regions
and for simple objects with or without holes. The Contour Shape Descriptor describes the
shape of an object based on its outlines. The descriptor used the curvature scale space
representation of the contour.
The motion descriptors in MPEG-7 are defined to cover a broad range of applications.
The motion activity descriptor captures the intuitive notion of intensity or pace of action in a
video clip. The descriptor provides information for intensity, direction, and spatial and
temporal distribution of activity in a video segment. The spatial distribution of activity
indicates whether the activity is spatially limited or not. Similarly, the temporal distribution
of activity indicates how the level of activity varies over the entire segment. The Camera
Motion Descriptor specifies the camera motion types and their quantitative characterization
over the entire video segment. The Motion Trajectory Descriptor describes motion trajectory
58

of moving object basic on spatiotemporal localization of trajectory points. The description
provided is at a fairly high level as each moving object is indicated by one representative
point at any time instant. The parametric Motion Descriptors describes motion, global and
object motion, in a bideo segment by describing the evolution of arbitrarily shaped regions
over time using a two-dimensional geometric transform.
The MPEG-7 Audio standard defines two sets of audio descriptors. The first set is of
low-level features, which are meant for a wide range of applications. The descriptors in this
set include silence, power, Spectrum, and Harmonicity. The silence Descriptor simply
indicates that there is no significant sound in the audio segment. The power Descriptor
measures temporally smoothed instantaneous signal power. The Spectrum Descriptor
captures properties such as the audio spectrum envelope, spectrum centroid spectrum spread,
spectrum flatness, and fundamental frequency. The second set of audio descriptors is of
high-level feature, which are meant for specific applications. The features in this set include
Audio Signature, Timbre, and Melody. The Signature Descriptor is designed to generate a
unique identifier for identifying audio content. The Timbre Descriptor captures perceptual
features of instrument sound. The Melody Descriptor captures monophonic melodic
information and is useful for matching of melodies. In addition, the high-level descriptors in
MPEG-7 Audio include descriptors for automatic speech recognition, sound classification
and indexing.
5. MULTIMEDIA DATA MINING IN DIGITAL LIBRARIES:
Quan Liu 11 suggested the ‘Standards and guidelines associated with library
digitization practices vary from project to project. Over the years, university, public, school,
and special libraries have adopted their own policies with regard to digitization. Some older
standards, as well as more recent ones, are widely accepted and practiced library digitization
projects. Metadata standards and image quality standards and guidelines are commonly
sought when planning digitization projects… Common metadata standards used to date are
Dublin Core, RDF, EAD, TEI, and SGML and its descendents XML and HTML. The MARC
standard has been used as the standard interchange format in representing catalog records
electronically’.
It is noted that in India, only a few University and College libraries have already
started digitization and a majority of the University and College libraries are yet to start the
work of digitization and conversion work of their collection. Further, it is noted that the
experts in library science and information science, to large extent only provided guidelines
for conversion of text documents. Hence, there is need to know about the standards and
processes of the data mining and storage of multimedia data through data mining techniques.
6. CONCLUSION
Multimedia data mining techniques are active and growing area of research now. In
case of digital library projects, there is need for multimedia data mining for conversion and
preservation of multimedia information. There is needed to make data mining strategy for
conversion of multimedia files in the libraries. The digital libraries, to a large extent
accessible through the web, must present multimedia information effectively. Then the
purpose of these libraries is served properly. To serve this purpose, there is needed to form
data mining strategy, considering standards, features and available techniques.
59

REFERENCES
1. Sinha, Manojkumar and Others: Digital Library Initiatives in India for Open Access: An
Overview. 4 th International CALIBER 2006. Gulbarga: Gulbarga University, 2-4 February
2006. P. 149-164.
2. Parekh, Harsha and Sen, Bharati: Introduction to Digitization: a Librarian’s Guide. Mumbai:
SHPT School of Library Science, SNDT Women’s University, 2001. P. 8.
3. Bharihoke, Deepak: Fundamentals of Information Technology. 3 rd Ed. New Delhi: Excel
books, 2005.
4. Groth, R: Data Mining: A Hands On Approach for Business Professionals. Upper Saddle
River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998.
5. Berry, MJA and Linoff, G: Data Mining Techniques for Marketing, Sales and Customer
Support. New York: Wiley Computer Publishing, 1997.
6. Agosta, L: The future of data mining- Predictive Analytics. IT View Report, Forrester
Research, http://www.forrester.com/Research/LegacyIT/0,7208,32896,00.html accessed on
30th April 2007.
7. Berry, MW, Ed: Survey of Text Mining: Clustering, Classification and Retrieval. New York:
Springer-Verlag, 2004.
8. Petrushin, Valery A: Introduction into Multimedia Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery.
IN Multimedia Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery. Edited by Valery A Petrushin and
Latifur Khan. London: Springer-Verlag, 2007. P. 3-13.
9. Patel, Nilesh and Sethi, Ishwar: Multimedia Data Mining: An Overview. IN Multimedia Data
Mining and Knowledge Discovery. Edited by Valery A Petrushin and Latifur Khan. London:
Springer-Verlag, 2007. P. 14-40.
10. Myatt, Glenn J: Making Sense of Data: A Practical Guide to Exploratory Data Analysis and
Data Mining. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2007.
11. Quan Liu, Yan: Best practices, standards and techniques for digitizing library materials: a
snapshot of library digitization practices in the USA. Online Information Review. Vol. 28.
No. 5. 2004. P. 338-345.
60

Information Resource Management in a
Knowledge Society
V. Rajendran* and E. Soundararajan *
Abstract
Digital Libraries have to serve the needs of knowledge society where the organizational
knowledge, individual knowledge and other resources of knowledge have to be managed and
disseminated. Librarians who have been the traditional information resource managers have a vital
role to play in this context. They are responsible for information resource management in effective and
efficient way. Information resources management includes the basic infrastructure management,
underlying technology, standards and protocols, access models and finally the user management which
is the ultimate purpose of any knowledge management process. This paper highlights essential aspects
of information resource management with a special reference to Indira Gandhi centre for Atomic
Research (IGCAR) environment.
1. INTRODUCTION
Information is an important resource in the “Knowledge Society” and its
management is very different from traditional Library management. Mostly, it
involves management of change, time and electronic sources, along with traditional
collection management aspects. Information resource management is a philosophical
and practical approach to managing information. Because information is a valuable
resource to be managed like other resources, IRM contributes directly to
accomplishing organizational goals and objectives. It provides an integrated approach
to managing the entire life cycle of information—from creation, to dissemination, to
archiving or destruction—so as to maximize the overall usefulness of information.
Forest W. Horton (1979) one of the leading experts in the area of IRM, defines
“Resource Management system includes all methods and procedures for collecting
and processing information on a particular resource (i.e. men, money, machines, or
what is germane to our subject here, information itself) and formatting that data in a
manner which is useful for management”.
The most comprehensive definition offered by Horton in his book
“Information resources management: harnessing information assets for productivity
gains in office, factory and laboratory” (1985) states that IRM is:
“a managerial discipline which views information as a resource equal to
financial, physical, human, and natural resources. IRM addresses the efficient and
effective handling of information resources (raw data) and the resulting information
assets (knowledge)”.
There are at least three events which, when combined together, triggered the
inception of IRM. The main events are:
* Scientific Information Resource Division, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam
Tamilnadu -603 102. Email: vraj@igcar.gov.in
61

- Information explosion
- Proliferation of paper
- Extensive use of information handling technologies
2. INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT
We can classify the different requirements for proper infrastructure
establishment as:
• Network environment
• System Requirements
• Content Creation, and
• Information Storage & Retrieval (ISR)
The basic requirement for a Digital Library is well-planned and tuned network
environment. Networked Environment could mean an intranet, which is a set of Local
Area Networks (LANs) with in an organization. More widely, it could also mean
internet. The performance of the Networked environment is determined by the factors
of hardware (Switches, Routers, Servers, etc.) and Software (Operating System,
Application Programs).
Document
Management Server
Video Streaming
Server
Content Creation
Server
User Stations
Knowledge Resource
Server
Library Gateway
Server
Reports Collection
Server
Digital Library
Transaction Server
Full Text Resources
Server
CD /DVD Resource
Collection Server
Storage (NAS) Server
Centralized Tape
Library
Fiber
Uplink
IGC NET
Fig.1 IGCAR Library Configuration
Designing and establishing the infrastructure for a suitable networked
environment in a library is more important and could have impact on its information
services. The networked environment should exist in the entire organization to serve
its information requirements of the users.
62

System Requirements for Digital Library
Hardware Requirements
Software Specification
• Server Class Systems
• Operating System – Server /Client
• Work Stations
• Database Software
• Scanning & Capturing Devices
• Documents Management Software
• Intranet & Internet
• Backup Management Software
• Storage Servers (NAS)
• Library Portal & Search Engines
• Backup Devices (Tape Library)
• Web Server / Browser
• Printer
• Authentication Management
• UPS
• Web tools & PDF Suite etc
Table 1: System Requirements for Digital Library
The capable and adequate servers with enough processors, memory and other
resources must be procured for hosting different information resources. IGCAR
library has over 12 servers with Intel Xeon processor with high-speed memory for
different E-Collections, E-Applications, Document Management, Knowledge
Resources, Library Automation and information services. From the client side, a
Pentium PC with minimum resources is required which must be connected to the
network so as to have the desktop access to vital information resources from Library
easily.
Similarly, necessary software for server and client side like operating systems,
anti virus package, document management systems, digital library solutions etc have
to be procured for efficient functioning of digital library.
3. RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
Scientific Information Resource Division at Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic
Research holds very large collection of books, journals, technical reports, standards,
etc, and e-journals, full text standards in e-format and also international bibliographic
databases.
Digital resources management is a process consisting of collection
development, information management and digital asset management. The
development of digital collections should be guided by the same principles as the
development of any other library collection, those of meeting the needs of the
perceived user base and of acquiring materials that might be valuable to the users of
the future. In general, there are 3 different ways through which digital collections are
acquired.
3.1 Digitizing own collection
Libraries are forced to establish a content creation section that can consist of
both multimedia and scanning units. To digitize any document, the basic requirement
is the need to have a suitable scanner & software like OCR. Multimedia section can
63

also go together for adding visual and sound information. Digitized information must
be clearly identified, properly indexed and well organized for archival and
dissemination.
3.2 Acquiring or licensing from Publishers
Digital resources could be in the form of databases and even full text. They
could be purchased / subscribed from the vendors or publishers. These resources may
be offered to library in one of the following models
a. Single user
b. Site License
c. Consortia
The usage based pricing concept, which defines the price based on the amount
of usage by the patrons, is the emerging one. Whatever be the model, the continued
access and support from the publishers are the key factors to be considered while
subscribing
3.3 Creating resources from World Wide Web (Free Resources)
The web has a very large content and continues to grow exponentially. The
content from the web could be a good resource to library. There are many free
resources available from Internet like free e-journals, databases, bibliographic and full
text contents. Using search engines or web crawlers, the required information can be
filtered and classified to make subject specific portal.
4. INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
The exponential growth of information has put a demand before information
professionals for a new evolutionary technology to support effective search and
indexing functionalities. Digital libraries should integrate a variety of information
technologies and provide opportunities to organize and access large volumes of
information from multiple repositories. Through this integration, the distributed
heterogeneous resources spread across the network appear to be a single uniform
federated source.
4.1 Metadata Management
Metadata is one of the important concepts for the description, organization,
exchange and retrieval of information in a networked environment. It is one of the
critical components of digital resource development and use, and is needed at all
stages in the creation and management of resources. Well formed metadata is the most
efficient and effective tool for managing and finding objects in the complex
information spaces. Information resources must be made visible in a way that allows
people to tell whether the resources are likely to be useful to them. This is no less
important in the online world, and in particular, the World Wide Web. Metadata is a
systematic method for describing resources and thereby improving access to them. If
a resource is worth making available, then it is worth describing it with metadata, so
as to maximize the ability to locate it.
5. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Nowadays, the role of information professional is beyond issues related to
displaying, cataloging, and indexing documents for end users. Digitizing the
64

information and publishing it on the web is far from knowledge management. To
provide high quality information services to users, libraries need to describe the
information using metadata and organize them using classification schemes. Keyword
based searching may not retrieve the content what user is looking for. For more
effective and efficient search, the support of subject specific thesaurus can be used.
To be successful in Knowledge Management, DL must become a knowledge space
for a wide spread of knowledge enquiry, sharing and propagation.
DL
Knowledge Enquiry
(Knowledge Base)
Looking for Knowledge
Information Browsing
Intelligent Information
Information
DL Searching
Fig.2 Knowledge Discovery
Information Search is targeted towards a specific document by user request.
Information browsing produces a conceptual map of set of documents. Knowledge
discovery from the information require intelligent answers to user queries with the
support of set(s) of relevant documents. To form a knowledge base, the classification
and thesaurus are to be merged into a concept network and the metadata are
distributed into nodes of concept network according to their subjects. This is not only
the framework for knowledge organization but also a structure for knowledge
Navigation retrieval and learning.
6. USER MANAGEMENT
Basically, information services consist of three main points, and libraries
should be able to (i) provide information services to the patrons (ii) provide access to
information, and (iii) satisfy patrons' information needs. Libraries should form the
amount of services and resources considering different patrons' needs. The whole
variety of patrons' needs can be generally divided into three main groups.
6.1 Access
Libraries should provide open access to different kinds of information in
different forms and on different media. In other words, a patron may need textbooks,
reference works, dissertations, reviews, biographies, etc. in different languages and
publication date. They may need a printed original or a digital copy, they may want to
watch a screen version of a book or listen to some audio clips. A library must provide
not only the resource itself, but an opportunity to read, watch, listen or study it.
65

6.2 Format
This refers to the ability to convert information from one format to another. It
means that a user might need to digitize a traditional printed resource. Libraries must
have necessary infrastructure for content creation, scanning etc. And, on the contrary,
a user might need to print a text or image. Hence libraries must cope up with the
heterogeneity in the information formats, medias and technology in order to provide a
seamless smooth functioning to their patrons.
6.3 Time
Library patrons information needs to be answered 24/7. The patron doesn't
need to go to the library to learn its working hours or to find out the availability of a
book. If a library has its own website or a webpage - all the information may be
published there, so that users can get the information from their desktop itself.
7. THE ROLE OF LIBRARIAN
Any product requires advertisement and it could be simple informative or
educative. In case of library applications, both informative and educative approaches
are required. Librarians are required to provide the user support using the information
technology developments like email, chat services, web technology, etc. Multimedia
Presentations, Road Shows, Workshops, User Manuals, Helpdesk are some the
techniques for user education. Digital Librarian who acts as digital information
manager need to face the following challenges.
• Hybrid Librarian
The Hybrid librarian role is to integrate information systems and services
using the most appropriate resource, whether print or technology based, to
achieve the user’s information need.
• Information Architect
Information Architect is concerned with the way that content is structured
for use. The Metadata standards like XML/MARC are the specific area in
which the librarian should be familiar with.
• Knowledge Preserver & Mediator
This is connected with the preservation of digital contents and discovering
and disseminating the information resources.
8. BENEFITS OF IMPLEMENTING AN IRM STRATEGY
• Identifies gaps and duplication of information
• Clarifies roles and responsibilities of owners and users of information
• Provide costs saving in the procurement and handling of information
• Identifies cost/benefits of different information resources
• Actively supports management decision processes with quality
information
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9. CONCLUSION
To face these challenges, the librarian needs to enhance his skills on
managerial, technical and subject areas particularly on:
• Computer Networking
• Internet Information Access
• Email based information Exchange
• Information Search engines
• Metadata Standards (XML, MARC etc)
• Content Creation and Representations methods
• Dissemination of the information over the network
• Web Publishing Technology
• User friendly retrieval system
• Selection of information resources in different media and collection
development
• To provide flexibility, ease of use and access in cost-effective way
REFERENCES:
1. Savic, Dobrica (1992) Evolution of information resource management. Journal of
Librarianship and Information Science. 24(3)p. 127-138
2. Willard, Nick (1993) Information Resources Management. Aslib Information, 21(5).
3. http://drtc.isibang.ac.in/~aparajita/Information%20resource%20management.ppt (06-
06-2007)
4. http://www.library.uq.edu.au/iad/ctmeta4.html (29-07-2003)
5. Soundararajan, E; Joseph, JVM; Jayakumar, C; Venkadesan, S (2003) Networked
Information Services: A case study of IGCAR Library. Manlibnet National
Convention, XLRI, Jamshedpur. March 6-8, 2003
6. Soundararajan, E; Joseph, JVM; Jayakumar, C (2001). Building Up E-Collections at
IGCAR Library. READIT-2001. 18-19 Sep 2001. IIT, Chennai.
67

Using Knowledge mapping to support knowledge
management in health organizations
Sangita Gupta * , Sneh Lata Sharma ** and Kavita Dutta ***
Abstract
Creating visual representations i.e. charts or maps, of repositories can be an useful exercise
in knowledge management. This knowledge map serve as a blueprint to pinpoint to knowledge sources
and will help in locating relevant information in the organization. This article briefly discusses
knowledge translation and knowledge mapping. It focuses on the use of knowledge mapping as a
technique to support knowledge translation in health organizations in order to bridge the gap between
knowledge generated and action for health. This paper explores the possibility for integrating
knowledge mapping with conceptual framework so that it can help understanding many complex
processes, resources and people involved in health system.
INTRODUCTION
Knowledge translation program was founded in the year 2000 by the
Department of Medicine, Family and Community Medicine, Health Policy
Management and Evaluation, Public health sciences, through funding from the
Academic Priorities fund, University of Toronto. The process was developed in
response to the gap between research evidence and clinical practice. Initiatives were
needed to facilitate interaction between researchers and policy-makes to foster greater
use of research findings and evidence in policy-making and to narrow the “know-dogap”.
The Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) has referred to knowledge
translation as the process of supporting the uptake of health research in a manner that
improves the health and health care of Canadians through improved understandings,
processes, sciences, products and systems.
A vast amount of global investments in health research generated pool of
knowledge that is underused and not translated rapidly enough into new health
policies, products, services and outcomes. Knowledge translation has come at a time
when the gap between what is known and what gets done (the known –do gap) is
highlighted by shortfalls in equity and quality in health services.
What does Knowledge translation stand for:
Knowledge translation can be used as a noun or a verb. It is described a
structured process that results in scientifically researched evidence being used to
improve the outcomes of professional practice. Knowledge can be created without
science and knowledge translation is not research; it moves from responding to
curiosity to focusing on purpose and problems solving. It is defined as “ the
synthesis, exchange and application of knowledge by relevant stakeholders to
accelerate the benefits of global and local innovation in strengthening health systems
and improving people’s health. Knowledge translation is about creating, transferring
* Sr. Technical Asstt. NDC, NIHFW, Munirka, New Delhi10067. Sangitagupta2006@gmail.com
** Librarian. , TCS, Gurgaon, Haryana, sneh.sharma@tcs.com
*** IGNOU, Regional Centre Delhi1, 52 Tughlakabad, Institutional Area, New Delhi-110062,
dutta_kavita07@yahoo.co.in
68

and transforming knowledge from one social or organizational unit to another in a
value-creating chain. The transfer of knowledge from one community or
organizational unit to another usually faces five problems: knowledge access,
knowledge incompleteness, knowledge asymmetry, knowledge valuation and
knowledge incompatibility. Knowledge translation is distinguished by at least three
features:
a. Emphasizes the process of qualifying search evidence;
b. Supports the flow of data and understanding from researcher to
practitioner/ policy makers as well as the flow from practitioner/policy
maker to researcher.
c. Pertains to complex social and organizational contexts.
While the term knowledge translation may appear similar to dissemination or
diffusion, it can be differentiated by its emphasis on the quality of research prior to
dissemination and implementation of research evidence into a system. Unlike simple
dissemination activities, knowledge translation requires coordination and process
improvement amongst a complex system. Knowledge translation involves the
reporting, quality assessment and adaptation of research and development knowledge
into an understandable and contextually relevant form that reflects organization’s
research and development priorities and that will be utilized by and benefit
practitioner and consumers.
Importance of Knowledge translation:
Knowledge translation has emerged in response to the gap between evidence
based research and its use / implementation by various stakeholders change in
behaviors is usually the ultimate goal, but in practice the impact of knowledge
translation is often much more suitable and long term.
Knowledge Mapping and Knowledge translation:
Knowledge mapping comprises a process, which provides an organization
with a picture of the specific knowledge it needs in order to support its business
processes. Knowledge mapping is an important practice consisting of survey, audit
and synthesis. It aims to track the acquisition and loss of information and knowledge.
It explores personal and group competencies and proficiencies. It illustrates or “maps”
how knowledge flows throughout an organization. Knowledge mapping helps an
organization to appreciate how the loss of staff influences intellectual capital, to assist
with the selection of terms, and to match technology to knowledge needs and
processes. We have got some key principles of knowledge mapping like:
- Understand that knowledge is transient.
- Explain the sanction, establish boundaries, and respect personal
disclosures.
- Recognize and locate knowledge in wide variety of forms: tacit and
explicit, formal and informal, codified and personalized, internal and
external, short life cycle and permanent.
- Locate knowledge in processes, relationships, policies, people, documents,
conversations, links and context, suppliers, competitors and customers.
69

- Be aware of organizational level and aggregation, cultural issues and
reward systems, timeliness, sharing and value, legal process and
protection (patents, trade secrets, trade marks, NDAs)
The internal knowledge mapping in a public health organization allows it to
learn what it knows. It refers to the understanding and self awareness that an
organization has with respect to its knowledge resources and their limitations. Internal
knowledge is especially important because it is unique, specific to the organization,
tacit and therefore difficult to reproduce by knowledge holders located outside the
organization. On the other hand, external knowledge acquisition refers to a capability
for external awareness, more specifically to the capacity for identifying and acquiring
knowledge from external sources and making it suitable for subsequent use by the
organization. Knowledge mapping and acquisition involve many specific capacities
for example, locating, accessing, valuing, and filtering pertinent knowledge,
extracting, collecting, distilling, refining, interpreting, packaging, and transforming
the captured knowledge into usable knowledge; and transferring the usable knowledge
within the organization for subsequent use in the problem solving. External
knowledge may provide new ideas and contexts for benchmarking internal
knowledge; this type of knowledge is more explicit and more costly to acquire but it
is easily available from other similar public health organizations.
With the help of results of the knowledge mapping we can look into the
knowledge gap that may exist between what a public health organization has to know
to implement its mandates and what it currently knows and this information leads to
one of three conclusions: 1. The organization has external knowledge gap if it does
not know enough to implements its public health mandate; 2. The organization has
external knowledge gap if it knows less than what other public health organization
know in order to implement similar mandate; 3. The organization has knowledge gap
it knows enough to implement its mandate or if it knows more than other public
health organizations know in order to implement similar mandates.
Knowledge mapping may rely on one of four organizational modes:
undirected viewing, conditioned viewing, informal search and formal search. In
undirected viewing, a public health professional is exposed to information, when he or
she has no specific informational needs in mind. We can say this is an informal
strategy that can be useful for the early detection of emerging problems. In
conditioned viewing a public health professional directs his or her viewing on
information regarding selected public health topics or issues. During the informal
search process, a public health professional looks for information that will improve
his or her understanding of a specific public health issue. Finally, in a formal search a
public health professional engages in a systematic search for ideas, information and
knowledge about a specific health issue. This last mode includes conducting
systematic reviews and external surveys as well as training and hiring employees (in
order to bring knowledge into the organization).
Knowledge creation is usually associated with research and development
activities. Knowledge translation capability refers to the capacity to combine
70

knowledge (tacit, internal and external) in order to develop new knowledge. It also
includes activities such as solving a public health problem, devising a public health
promotion strategy, discovering a pattern, developing a public health programme or
intervention or conducting, monitoring, and evaluation activities. On the other hand,
knowledge destruction frequently paves the way for knowledge creation and
innovation. However, it is difficult to destroy old knowledge and replace it with the
implementation of new knowledge (for example, replacing old clinical guidelines
with new).
Knowledge Integration:
Knowledge integration is the capacity to transform a public health
organization’s knowledge resources (tacit, explicit, individual, organizational,
internal, external) into actionable knowledge by taking into account the organization’s
strengths, weaknesses and opportunities as well as threats to the organization.
Over the time, public health organizations learn to integrate the accumulated
internal knowledge with knowledge acquired from other organizations or other
external sources. Organizations integrate the knowledge accumulated over time,
developing and delivering programmes, interventions and services using knowledge
from external sources. However, integrating of raw knowledge into actionable
knowledge is necessary but not sufficient to solve the public health problems;
knowledge must also be shared and transferred. Knowledge sharing is more
demanding than knowledge reporting. Reporting involves disseminating information
through codified formats to target groups within a public health organization. By
contrast, sharing implies person-to-person interactions during which one individual
convert his or her (individual and often tacit) knowledge into a form that can be
understood by other members in the organization. Knowledge sharing provides the
mechanism to transform individual knowledge into organizational knowledge that can
be redeployed to create value and solve problems at the organizational level.
Knowledge sharing is a social process that may lead to the emergence of communities
of practice. In public heath, such communities exist at the local, regional, national and
international levels. We can say knowledge transfer complements knowledge sharing.
While knowledge sharing is associated with an exchange of knowledge between
individuals and knowledge exchange is associated with exchange knowledge between
organizations or departments or divisions within the organizations. Knowledge that
has been shared or transferred provides a template or guideline for decisions and
actions. Knowledge replication is the capacity to identify the attributes of the
knowledge that are replicable, how these attributes can be recreated and the
characteristics of the contexts in which they can be replicated. But it is found that
there are significant differences between the attributes of the knowledge and the
contexts of the action and decisions described in the templates and guidelines, and a
real public health context. So, knowledge replication must be guided by the attributes
of the local context of actions and decisions, especially with respect to public health.
The capacity to replicate knowledge improves the efficacy and efficiency of public
health programmes and interventions. However, many legal mechanisms of
knowledge protection like patent, copyright, trademarks etc. restrict use of knowledge
replication. To what extent knowledge replication has been able to give desired results
and outputs, it should be assessed by knowledge performance. Assessments are based
on perspectives like a) Value for money- investments in the creation, sharing and
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application of knowledge providing public health benefits; b) knowledge users -the
extent to which evidence based professional practices contribute to the development
of new products and services to improve them; c) Final beneficiaries of knowledge
translation -the extent to which evidence based professional practices are translated
into new improved products and services; d) internal organizational process- public
health organizations must have an account of processes to achieve superior
knowledge sharing, transfer, replication in order to achieve superior outcomes for the
public.
CONCLUSION
The gap between what we know and what we practice i.e. know-do gap exist
in public health organizations. Knowledge translation is also on important measure to
bridge the gap between knowledge and action for health. It is hoped that public health
organizations in developing countries will try to invest more resources in prompting
measures like- knowledge translation, knowledge management to narrow the gap as
well as develop a culture where decisions taken by policy-makers, health professional
and the public are based on evidence.
REFERENCES
1. Holsapple C W, Joshi KD. Knowledge, manipulation activities: results of a
Delphi study. Introduction and Management 2002; 28: 265-84.
2. Lee C C, Yang J. Knowledge – value chain. Journal of Management
Development. 2000; 19: 783-93.
3. Ipe M. Knowledge sharing is organizations; a conceptual framework. Human
Research Development Review. 2003; 2: 227-59.
4. Landry Rejean, Amara Nabil. The knowledge – value chain: a conceptual
framework for knowledge translation in India. Bulletin of the World Health
Organization.2006; 84(8): 597-602.
5. Ebener S, Khan A. Knowledge mapping as a technique to support knowledge.
Bulletin of the World Health Organization.2006; 84(8): 636-42.
72

Fire Detection System: A Device for document
preservation in a Library Environment: Guidance for
Selection to Installation of an Ideal System
J.V.M.Joseph*, M.Pandurangam* and M.Somasekharan*
Abstract
This paper discusses about the implication and hazards of fire in Libraries / Archives and
explains about the necessary preventive measures to be taken. It stresses about the importance of
installation of an ideal Automatic Fire Detection and Alarming System in libraries and archives for
early detection and prevention. Describes detail about the various components comprising of Fire
Detection & Alarm System. It provides necessary guidelines to the selection and installation of an ideal
Fire Alarm System. Also discusses about the pros and cons of Beam Detectors. Finally, Software
Interface and Network Issues are explained.
1. INTRODUCTION
Safety and Security of Archives and Libraries: The prime activity of Information
Security is the Physical Protection of Documents. The Dictionary meaning of safety is
the freedom from loss or risk and security means the thing that guards or guarantees.
In the context of physical records is free from losses or risks. If a document crumbles
due to any reason, it is a permanent loss to the repository / the nation and the world as
well. Safety and Security measures are to be strictly adhered to safe guard the
documentary heritage from the losses against natural calamities like flood, earthquake
and fire. Hence the safety and security of archives and libraries are concerns in
preservation of documentary wealth.
Fire: Fire is responsible of complete annihilation of documentary wealth and
therefore, is necessary to prevent it. The nature of material housed in libraries and
archives is mostly inflammable and even a single spark may completely burn the
house. Therefore, it is essential to take care of documentary wealth of unique nature
from fire. In order to take preventive measures, the following strategies are to be
followed
Prevention Strategies: While planning strategies against fire, it should guarantee for
no outbreak of fire in archival repository or where documentary wealth is housed.
Even it breaks due to any reason the Libraries and Archives must be in full
preparedness to control it immediately before any loss occurs to the wealth.
The following preventive measures will save the documentary wealth.
a. First and foremost activity of prevention is the complete prohibition of
smoking practices in library and archive buildings.
b. Secondly, a special wiring system, negating short circuiting should be
adopted.
c. Thirdly, all the possible points causing short circuit in the electrical wiring
should be avoided.
d. Fourthly, sufficient fire fighting aids should be stockpiled in the vicinity of
respective buildings to meet any challenge of fire.
* SIRD, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research,Kalpakkam, Tamilnadu –603102
Email: joe@igcar.gov.in
73

By implementing these strategies, there is no guarantee to achieve full protection to
the documents. But we can ensure the fullest precautionary measures to prevent. In
order to meet this precaution of fire, Fire Detection is to be made.
2. DETECTION OF FIRE
Timely detection of fire detection by using proper transducer to sense the different
types of smoke and temperature facilitates in effective control of it.
Fire Detection and Alarm System: Fire Detection and Alarm System is electronic
equipment which detects fire and raises alarm as warning of fire. Fire, generates
smoke, heat and light and all the three parameters have been used for the detection of
fire. Different types of Detectors sense the smoke and heat using different techniques
depending upon the location and probable nature of fire. Typically a cooking place
will have a special type of heat detection mechanism rather than simple smoke
detection. The significance of all the detection system is that they raise alarm just
after the outbreak of fire. The physical guidance system to location of fire is provided
by the indicator panel of the system which shows or displays the exact location of the
place where fire has broken.
Fire Alarm Systems are classified as Conventional and Addressable. A system may
have many numbers of loops and a loop may have different types of sensors and
devices. The advantages of Addressable Systems are: All sensors devices and loops
are uniquely addressed by a number. This feature provides exact geographical
location of fire or faulty device or sensor. The address of senor/device can have
detailed information which can be displayed on the panel where as the conventional
system can only indicates loop number /(s) and not the exact location of the physical
identification number of devices or sensors.
Analogue Addressable Fire Alarm System: The major components of fire alarm
system are the panel, sensors and devices. The fire alarm panel is a microprocessor
based system which controls all the loops and interface ports for various devices and
systems. Each loop consists of local memory and interface modules to interact with
devices and is controlled by a micro controller.
Fig-1: Front panel
Fig-2: Cabling layout
3. FIRE ALARM DEVICES
The fire alarm system can accommodate various devices and sensors. Manual Call
Points, Isolators, Hooters and Response Indicators are treated as devices and other
74

sensing devices are named as sensors / detectors. The following are the various types
of Smoke sensors / detectors.
1. Ionization Smoke Detector
2. Photoelectric Smoke Detector
3. Optical Smoke Detectors. And
4. Beam Detector
Ionization Smoke Detectors:
Detectors sense the smoke arising out of
the bursting of fire is known as ionization
smoke detectors. In the event of fire, some
materials in Libraries and Archives may
generate or release a large amount of solid
particles, as constituent particles of
smoke, in the atmosphere. These types of
detectors are ideal for Libraries and
Archives.
Fig-3: Ionization Smoke Detectors
Heat Detectors: Heat Detector ideally suited to locations where high sensitivity is
required for change in heat and where smoke detectors are found unsuitable for
detection of fire. Generally, smoke detectors, do not work efficiently in the places
where material stores and produces little smoke in the initial stage of out breaking of
fire or where adverse environmental conditions are prevailing.
Optical Smoke Detectors:
An optical smoke detector
includes a light source
(infra-red LED) and a
photodiode or other
photoelectric sensor at
right-angles to the light
beam. In the absence of
smoke, the light passes in
front of the detector in a
straight line and light
sensor does not get any
light.
Fig-4: Optical Smoke Detectors
When the smoke enters into optical chamber, that is the path of the light beam, some
light is scattered by the smoke particles, and same is detected by the sensor. These
75

detectors are suitable for detecting fire in the place where materials stored generate
smoke just before the out break of fire.
Beam Detectors: A Beam Detector consists of a transmitter and receiver and operates
in line of sight. The system has a separate alarm and trouble signals which distinguish
between a percentage of signal blockage and a total beam block. Beam Detector is
uniquely suitable for protecting open areas with high ceilings where conventional spot
type smoke detectors are difficult to install and maintain. Typically, this type of
Detectors is suitable for Auditorium, Garage or Warehouse.
Other Devices:
1. Manual Call Point: Manual Call Point is a device meant for human beings
to operate in the event of visual fire or smoke where the sensors failed or
delayed to operate. MCP is also interfaced with the main fire alarm system.
Typically these devices are installed near the exit door / corridor / staircase.
2. Isolator: An Isolator Device will detect short-circuit and isolates the shortcircuited
segment from a loop. When the faulty sensor(s) removed or
replaced the isolator will return to normal operation.
3. Response Indicator: Response Indicator is a Light Emitting Diode (LED),
which indicates the status of the corresponding sensor. Normally these
indicators are fitted outside the closed rooms, so that the person can ascertain
the status in the event of alarm condition. This reduces the time consumption
while searching for the doubtful location.
4. Hooter or Sounder: Hooter or Sounder is a device powered by the loop
supply and does not require any separate power to activate. If the volume is
insufficient separate power unit can be attached. Generally the device is
designed such that the current consumption is low with high volume and no
additional power supply is required.
4. GENERAL GUIDELINES
1. Factors involved in Selection of an Ideal System:
a. Assessment: Assessment has to be made with respect to the area to be
covered, layout of the building, types of material housed. In this aspect,
engagement of a professional in the field especially from the Industry is most
advisable so that the exact quantity and type of detectors can be technically
assessed.
b. Fire Alarm Panel: Selection factors like number of Detectors and Devices
should be taken into consideration. Each loop card should support addressable
devices (Detector, Isolator, Hooter, Indicators). Normally, an ideal panel
should be capable of having 99 Detectors and 99 Devices per loop. The panel
should be able to accommodate enough number of loops to cover the building
and the future expansion. Hence there shall be provision for sufficient number
of loops.
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The system having the following features are to be considered.
i) Loop capacity can be expandable
ii) Minimum198 devices per loop (99 Sensors + 99 Devices like
Isolator, Manual Call Point, Response Indicator etc.)
iii) No. of Zones per Panel – More No. of Zones is Good
iv) Modular design
v) Graphical display and control system
vi) Multi-Protocol
vii) Supports advanced detection
viii) More Levels of sensitivity
ix) “Auto Learn” Facility
x) Network option
xi) Programmable from the Panel Keypad or PC
xii) LCD Display
xiii) Degraded mode of operation
xiv) Variety of mounting option
xv) Flexible time programming
xvi) Supports loop powered sounders and switching relays
xvii) Ease of maintenance
xviii) Easy expandable
xix) Provision for network connectivity
xx) Easy to install
xxi) Easy to configure
xxii) Easy operation
c. Sensors: The following features are to be ensured.
i) Direct Decade Addressing
ii) Electronic Addressing
iii) LEDs for 360 degree visual alarm indication
iv) Easy cleaning access
v) Very low activity chamber (Ionization sensors)
vi) Single plug-in installation with electronics-free base
vii) Local magnet test facility
viii) Tamper resistant facility
ix) Sleek Low-Profile design
x) Common Base for Ionisation, Heat and Optical Sensors
xi) Addressable -Analogue Communication
xii) Stable Communication Technique with Noise immunity.
xiii) Low Standby Current
xiv) Rotary Decade 01 to 99 Address Switches
xv) Remote LED Output as Standard
xvi) Dual LED Design provides 360 degree viewing Angle
xvii) Visible LEDs Blink Every Time the Detector is Addressed
(Optional), and Illuminate Steady On Alarm
xviii) Built-in Functional Test Switch
xix) Optional Relay, Isolator, or Sounder Bases
d. Associated (Optional) Devices:
i) Repeater Panel
ii) Fault Isolator Device
77

iii)
Response Indicator
II.
Confirmation to one or more Indian and International Standards:
The above Panel and Sensors shall have the approvals of any one of the
International Standard Specifications along with Indian Standard
Specification indicated below:
• ISI (BUREAU OF INDIAN STANDARDS), India
• LPCB (Loss Prevention Certification Board), UK
• EN54 – British Standard
• UL (UNDERWRITERS LABORATORIES, USA)
• ULC (UNDERWRITERS LABORATORIES, CANADA)
• BS-5839 (British Standard)
• CE – CE Mark for European Standards & Regulations
• Vds (Verband der Sachversicherer e.v) Germany
• CSFM – California State Fire Marshall
III.
Cables, Conduits & Accessories: The following specified technical
specifications should be followed during Installation.
• 2 Core (1.5 sq.mm) Multistrand shielded copper cable having
aluminum braid around is highly suitable
• 1 Inch MS Conduit pipes are to be used on the walls is to be ensured.
For easy identification among other conduits it is better to have
uniform colored pipes preferably Red throughout the building.
IV.
UPS: The main panel and the sub-systems should be powered through
Uninterrupted Power Supply unit (UPS). The power rating and backup
time should be ensured with at least one hour.
V. Battery Power: In case of loss of mains power, the power supply unit shall
automatically get change over to battery power which is rated suitably.
VI.
VII.
Output Facilities: The control unit shall have necessary built-in Interface
to Connect different types of printers.
Spares:
Purposes: The Spares in sufficient quantities are to be stored due to the
following reasons:
1. Easy replacement
2. One or two nos. to extend in the loop / zone.
3. To meet the obsolescence of the component
These spares include Sensors, Loop Card, Communication Card, etc.
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2. Selection of Vendor:
The following criteria are to be considered while selecting the proper
vendor for assigning the contract.
• Reputation and Reliability of the Company
• Previous Installations done in various places
• Trade Mark / Make dealt with shall be reputable and worldwide. This
can be assessed by enquiring with the persons using the system
• Standards and performance of the Company
• Quality of Service
• Easy maintenance and cost effective
• Timely Delivery and Installation of the System at the customer’s site
• Periodical Maintenance of the system should be assured by the supplier
• Training to the Person(s) for operating the System be given by the
Supplier
• Assurance from the Supplier to supply of spares etc. for at least next
15 years.
• Last but not least, the Supplier should provide the Documentation of
the System regarding Layout, Cables routings etc. installed at the site
for Reference and Records.
Software Interface and Network: The Software should have the features to identify
the location and healthiness of the sensors and other devices. Since the software and
communication protocols are following the standards, the capabilities also permit to
monitor other network of the fire alarm systems (supports different vendors of fire
alarm system). The email option enables the user to get up-to-date information and
healthiness of the system with time stamp. In case of fire, the voice alarm navigates
the users with the pre-recorded audio information and the users need not visit the
main control panel.
Fig-4: Screen shot of monitoring software
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5. CONCLUSION
Present day libraries are mostly Hybrid Libraries which contains both print and
electronic documents, to safe-guard these valuable and multi type materials, it is
highly essential to install an Automatic Fire Detection and Alarm System in any
library or in archives which ultimately safe-guards the Nation’s heritage and wealth.
It is advised not to use water sprinklers and use only fire fighting equipment which is
fitted in a library environment. It is also suggested that one Repeater Panel should be
installed near the Security Area of the main building to take immediate action by the
security personnel in case of emergency. Finally, the training of staff members
should be ensured with proper training with operational documents to enable them to
meet the emergency needs. Following the above guidelines and suggestions along
with a highly reliable Fire Safety System, the archives can be protected from fire
which ultimately meets the total document preservation.
REFERENCE
1. Fire detection and fire alarm systems (CEN/TC 72)
2. Fire detection and fire alarm systems - Part 21: Alarm transmission and fault warning
routing equipment :EN 54-21:2006
3. Fire detection and fire alarm systems - Part 3: Fire alarm devices - Sounders :EN 54-
3:2001
4. Fire detection and fire alarm systems - Components for fire alarm voice alarm systems -
Part 16: Voice alarm control and indicating equipment : prEN 54-16
5. Fire detection and fire alarm systems - Part 7: Smoke detectors - Point detectors using
scattered light, transmitted light or ionization : EN 54-7:2000
6. Smoke alarm devices : EN 14604:2005
7. IS No. SP 7:2005 National Building Code of India 2005
8. Class 2 ignitability as per IS 125612 (Part 1).
9. Class 1 ignitability as per IS 15612 (Part 1).
80

Document Management, Resource Generation &
Preservation of Scientific Source Materials in Physics
and Allied Fields: A Special Reference to SINP
A.K. Saha*, B.K. Mallick*, D. Dasgupta* and P. Das *
Abstract
An archive of a Scientific Research Institute preserves and disseminates information related to the
scientific works of a scientist and documents on his personal life and other areas of his interest. This paper
indicates what type of source materials we, at SINP, can provide to the scholars of history of science and
how to preserve these materials. As these documents help to develop history of science, it requires proper
care and guidance.
A scientist usually seeks computational tools or experimental setups that open up new areas of
investigation. Historians, on the other hand, look for letters, diaries, notebooks, and informal reports to
know the personality of a scientist, and to capture the dynamics involved in his scientific works. Like other
pioneer academic institutions, SINP is also developing its own resourceful archives which will preserve
different types of documents like Institute’s historical development, research activities including life and
works of its founder, the eminent scientist Prof. Meghnad Saha. The paper describes the modern techniques
and technologies which are being used in this archive for document management, resource generation and
well preservation of scientific as well as non-scientific data. SINP is also trying to set up a system to share
its resources with the academics of the world.
1. INTRODUCTION
Awareness for preservation of our heritage has grown tremendously and archives
nowadays have become an essential part in this regard. History of science is an
interesting area of study to many of scientists. That is why archivists collect, appraise and
preserve documents and materials found in manuscripts, video photography, still
photographs, oral history recordings and literary correspondence.
The Meghnad Saha Archives of Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics was set up in
September 15, 2003 and started functioning from January 2004 to trace and record the
history and development of SINP since the time of Prof M N Saha. The unit is yet in a
nascent stage. This archive is primarily based on unpublished as well as published
documents on Prof Saha and his brain-child, the Institute of Nuclear Physics, renamed as
the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics after his demise.
A scientific archive purports to collect, preserve and disseminate information
regarding the history of the institute and the history of science as well. So does the SINP
Archive also. This archive is not much old to become a full-fledged facility, but the work
of organization is going on sincerely in full swing. After some time this archive will
become an indispensable part for the study of history of science.
* Publication & Documentation Unit, Saha Institute of Nuclear PhysicsI/AF, Bidhan Nagar, Kolkata-
700064, amit.saha@saha.ac.in
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The objective of the archives is:
1. To collect and preserve (both in digital and print forms) various published
and unpublished writings of Prof M N Saha;
2. Documents so far published on Prof Saha (Newspaper cuttings, Articles,
Photographs, testimonials);
3. Documents relating to Saha Memorial Lectures, Colloquium Materials,
prestigious achievements by fellows/staff members, important events and
celebrations;
4. To present the essentials of the SINP archives through our website.
2. COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT
The job of an archivist starts from collection development and proceeds to a
dissemination of information.
The multifaceted genius like Prof M N Saha was not only associated with science
but also with different activities important to the country. He was a Parliamentarian,
acted on several occasions in the capacity of Chairman of different important committees.
All records related to him, therefore, have an immense importance to the mankind.
The archive has been able to collect a good amount of unpublished writings,
correspondence, photographs and sketches etc from his close associates, family members
and students. In this regard mention should be made of people like Prof. A K Saha, Dr.
Prasenjit Saha, Dr. Chitra Roy and Dr. Santimay Chatterjee. Dr. D H DeVorkin of the
Department of History of Science, Smithsonian Institution, California, also provided us
with copies of important materials. We received a good number of documents also from
the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, the custodian of the original
Meghnad Saha Papers. Dr. Prasenjit Saha, the youngest son of Prof M N Saha has been a
great help in enriching our collection.
Records are broadly of two categories – scientific and private. The scientific
documents include articles written by Prof M N Saha in ‘Nature’, ‘Science and Culture’,
letters written to and by Prof M N Saha, ‘Biographical note on M N Saha’ written by D S
Kothari, list of publications of Prof Saha in scientific journals and elsewhere,
photographs and other documents relating to Prof Saha. To date, the unit has collected
copies of as many as 2000 letters written to and by Prof M N Saha. So far the document
holdings comprise 22 volumes, arranged in alphabetic order of the correspondents. Of
these 22 volumes, 18 volumes are complete with catalogue, summary and, whenever
necessary, English translations of letters. A good part of this collection has already been
digitalized. Some personal articles of Prof Saha also constitute a valuable asset of this
archive.
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3. ORGANISATION OF DATABASE
The advent of digital documents and development of electronic database has
greatly facilitated the task of maintaining documents and accessing information on
documents. Valuable archival documents require special management skill. Technologybased
organization and retrieval of information is stated below.
Scanning of documents is done by using the latest high speed scanner. OCR
version 8.0 is also used for easy and exhaustive retrieval of information. Presently we are
using the following scanners:
1. HP Scanjet 5590
2. HP Scanjet 4400c
3. Minolta 7222
4. UMAX Power look 2100XL
Editing of the scanned material is done by using Adobe Photoshop CS2 version.
We are using the following software for editing video file and pdf file:
1. Adobe Premier version 1.5
2. Adobe Writer Professional version 7.0
We have a good number of PCs, the indispensable unit of modern archive with
huge Hard Disk capacity and RAM and a server as well.
Abstracting and indexing of documents are also going on simultaneously. We
adopt International Standards for cataloguing and classification of knowledge and base
the document organization on the AACR2 and UDC Schemes for classification.
The job of hyper linking the documents is going on to make it ready for retrieval
through web page.
We organize and typeset our Annual Report all by ourselves. Only large scale
printing for distribution purpose is got done by printing press. From Annual Report data
input to the printable version everything is fully computerized using our in house
software development.
4. STORAGE & PRESERVATION
Process controlled storage facility is the key word of an archive. We maintain 70°
F temperature and 40٪ humidity to store all this valuable documents.
We are preserving the processed digital documents in two CDs and in one Hard
Disk keeping in view the safety and security. Original documents are always kept in safe
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custody and two copies are made for regular use. All are preserve properly by applying
pesticides at regular interval.
1. We are using TRAY Cabinet for sketches, photographs, posters, and valuable
newspaper cuttings etc
2. Valuable published and unpublished document like books, journals are kept in
compactor for proper storage and maintenance
3. Very old and partly damaged documents are kept after proper processing and
lamination.
Depending upon the quality of the original document we have digitalized the
articles and stored both in Hard Disk and back up CD-Rom. We maintain a separate
sequence for the document usually consulted by the users and archive copies are kept in a
fire protected safe location to avoid mutilation and rough handling. The original
photographs and scanned images are kept separately.
5. RETRIEVAL
Process for procurement of software for managing our database and to retrieve
information is on the cards. By using this software, online access to the document up to
summary level will be facilitated after completion of the first phase of database
preparation. Retrieval can now be made mostly at personal levels.
However, the Annual Report for the years 2002-05 are available both in the web
and print versions.
A few photographs and testimonials on Prof Saha are also available on the website.
6. FUTURE PLAN
1. The archive is planning to digitalize all the past Annual Reports of the
institute and other publications (theses, journal publication, reports etc.) of
SINP.
2. We have a future programme of exhibiting valuable archival materials round
the year.
3. The archives is trying to build up a departmental library comprising books and
other documents by and on Meghnad Saha.
4. Recordings of oral history is also in our future plan
Apart from this, we also arrange conferences, seminars, lectures and poster
presentations. The following are some of these activities.
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1. A lecture titled “From Attic to Archives: the making of the TIFR Archives”
was delivered by Dr. Indira Chowdhury, Archivist of TIFR on December..,
2006
2. A lecture delivered by Dr Subhayu Chattopadhyay, Department of History,
Visvabharati University; the title was “Science, Nationalism and Colonial
Contestations: P.N.Bose and Indian Geology”.
3. A poster presentation titled “A Tale of Two Giants (Prof Meghnad Saha and
Prof H N Russell)” was arranged on the occasion of Science Day
Celebration, 2007 in SINP Auditorium.
We are going to arrange the following events in the near future
1. A poster presentation entitled “Saha and Freedom Movement of India”
2. A National Symposium on “History of Indian Science and Technology: Pre
and Post Independence Era” in the month of September/October, 2007.
7. CONCLUSION
We cannot ignore our past, for the present and future build upon it. Scientific
research is a continuous process and it goes forward basing on the knowledge of their
predecessors. An archive provides this connection. SINP archive is also moving in this
direction. We take inspiration and guidance from every instance to help us go forward for
a better future. Every institution or organization has its own history of development
which paves the way. Only an archive can make alive and preserve this colorful world of
the past. Considering these, our ultimate goal is to make a digitalized modern scientific
archive which will be most helpful to all the researchers and users of physics as well as
the members of the general science community.
8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We are thankful to our Director for giving us the opportunity/responsibility for
such a noble job and to Prof. Atri Mukhopadhyay, former Chairman, P&D Committee for
his guidance. We are also thankful to Prof ANS Iyenger, present Chairman, P&D
Committee for his encouragement.
REFERENCE
1. Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics Biennial Report, 2002-04
2. Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics Annual Report, 2004-05
3. SINP Turns Fifty (1950-2000), the Golden Jubilee Commemoration volume, Ed.
A Mukhopadhyay, SINP, 2002
4. NARA Guidelines for Digitizing Archival Materials for Electronic Access.
5. Richard J Cox, Managing Institutional Archives: Foundational Principles and
Practices, (1992)
6. Candy Schwartz and Peter Hernon, Records Management and the Library: Issues
and Practices (1993)
85

DIGITAL PRESERVATION ISSUES AND FALLACIES IN
DIGITAL ERA
K.Vinitha * , Dr.S.Kanthimathi ** , Dr. S.Sampath Kumar**, & K.Tharani ***
1. INTRODUCTION
The rate of change in computer technology shows that information can be
inaccessible within a decade, Preservation is therefore an immediate issue for digital
resources than for traditional. Digital resources will need Pro-active Preservation.
Digital Preservation is defined as Long term, error-free storage of Digital
information, with means for retrieval and interpretation for the entire time span that
the information is required for Digitization refers to the conversion of non-digital
material to digital form (i.e. a form which uses a binary numerical code to represent
variables).
According to a recent statement from the council on library and information
resources “Digital Preservation refers to the various methods of keeping digital
materials alive into the future”. Digital preservation typically centers on the choice of
interim storage media the life expectancy of a digital imaging system, and the
expectation to migrate the digital files to future systems while maintaining both the
full functionality and the integrity of the original digital system.
The goal of digital preservation is to maintain the ability to display, retrieve
and use digital collections in the face of rapidly changing technological organizational
infra structures and elements. In the digital era,” Preservation is the creation of digital
products worth maintaining over time”.
2. ARCHIVE/DIGITAL REPOSITORY
Digital Repository as well as Archive when referring to an organization that
intends to preserve information for access and use by the user community others
prefer the term digital repository instead. Archives/Digital repository should not be
confused with either digital libraries, which collect and provides access to digital
information, but may not commit to its long- term preservation, or data archives,
which do include long term preservation but limit their collections to statistical data’s.
3. DIGITAL PRESERVATION STRATEGIES
Many digital preservation strategies have been proposed, but no one strategy is
appropriate for all data types, situations, or institutions.
Bit stream copying: Bit stream copying is more commonly known as “backing up
your data,” and refers to the process of making an exact duplicate of a digital object.
Refreshing: Refreshing means copying information without changing it, offers a
short-term solution for preserving access to digital material by ensuring that
* Librarian, National Engg. College, (TN)
** Research Guide
*** Dr. Sivanthi Adithanar college of Engg.(TN)
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information is stored on newer media before the old media deteriorates beyond the
point at which the information can be retrieved.
Durable/ Persistent media: It may reduce the need for refreshing, and help
diminish losses from media deterioration, as do careful handling, controlled
temperature and humidity, and proper storage. Durable media has the potential for
endangering content by providing a false sense of security. (i.e., Gold CDs).
Technology preservation: technology preservation is based on preserving the
technical environment that runs the systems,. Including operating systems, original
application software and media drives. It is sometimes called the “computer museum”
solution maintaining obsolete technology in usable form requires a considerable
investment in equipment and personnel.
Digital Archaeology: Includes methods and procedure to rescue content from
damaged media or from obsolete or damaged hardware and software environments.
Given enough money, readable bit streams can be often be recovered even from
heavily damaged media (especially Magnetic media), but if the content is old
enough, it may not be possible to make it render able and/ or understandable.
Analog backups: Analog backup combines the conversion of digital objects into
analog form with the use of durable analog media, e.g. HD Rosetta or the creation of
silver halide microfilm from digital images. Text and monochromatic still images are
the most amenable to this kind of transfer. Given the cost and limitations of analog
backups, and their relevance to only certain classes of documents, the technique only
makes sense for documents whose contents merit the highest level of redundancy and
protection from loss.
Migration: Migration means to copy data, or convert data, from one technology to
another, whether hardware or software, preserving the essential characteristics of the
data, the purpose of migration is to preserve the integrity of digital objects and to
retain the ability for clients to retrieve, display, and otherwise use them in the face of
constantly changing technology.
Replication: The term is used to mean multiple things. Bit stream copying is a
form of replication. OAS (Open Access System) considers replication to be a form of
migration.
Reliance on standards: Reliance on standard may lessen the immediate threat to a
digital document from obsolescence, but it is no more a permanent preservation
solution than the use of Gold CD or stone tablets.
Normalization: Normalization converted into a single chosen file format that is
thought to embody the best overall compromise amongst characteristics such as
functionality, longevity, and resolvability. The advantages and disadvantages of
reliance on standards also apply to normalization.
Canonicalization: Canonicalization is a technique designed to allow determination
of whether the essential characteristics of a document have remained intact through a
conversion form one format to another.
Emulation: combines software and hardware to reproduce in all essential
characteristics the performance of another computer of a different design, allowing
programs or media designed for a particular environment to operate in a different,
usually newer environment. Emulation requires the creation of emulators, programs
that translate code and instructions form one computing environment so it can be
properly executed in another.
Encapsulation: Encapsulation may be seen as a technique of grouping together a
digital object and metadata necessary to provide access to that object appropriate
types of metadata to encapsulate with a digital object include reference,
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epresentation, provenance, fixity and context information. Encapsulation is
considered a key element of emulation.
Universal Virtual Computer (UVC): The concept of Universal Virtual computer
was developed by Raymond Lorie. It uses elements of both migration and emulation
which allows digital objects to be reconstituted in their original form. The UVC
concept consists of the UVC itself, a logical data scheme with type description, the
UVC program (format decoder) and the logical data viewer.
Authenticity: The quality of being reliable or trust worthy.
Fixity: The state or quality of being fixed or unchanged.
Compression: Compression can be applied to many different kinds of digital
objects, and can be either lossless. Lossless compression is fully reversible, so when a
file is decompressed, it is bit for bit identical to its original. Lossless compression is
always used for encoded text and may be used for images sound, video, etc.,
depending on considerations such as bandwidth, quality, and storage requirements.
4. ISSUES IN DIGITAL PRESERVATION
• Obsolescence
File formats and software:
Determine the file format status of your digital holdings. What formats and
versions are represented, in what quantities? Such an inventory is an important step
towards managing file format risk. The range of formats in use should be consolidated
to minimize duplication and eliminate problem formats. This process is known as
normalization.
Hardware:
New computing hardware opens the door to new and improved software,
leading to software and file format obsolescence. The new software will not run on
old hardware, further exacerbating hardware obsolescence. At the same time, the new
hardware introduces other new technologies such as peripheral connections and
storage devices (e.g., USB keys, pen drives and CD drives replace floppy disks).
These changes force older peripherals into retirements along with their compatible
computers.
Media format:
There are three commonly used categories of digital storage media: disk, tape
and solid state. The nature of the physical media on which digital data is stored
presents a major challenge to the preservation of digital content. The great variety of
media types, their often rapid obsolescence from technology from technology change,
and their vulnerability to Physical degradation all contribute to problems.
Physical Degradation:
Besides the issues around obsolescence of file formats, applications, operating
systems and hardware, there is the more basic question of how to deal with the fact
that media physically degrade or become obsolete. How long will various media types
last? Thesis considerable controversy around the issues with Kodak claming in one
report that its writable CD’s would last 217 years under certain conditions while
others observe that such media start to degrade after only a couple of years.
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Rothenberg estimates that optical media have a practical lifetime of 5 to 59
yrs, digital tape 2 to 30 yrs and magnetic disk 5 to 10 yrs. There is just one problem
with such estimates though they‘re all academic, because, with the fast pace of change
in the IT industry, any given medium will be obsolete in about five years. Even if it
continues to functions, modern hardware may not be able to read its contents or even
connect to it.
“Digital information lasts forever or even five years, which ever comes first,
“Rothenberg quipped. That means any organization that wants to keep its data
accessible will have to look forward to an unbroken chain of migrations within a time
cycle short enough to prevent the media from becoming physically unreadable or
obsolete before they are copied. “A single break in this chain can render digital
information inaccessible short of heroic effort,” Rothenberg wrote.
Physical threats:
Digital storage media and hardware are subject to numerous internal and
external forces that can damage or destroy their readability.
• Material instability
• Improper storage environment (temperature, humidity, light, dust).
• Overuse(mainly for physical contact media)
• Natural disaster (fire, flood, earthquake).
• Infrastructure failure (Plumbing, electrical, climate control).
• Inadequate hardware maintenance.
• Hardware malfunction,
• Human error (including improper handling).
• Sabotage (theft, vandalism)
Storage issues:
Improper storage may be the most common reason for premature media
failure. Moderation of temperature and humidity are well known to extend the usable
life of most storage media, but many other factors can help, too.
Handling issues:
Another major threat to storage media come form improper handling. Though
many digital media give the impression of sturdiness and durability, they can be
damaged by too casual an approach to use.
5. CHALLENGES
No medium for recording expressions of human creativity, thought, and
accomplishment is immune to damage and decay. In this regard, the long term
maintenance of digital data is no different from the challenge faced by cultural
repositories for generations past. The challenges include:
a) Organizational
89

) Technical
c) Resource challenges.
6. SELECTING ASSETS FOR PRESERVATION
Organizational viability
(a) Organizational:
Organizations are investing for the digital assets for the purpose of
preservation. These decisions should be well-informed, consistent, reevaluated over
time, and documented. Selection protocols should be developed to assess the value of
the digital objects to the organization.
(b) Technical:
Protocols and tools to support and enable selection of digital assets should
continue to be developed and refined with use. Once decisions are made, ingest tools
should be ready to apply those rules.
7. BALANCING MULTIPLE STAKEHOLDERS
Administrative responsibility: producers, users, owners, managers, and others
have varied- and sometimes conflicting- interests and desires regarding digital
objects.
(a) Organizational:
The organization needs a clear and explicit commitment to the establishment
of a digital preservation program and an accurate definition of the scope and purpose
of the program that balances the interest and priorities of stakeholders.
Communication and outreach play an important role in engaging stakeholders’
participation. Stakeholders include content creators or providers designated and future
users, and digital preservation managers.
(b) Technical:
Developing and maintaining the requisite technological infrastructure require
ongoing comprehensive planning.
8. LEGAL ISSUES
Ownership and copyright are not simple in the digital preservation world,
where migration copies, archival copies, derivative versions, and other states of an
object exist, changing over time.
(a) Organizational:
Meeting legal requirements for preserving digital objects requires careful,
comprehensive, ongoing approaches that avoid risk to the organization or objects, and
that enable effective mitigation as concerns arise. Thorough procedures, protocols,
and documentation strategies provide the most effective organizational response for
legal issues.
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(b) Technical:
Implementing polices in a digital environment is a complex technological
problem that requires careful failsafe protections to ensure that exceptions can be
handled safely.
(c) Resource Challenges:
The resource implications are a product of the level of risk that each institution
is willing to assume. At a minimum, each institution is likely to want to determine if
the materials it is seeking to preserve is in the public domain, or if someone other than
the institution owns the copyright. It may want to try to locate the copyright owner
and license (perhaps at a cost) those rights needed to preserve a work. Alternatively, it
may conclude that preservation activities are authorized by “fair use”- but this
normally involves some legal advice and the support of senior administrators(who
must agree with the risk assessment inherent in any fair use argument).
9. AVOIDING TECHNOLOGICAL OBSOLESCENCE
Technological and Procedural Suitability: Hardware and Software become
obsolete at differing speeds, potentially leaving digital objects unusable or unreadable
over time.
(a) Organizational:
Organization may not be able to afford, or find it desirable, to move digital
objects through every incremental change in versions of software, file formats, or
storage device. Yet, incremental and staged moves forward as technology advances
have to anticipated and properly timed.
(b) Technical:
Enabling good technological decisions to avoid or recover from obsolescence
requires the active and ongoing tracking of the technology used by the organization
and the relevant developments that will support organizational needs. Identifying
timely, essential, and fortuitous acquisitions and upgrades is the ideal, sometimes
fueled by luck.
(c) Resources Challenges:
The organization needs short and long term planning to respond to immediate
needs and anticipate future requirements. Funding decisions for the digital
preservation program need to be informed by organizational planning and technology
monitoring.
10. FINANCING THE FUTURE RESOURCE SUSTAINABILITY
The costs of digital preservation are widely sought, but difficult to pinpoint.
Providing the administrative and technical infrastructures for digital preservation over
the long term requires sustained resources.
(a) Organizational
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There are many cost factors to consider, including size and scope of the
organization and of the digital preservation program, type of digital materials to
preserve availability of required technology-both hardware and software and
expertise, and existing versus need resources.
(b) Technical:
Sound technology investments to enable digital preservation are a core
component of any successful program. Saving pennies now may cost organization
many more in the future. Technology is not the only cost of digital preservation, but it
is a significant piece that must be managed wisely.
(c) Resources Challenges:
Digital preservation cost models are emerging. Try them on for size. Consider
what you need to do to incorporate your digital preservation program into your
accounting and business planning processed.
11. CONCLUSION
Academic Libraries and archival information’s have a unique opportunity in
the area of digital preservation. In ensuring persistent access to digital heritage, the
complementary processes of archiving and preservation are intertwined. The dynamic
and ephemeral nature of digital publications presents a special challenge for
archiving. In addition, rapid changes in technology means that documents created in
current formats, may be obsolete and inaccessible within a decade the facility with
which electronic documents may be reproduced means that intellectual property rights
issues also need to be addressed before materials can be copied. Once electronic
records have been collected, archival repositories also require appropriate
infrastructures to enable storage, maintenance and access over the long term.
REFERENCE
1. http:// www.openarchives.org/
2. http://www.digitlapresevation.gov/
3. http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/topics/18.html
4. http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?page-id-114
5. Digital Information Preservation, Jaba Das, workshop on Digital Libraries: theory
6. and PracticeMarch,2003DRTC,Bangolore.
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APPROACH ADOPTED BY NPCIL FOR CAPTURING AND
PRESERVING KNOWLEDGE
J.P.Moolani * , R.Mago*, Umesh Chandra*
Abstract
This paper summarises the present status, the experiences and future plans towards
capturing and preserving knowledge in Nuclear Power Corporation. Expanding nuclear power programme
and attrition prompted top management to lay emphasis on management of knowledge, specifically towards
maximising enterprise intellectual capital. This concern of the top management of NPCIL led to formation
of Knowledge Management group headed by a senior management level. Out of the two kinds of knowledge
namely explicit and tacit knowledge, the explicit knowledge is reasonably well documented and hence the
key concern was to capture, preserve and maximise tacit knowledge as this is lost with the separation of
personnel possessing specific expertise and knowledge.
The paper describes the approach adopted by Knowledge Management group of NPCIL in
capturing and preserving tacit knowledge and the results achieved in this regard. Methodologies for
identifying areas for experience and sharing of the same by organising the various training and workshop
sessions on regular basis have been detailed. Documenting of the so gained knowledge in e-form and
making it available in Knowledge Management (KM) portal has been described. This portal is accessible to
all employees of NPCIL at all sites and HQ through intranet.
The paper also presents the efforts being put towards development of computer based / web based
training (CBT / WBT) packages which would not only capture organisation related tacit knowledge and
difficult skills but would also ensure effectiveness of the training in this context. Insight about difficulties in
the development of such in-house packages in view of specialisation / expertise needed have been indicated
along with the approach adopted by NPCIL to address these difficulties
The paper concludes with the need of promoting enterprise knowledge driven culture and
motivational elements to capture the knowledge from in-house experts including retirees through
incentives/ recognition/awards. Future action plans are also discussed to achieve maximization of the
enterprise intellectual capital and delivering of knowledge based products and services.
1. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT (KM)
1.1 Key Words
Before sharing the present status and experiences in capturing and preserving
knowledge in Nuclear Power Corporation, it would be worthwhile that audiences are
refreshed briefly about frequent used terms ‘explicit knowledge’ and ‘tacit knowledge’ as
these have become the buzzword in organizations in the last decade and therefore their
correct understanding bear significance
Explicit knowledge – can be formally articulated or encoded; can be more easily
transferred or shared;
Tacit knowledge – knowledge-in-practice; developed from direct experience and
action; highly pragmatic and situation specific; subconsciously understood and applied;
difficult to articulate; usually shared through highly interactive sessions.
* Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited
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This knowledge would vanish from the organisation if it is not captured prior to
separation of the person possessing such knowledge.
Thus the concept of knowledge goes beyond the definition of information. It
consists of “information artifacts, such as documents and reports, available within the
organization and in the world outside” as well as “the experience and understanding of
the people in the organization”. The former is termed as explicit knowledge while the
latter is regarded as tacit knowledge.
1.2 Why KM in Nuclear Power Industry
Following issues indicate as to why knowledge management has become the need
of the hour specifically in context of managing of Indian Nuclear Power Plant Programme
– Expanding Power Programme requires management of technology divergent with
increasing complexity due to need for development of larger power producing nuclear
plants and of different design.
– Ageing fleet of plants and need for refurbishment -Design basis information is critical (to
be kept up to date)
– Need for high productivity gains in the environment where the industry is facing tough
standards imposed by regulatory bodies, competition from other conventional power
industries and management of obsolescence related issues
– Move towards lean operations and maintenance staff for efficient and cost effective
management of the plants
– Complex technology base, dependence on multi-disciplinary technologies and expertise
– Long plant life cycles, capital intensive, need for economic and risk informed
decisions
2. EVOLUTION OF KM IN NPCIL
From the very beginning of Indian nuclear power programme, the emphasis on
documentation has always been there. The documents like design notes, design basis
reports, design manuals, safety reports engineering drawings, tender documents, material
purchase requisitions, indents, purchase orders, inspection reports , non conformity
reports, design concession requests, manufacturers’ instruction manuals , inspection
history dockets , various national and international codes and standards etc. were
generated , indexed and systematically stored for easy and convenient retrieval .These
documents laid the very foundation of subsequently required documents for construction,
commissioning ,operation and maintenance phases. All these aided the formulation of
training material for developing operation and maintenance (O&M) personnel.
A strong culture of comprehensive and extensive induction training programme in
O&M organisations by recruitment at stipendiary trainees level has served as the boon
for achieving efficient O&M workforce. This has led to ease in implementation of the
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qualification programmes for all categories of scientific and technical employees.
Foundation of technical knowledge management was built over an operating experience
of almost four decades with continuous evaluation by line managers corporate
management, knowledge facilitators and. regulators, This developed a logical structure of
a qualification-based organization for operating stations, which led to documentation of
on-going programs with adequate guidelines on design and implementation. The aim had
been to provide a broad based nuclear plant orientation and generic task skills, followed
by “hands on” commissioning experience. The systems worked well as per the design
intent and facilitated development of strong training infrastructure. NPCIL has six fullfledged
Nuclear Training Centers (NTCs) for conduct of common organizational
programs for various NPPs such as ‘formal induction training for various categories in
different disciplines’, ‘simulator training on full scope replica simulators’ and such other
programs. These training centers are fully equipped with classrooms, library and various
training shops catering to practical training of trainees of different disciplines. Three
Nuclear Training Centers are also equipped with full-scope simulators.
However, the new business environment in early nineties required, the optimized
utilization of resources , compressed project schedules and quick succession of several
nuclear power projects (NPPs). Hence the corporate policy in NPCIL was required to
refine, restructure and accelerate all disciplines of traditional training and qualification (T
& Q) systems. The thrust was to make T & Q systems more job performance focused
requiring a much shorter lead-time to qualify personnel to different positions. Adaptation
of Systematic Approach to Training (SAT) was the answer to above.
Our interaction with international agencies (International Atomic Energy Agency,
World Association of Nuclear Operators, CANDU Owners’ Group and such others) as
well as through feedback received by internal and external peer reviews established
corporate level management commitment to adaptation of such SAT methods. A uniform
and systematic approach for managing these changes at NPP sites in all the disciplines
without interrupting the ongoing training activities was implemented in selective and
phased manner for effective change management. This also paved the way for structured
capture of tacit/explicit knowledge in form of ‘on-job-training checklist questionnaires’,
simulator lesson plans, examination syllabus and such others.
From year 2000 onwards, expansion of organization and retention of knowledge
resources became the key issues . Superannuation of experienced personnel and attrition
of young engineers needed a makeover in erstwhile corporate policy of knowledge
management and training, for preserving existing knowledge for competitive business
advantage The basic need of uniform and systematic knowledge management approach in
NPCIL was to inculcate confidence towards preparedness of NPCIL to undertake massive
expansion program by ensuring adequate knowledge resources and competent trained
staffing.
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The key issues were:
– Development of new approach for human asset management - acquisition and retention
– Development and implementation of Knowledge Management (KM) systems, tools and
programs for knowledge capture and dissemination
– Focus on generation, absorption and dissemination of new reactor technologies (700
MWe PHWR, FBR and PWR) knowledge bases
– Enhancement of effectiveness of KM systems/tools already developed
– Identification, career progression and redeployment of intellectual assets to
organization’s best advantage
– Making corporate information accessible to employee through knowledge portal,
knowledge bank and sharing of best practices
– Harness IT infrastructure effectively for maximum advantage and to promote e learning.
In order to achieve above, a dedicated KM group headed by a senior management
level was created at HQs. As KM and learning activities for operating personnel were
already streamlined, focused attention is being given for qualification development for
construction/project/engineering personnel. Committees and facilitator groups in the
NPCIL Headquarters were constituted for finalisation of qualification procedures. The
focus is to embed knowledge elements in all the new business process automation
projects (core business as well as commercial systems) so that the generated knowledge
can be transformed, stored and disseminated for business needs. A process of human
asset review has started.
3. METHODS ADOPTED IN NPCIL FOR CAPTURING KNOWLEDGE
3.1 Good practices for maintaining the currency of knowledge
Managing obsolescence of knowledge is an essential requirement to ensure
relevance and accuracy of knowledge else it would provide incorrect inputs to those
utilizing such knowledge which would in turn lead to human errors in the organisation.
In NPCIL, knowledge updating is done by capturing the sources of information reflecting
needs of such updation. The policy to distribute such relevant documents to training
groups in each O&M organisation serves as trigger for updation of classroom training
material and field checklist for On-Job-training.
The mandate as laid down in the licensing and qualification procedure and QA
policy ensures that syllabus, training material and on-job-verification documents (called
OJT checklists) are revised periodically to maintain relevance and accuracy of the same.
This policy has ensured that changes in knowledge are captured by training personnel and
training and knowledge verification documents are updated using relevant documents.
The documents, which typically provide the following information, are used in this
context:
• Configuration changes due to ECNs
• Implementation of changes arising out of the Lessons Learnt through Root Cause
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Analysis (RCA) of events
• Introduction to any new Good Practices ( GPs)
• Awareness of the new design and associated principles
• Awareness of the revised Operating Procedures
• Sharing of experiences based on the Seminar/ Workshop/Training programmes
conducted by Knowledge Management Group/ NTCs etc
A concept of ‘Training Update Memo’ has been introduced in NTCs as a good
practice to ensure that one always uses the current version of the document. Training
Superintendents (TSs) get hard and soft copies of training/workshop proceedings issued
by KM group to see the applicability of the topics for initial/continued training purposes
at site. Based on this review TSs ensure appropriate up-to-dating of relevant training
material. TSs also ensure that trainers conduct training programmes in future on such
topics using the up-to-dated version of training material.
3.2 Through continuing training and retraining programs for NPCIL personnel
Althogh training programme is considered to be a knowledge dissemination mechanism, yet it
serves as the means of capturing f new/tacit knowledge due to sharing/interactive nature .
Corporate documents control implementation of such training and re-training. The continuing
training, which promotes capturing of tacit and new knowledge typically, includes knowledge
sharing on
• Infrequent or rare experiences such as accident situations
• Lessons learnt based on root cause analysis and sharing of above experiences
• Simulator exercises on above aspects. This approach embodies that aspect of
knowledge which is difficult to articulate but is understandable through
simulation of experience on simulator
Retraining is conducted in NPCIL through formal lecture programs as well as in
workshop format for review and re-analysis of incidents and operating experiences. The
training objectives are accordingly worked out using the corporate guidelines. The tacit
knowledge so captured become the part of training material and is distributed among
participants and is also put on intranet and hard copy is kept in library for reference and
use by concerned employees.
4. KNOWLEDGE DISSEMINATION PRACTICES
4.1 Systematic Approach to Training (SAT)
Systematic Approach to Training is recognised internationally as the best practice
of training. SAT approach adopted in NPCIL has helped the organisation to achieve
effectiveness in knowledge management because the knowledge dissemination through
this methodology ensures that need based knowledge is imparted to the concerned
employee. SAT approach identifies training needs in respect of an individual after taking
into account his/her present competencies and required competencies based on his/her
duty areas. This competence gap analysis provides direction for training needs. This
approach has been adopted in O&M organisations and same approach is being considered
for construction and HQ personnel. This training need analysis is continuous process
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as there would be changes in competence requirements of persons due to job rotation,
upgradation, and technological upgradation/changes.
4.2 Approach for management of knowledge –in- practice
Tacit knowledge is difficult to be imparted , yet it is possible to make its’
dissemination easier through effective training settings. In NPCIL Nuclear Training
Centres (NTCs) are equipped with various provisions of effective training settings in this
regard. These NTCs are equipped with various workshops having working models, cutaway-views
of complex equipment, exploded views through drawings and charts for
providing sound knowledge on foundation courses for all technical personnel and have
helped in achieving of multidisciplinary knowledge and skills among technical personnel.
Earlier, Control Room engineers used to learn under guidance and close
supervision of their superiors. Now such learning has become easier through Nuclear
Power Plant Simulators. This facility provides structured progressive learning, under the
guidance of qualified instructor, of about 5 to 7 weeks duration, covering all phases of
plant operations thus making it easier to license incumbents in shorter duration for
control room positions. The human error will not result into any actual incident as this is
only simulation but at the same time would provide opportunity to the incumbent to learn
managing of such incident
Considering difficulties in transfer of tacit knowledge from the diofficult to be
located experts , computer based or web based training (CBT/WBT) packages have
become powerful tools. Here using services of training expert, structured presentations on
the selected topic in form of multimedia training package are developed. For explaining
the operation of complex mechanism, the dynamic simulation of such mechanism through
computer mimics or video clips is enforced and progressive learning concept ensures that
phase wise learning takes place. Unless the incumbent knowledge is not verified through
built in test mechanism, he/she would not be permitted to visit next phase of learning. The
incumbent can replay the part not understood by him any number of times he desires till
he has understood it. For conventional part of core competency such packages are
available in the market, however for Nuclear System knowledge, in house custom built
package is the only solution. KM group has started putting the efforts in this direction. As
these training packages are also accessible through intranet easy availability for learning
by larger work force is another advantage of this approach
4.3 Promoting Communities of Practices and Groups of Subject Matter Experts
Communities of practices and specialist task forces have been established at
NPCIL to promote sharing of knowledge and experiences. Some of them are described
below:
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4.3.1 Quality circles
Each Operating Station has promoted formation of quality circles so that all the
personnel involved for a particular problem join hands and find out the solution through
group discussions and provide solution to the Management. These communities of
practices have given useful inputs for improvements for achieving the improved plant
performance.
4.3.2 Organising of In-house workshop/seminars
For the last couple of years KM Group has been organising workshops/seminars
by inviting in-house faculty based on their volunteered offer for sharing of their
experiences through workshops.The details of such scheduled workshops/seminars as
well as the lecture contents are available on NPCIL intranet. Thus all interested can
come and join the workshop/seminar. This approach has promoted a lot of interest
among the employees .
5. CONCLUDING REMARKS
Organizational knowledge ranges from the individual to group to the corporate
level. Some of it is explicit in the sense that it can be coded and transmitted in a formal
and systematic language. At the other end of the continuum is implicit or tacit knowledge,
which is derived from personal experience. With expanding nuclear power programme,
the Corporation is seized with the issues such as need of promoting enterprise knowledge
driven culture and motivation elements to capture the tacit knowledge from in-house
experts including retirees through recognition/awards.
The practices and methods of knowledge management in NPCIL have evolved
with built-in knowledge capture and dissemination mechanisms for ensuring that the
required quality of knowledge is available to NPP personnel. The focus has been to
master and manage high technology while producing good financial results without
compromising on safety. the installation of systematic approach to training approach to
knowledge management methodology and information management system in all its
traditional qualification systems is expected to boost effectiveness in the knowledge
management. It is expected that present efforts for promoting custom built CBT/WBT
approach will help in resolving increasing demand of knowledge dissemination in NPCIL
99

Digital Preservation and Online Access in
“Meghnad Saha Archive”
Dipa Dasgupta *
Abstract
The goal of the Meghnad Saha Archive is to preserve the archival materials, enhance
accessibility to the materials and increase the public awareness of the scientific achievement, political
activities, moral and humane values of Prof. Meghnad Saha. A trusted repository requires new
methods, policies, standards and technologies for its preservation purpose. This paper will explain the
purpose of digitization, source selection criteria and general standard for creating digital image. It
will also provide guideline for digitization of image, software and hardware recommendation,
advantages and disadvantages of digital preservation
1. INTRODUCTION
The goal of the Meghnad Saha Archive is to preserve the archival materials,
enhance accessibility to the materials and increase the public awareness of the
scientific achievement, political and scientific organizing activities, moral and
humane values of Meghnad Saha. Our special collection and holdings of archive have
been away from public view for a long time. Now anyone with access to the internet
can log on to our website and view number of historical documents and images
related to Meghnad Saha. This democratization of archival collection has been
possible through the digital revolution. Online resources serve local, national and
international needs. We want to increase utility of our collection by allowing a wider
audience to view digital surrogates of primary materials.
2. PURPOSE
Digitization is essential aids in material preservation. Creation of digital
surrogates of valuable archival materials can serve to enhance preservation efforts by
reducing the handling of original materials. This can be specialy beneficial for
decreasing wear and tear to fragile or rare valuable items. Decrease access to originals
also helps to protect items from potential theft or mutilation. Digital surrogates can
serve as backups in case the originals are lost in a disaster or theft. So by producing a
high quality digital reproduction of an item, archivists can keep the original safely
locked away, while the researcher views the digital version either in the archives or
from a remote location. Copies can be easily and cheaply made from a digital file,
leaving the original undisturbed.
3. SOURCE SELECTION, FINDING AIDS AND STANDARDS
The Meghnad Saha Archive has implemented a plan to digitize its holdings
starting with the vast correspondence with the most influential physicists and
intellectuals of the 20 th century. At the time of this article we have digitized almost
2000 letters. Once the project is completed, we will begin to digitize M.N. Saha’s
scientific and non-scientific articles, lectures, statements, forwards and curiosity
items, reprints, newspaper clipping, posters, photographs etc.
Prof. Meghnad Saha visionised that his Institute of Nuclear Physics would
one day become one of the best scientific institutes of the world. His dream has been
realized for at present. Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics has acquired international
* P&D Unit, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, dipa.dasgupta@saha.ac.in
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fame. So in the near future, we plan to digitize all the important documents on
historical and developmental activities of Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics since its
birth. All the important and frontline lectures delivered by world famous scientists at
SINP during different occasions for last five years are preserved digitally in our
archive. Current Annual Reports of SINP is available online in our website.
To generate a greater awareness of our holdings, we have begun to prepare our
finding aids, the paper guide to our archival materials. Finding aids are the main tools
of archival description, providing a detailed account of the contents of an archival
collection. The web will facilitate both the searching and distribution of the guides.
Then a researcher will able to browse our guides without making a trip to the archive
and will make appointments to view the records.
We are now starting to build virtual archives of selected materials from our
archive which provide us with another motivation for developing an encoding
standard for finding aids. We must intellectually and physically manage and control
the objects in digital archive, just as we have the traditional materials that frequently
serve as the source. Creating digital repository will require precise mechanisms to
locate and present computer files in a variety of notations. We will need to create
complex, compound archival information constellations comprised of finding aids,
digital representation of primary source and information that maintains the integrity
and interrelation of the two across different hardware and software platforms. If we
fail to manage the digital treasures in our care, we will lose them forever. The only
means to assure the enduring access and control required through standards.
Used in conjunction with the ubiquitous connectivity of the Internet, a
standard for encoding finding aids will enable archives to easily communicate and
share information about their collections with one another and users. It will be
possible for users and staff to easily locate and gather information about related but
different collections. We will be able to restore the unity and integrity of collections
that have been dispersed among two or more repositories creating virtual collections.
Direct access to information about one another's collections will facilitate interinstitutional
cooperation in collection development and preservation where knowledge
of the holdings of other institutions can help archivist make difficult decisions about
how to spend money in developing, managing, and preserving their own collections.
4. DIGITAL PRESERVATION STRATEGY
How can an institution keep up with all the various types of digital files,
programs, and computers being used in-house much less keep abreast of emerging
technologies? How much preservation is enough? How much is too much? What are
the deciding factors for an institution? These are all issues that need to be considered
when devising a digital preservation strategy. Here are some points to start:
Software/Hardware migration: Because of the issues of obsolescence, all
products of digital preservation must be migrated at some point, at the very least to a
file format that the latest technology can recognize. If someone wants to preserve the
whole system, then operating systems and functional software must be migrated as
well. Full system migration must be carried out frequently to ensure access and
usability. In order to protect one’s digital assets, one wants to formulate a migration
policy that is implemented on a regular basis rather a reactionary action to new
software or hardware. After migration, it is crucial to test the documents to ensure that
functionality has been preserved.
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Physical deterioration of digital media: As with other formats, all digital media
deteriorates over time. This process will be more rapid if storage conditions are bad,
such as a damp basement, or as a pile of CDs stacked one on top of another. Correct
storage (e.g. in racks that enable the disks to be stored separately) and an
environmentally controlled location will help to optimize stability and protect digital
information from loss. Digital media should be checked and refreshed regularly to
ensure that the data is still readable, and this process should be part of one’s
preservation policy. Preserve the data on a medium where the hardware exists to
transfer to a later medium if the original becomes obsolete. It should be remember
that it is costly to use a data recovery agent to move files from an obsolete medium, so
make sure the preservation policy will prevent this happening, and migrate while the
process is still straightforward. Digital media should also be part of an institution's
disaster preparedness plan.
Metadata: Metadata is the information about the creation and maintenance of the
digital images. Metadata is crucial to preserve. It is important to ensure that metadata
is recorded somewhere in or outside of digital asset management system.
User needs and preferences: This is a complex issue which may cause certain formats
to become effectively obsolete even while they remain technically functional. User
acceptance and its decline will compel migrations to new delivery versions of digital
collections.
5. DIGITAL PRESERVATION PROCESS
There are essentially five main storage applications that occur during the
digitization process: Production, Data transportation, Presentation to the public,
Backup or Archiving, and Migration.
Production
The production or creation of digital material generally requires sufficient hard
disk capacity to store working files while they are being manipulated and developed.
If the collection is considerable and there is a large production environment, a
Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) may be the most appropriate however
storage for active files can generally be handled by a large hard drive. Be warned that
determining what will reside on the hard drive and what will be forwarded to a server
in networked environments can often be difficult because multiple versions of files
can become confusing. It is important to outline the various processes one need to
perform on the same images and then determine how many "active" files one need at
any one time. This demonstrates the role of file management and file naming in the
preservation process.
Data Transportation
Generally, moving digital information is handled by portable storage devices
such as recordable CDs (compact disks) and more recently by DVDs (Digital Video
Disks or Digital Versatile Disks). The capacity of the CD and DVD is greater than
that of the tape drive, an early favorite for data transportation, though its transfer rate
is slower than tape. Another feature of the CD is its compatibility across platforms.
The CD-R (a CD which can only be written upon once) is a secure format; its "write
once mechanism" does not allow overwriting. CD-RW (CD Read/Write) is less secure
but more versatile.
Presentation to the Public
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Most institutions making images of their collections available to the public via
the Internet make use of in-house servers or rent space on commercial servers.
Backup/Archiving
Digital collections should be backed up in a format that is easily accessible
and stored remote from the original source on a routine basis. When evaluating
storage for backup, the inevitable dilemma is between speed and cost. Most managers
prefer tape for backup, as it may be used at non-peak hours, when speed is not an
issue. For small networked systems, tape backup is the common practice.
Migration
In the context of digital preservation, migration refers to the shifting of digital
objects from old media formats and software programs to newer ones. Migration of
backed-up digital material needs to be as easy and cost-effective as possible for
institutions to buy into a system. The continual drain on fiscal resources to repeatedly
upgrade equipment and software can be borne by some institutions, but others will
find it difficult to stay abreast of continual migration. Decisions must be made in
every institution concerning what information will be saved and migrated and what
will not based on a combination of cost effectiveness, intellectual necessity, and moral
and professional obligation.
6. GENERAL STANDARD FOR CREATING DIGITAL IMAGES
Classifying Document Type
According to the guidelines established by California State Library and
NARA, material selected for scanning can be divided in the following classifications.
However, decisions for scanning documents may need to be made on an individual
basis, depending on the intended goals for digitization.
Textual Documents: Including printed materials, photocopies, manuscripts,
some bitonal line drawings and maps.
Photographs: Including color, sepia-tone, and black and white photographic prints,
negatives and transparencies.
Maps, Plans and Oversize Records: In some cases the original document may be
scanned, and more typically institutions will scan photocopies, copy transparencies, or
photographic copy, negatives.
Graphic Materials: More detailed graphic illustrations such as line-drawings,
lithographs, water-colors and other artistic illustrations. Again, provisions may be
made for scanning the original document, photocopies, copy negatives, or
transparencies (as long as the scanner has this ability). In some cases graphic
materials can follow the same guidelines given for photographic records.
Master and Derivative Image Files: In accordance to the guidelines established by
NARA and the Colorado Digitization Project, we propose that three versions of the
image be created: A Master Image, Access Image, and Thumbnail Image. The
following information is taken from CDP’s General Guidelines for Scanning
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7. POLICIES FOR DIGITIZATION
1. Meghnad Saha Archive will not digitize its entire collection.
2. Digitization and the management of digital objects are undertaken in the
efficient and effective manner possible. Digitized collections are arranged
in proper ways that are easy for public to access and navigate.
3. Digital project also cover the management of storage space for digital
online products.
4. In addition to converting materials to digital format for access in the world
wide web, Meghnad Saha Archive also present digital material to public
domain by means of Online Exhibition and Publications.
5. Digitization activities are integrated into Publication & Documenta-tion
Unit’s routine activities
6. Digitization is undertaken in accordance with the copyright act and other
relevant legislation. Physical ownership does not automatically mean that
an institution owns the rights to reproduce it. In the past it was thought that
when an object was transferred to an institution, so too were the legal
rights to reproduce the object. Institution can no longer count on the fact
that legal rights are transferred.
7. Authentication of an object is one of the most important issues in archive
administration So Archive will keep all administrative information
protected.
8. The digitization of items in the collection is not diminish commitment to
the preservation and care of these items, while the resulting digital
surrogates will reduce the need for future handling of the items. If it is
essential to digitize an item that is unstable due to its chemical and
physical structure, digital camera is used for the scanning phase.
9. Digital version of materials will represent originals as closely as possible.
Image will not be manipulated or improved, except to compensate for
defects in equipment or in the original.
10. There is a commitment to migration and/or conversation technologies to
enable long term future for digital products.
8. CONCLUSION
Preservation keeps materials alive, intact and available for use so that they can
be authoritatively used as long as possible (1) to document our heritage and our
society and (2) to guide to others who will come in the future. As Philip Ward
poetically states-
“Our heritage is all that we know of ourselves; what we preserve of it, our
only record. The record is our beacon in the darkness of time; the light that guides our
steps.”
Digital information forms an increasingly large part of our cultural and
intellectual heritage and offers significant benefits to users. At the same time
preservation and access to this information is dependent on impermanent media and
technologies; retaining metadata on the provenance and context; and retaining the
authenticity and content of the resource. Although experience in creating and
managing specific forms of digital data has been built up over a number of decades in
the sciences and social sciences, in many areas it is a relatively new medium where
much of the future life-cycle, activities and cost models are currently unknown. These
factors have led to increasing concern about the potential loss of our "collective
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memory" in the Digital Age and have prompted further research into the long-term
preservation of digital information and maintaining future access to it.
9. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am extremely thankful to our Director Prof. Bikash Sinha, Prof.ANS
Iyengar, Chairman, P&D Unit for their support and encouragement and to the
individuals who are directly or indirectly contributed substantially to this paper.
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105

Library 2.0: Myth or Reality ?
E.Soundararajan* and M.Somasekharan *
Abstract
Library 2.0 is a concept of a very different library service, geared towards the needs and
expectations of today’s library users. The changes in the information environment offer great
opportunities for the progressive libraries to reach out far beyond the boundaries of their buildings
and web sites and to engage with an increasingly literate body of the information consumers.
Key words: Library 2.0, Web 2.0, Librarian 2.0.
1.INTRODUCTION
The information environment in which libraries find themselves is
continuously changing. The ways in which people today communicate, interact,
acquire and share knowledge have changed due to advancements in the information
and communication technologies. Hence the libraries must compete for their survival.
Libraries have to integrate several technologies in their services in order to attract the
users. Library 2.0 is the new concept where users are not only information consumers
but also content creators. It is a library with out any boundaries and with the fullest
participation of users as architects.
2.INTERNET AND WEB 2.0
The World Wide Web with its resilient infrastructure and its dominant
interface in the form of web browser has established itself as the window to the world
of content. It has lead to the information explosion to the globe. Web 2.0 is the a
method by which data and services previously locked into individual web pages for
reading by the human beings can be liberated and then reused. The following are the
important characteristics of web 2.0:
• Web 2.0 allows data to be exposed, discovered and manipulated in a variety of
ways distinct from the purpose of the application originally used to gain
access.
• Web 2.0 permits the building of virtual applications, drawing data and
functionality from a number of different sources as appropriate.
• Web 2.0 is participative. The traditional Web has tended to be somewhat onesided,
with a flow of content from provider to viewer. Web 2.0 allows the
users to actively participate online by means of blogging, sharing files, or
equivalent.
* Scientific Information Resource Division, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam,
Tamilnadu -603 102 sound@igcar.gov.in
106

• Web 2.0 applications work for the user, and are able to locate and assemble
content that meets our needs as users, rather than forcing us to conform to the
paths laid out for us by content owners or their intermediaries.
• Web 2.0 applications are modular, with developers and users able to pick and
choose from a set of interoperating components in order to build something
that meets their needs.
• Web 2.0 is about sharing: code, content, ideas.
• Web 2.0 is about communication and facilitating community. People
communicate.
• Web 2.0 is smart. Applications will be able to capture user knowledge and
deliver services to satisfy their needs.
• Web 2.0 is built upon Trust, whether that is trust placed in individuals, in
assertions, or in the uses and reuses of data.
3.THE WEB AS PLATFORM
Like many important concepts, Web 2.0 doesn't have a hard boundary, but
rather, a gravitational core. We can visualize Web 2.0 as a set of principles and
practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demonstrate some or all
of those principles, at a varying distance from that core.
Figure 1 shows a "meme map" of Web 2.0 that was developed at a
brainstorming session during FOO Camp, a conference at O'Reilly Media. The basic
principle of web 2.0 was the web as the platform. Table 1 shows the web 2.0 services
as compared with web 1.0
Fig 1:
Web 2.0 Meme
Map
107

Web 1.0 Web 2.0
DoubleClick --> Google AdSense
Ofoto --> Flickr
Akamai --> BitTorrent
mp3.com --> Napster
Britannica Online --> Wikipedia
personal websites --> blogging
evite --> upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation --> search engine optimization
page views --> cost per click
screen scraping --> web services
publishing --> participation
content management systems --> wikis
directories (taxonomy) --> tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness --> syndication
Table 1: Web 1.0 vs. Web2.0
Every one of the technologies listed in Web 2.0 above – RSS, Wikis,
blogging, personalization, streaming media, ratings, alerts, folksonomies, tagging,
social networking software, and the rest could be useful in an enterprise, institutional,
or community environment and could be driven or introduced by the library.
4.WEB 2.0 + LIBRARY = LIBRARY 2.0?
Libraries were once the guardians of knowledge, and the point at which those
seeking existing knowledge would engage with it. With the rise of Google, Amazon,
Wikipedia and more, there is an oft-stated fear that many users, much of the time, will
bypass processes and institutions that they perceive to be slow, unresponsive,
unappealing and irrelevant in favor of a more direct approach to services offered by
others that just might be 'good enough' for what they need to do. Libraries should be
seizing every opportunity to challenge these perceptions, and to push their genuinely
valuable content, services and expertise out to places where people might stand to
benefit from them; places where a user would rarely consider drawing upon a library
for support.
Web 2.0's principles and technology offers libraries many opportunities to
serve their patrons better, and to reach out beyond the walls and Web sites of the
institution to reach potential beneficiaries where they happen to be, and in association
with the task that they happen to be undertaking. With these approaches, we take our
existing wealth of data, and make it work much harder. We begin to break down the
internal silos of the separate systems within a single library, and connect those
components to one another, and to related components and services far beyond the
building. At a technical level, we make it possible for searchers to be presented with
choices to view online, borrow locally, request from afar, buy or sell as
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appropriate to their needs and circumstance.
The beauty of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 is the level of integration and
interoperability that is designed into the interface through the library portal or
intranet. That’s where the real power to enhance the user experience is. In order to
take advantage of the concepts inherent in Library 2.0, all the advanced functionality
and features of web 2.0 should be integrated into the content.
5.LIBRARY 1.0 VS LIBRARY 2.0
In terms of library services, we can compare the library 1.0 with library 2.0 as follows
Closed stacks --> Open stacks
Collection development --> Library suggestion box
Preorganized ILS(Integrated Library Services) --> User tagging
Walk-in services --> Globally available services
“Read-only” catalog --> Amazon-style comments
Print newsletter mailed out --> Team-built blog
Easy = dumb users --> Easy = smart systems
Limited service options --> Broad range of options
Information as commodity --> Information as conversation
Monolithic applications --> Flexible, adaptive modules
Mission focus is output --> Mission focus is outcome
Focus on bringing ‘em in --> Focus on finding the user
ILS is core operation --> User services are core
With library 2.0, the collection becomes virtual that is library without walls.
Importantly, the traditional library read only catalogues will become Amazon style
comments where the user comments, reviews and feed backs will be used for
enhancing the catalog. Information is viewed as a tow way process in library 2.0
where in the users search, investigate and participate in the creation and re-mixing of
the new content. The mission focus is not on the mere output but on the outcome of
an organization. To summarize, library 2.0 focuses on user and how to attract the user
as information consumer as well as contributor.
6. CONCLUSION
Library 2.0 put great challenges before the librarian to redefine their
traditional services and approach. Librarian 2.0 will be the pioneer of the information
age and he continuously strives to understand, learn and implement the library 2.0
functionalities. He is responsible to connect people and technology and information in
context. He doesn’t shy away from non- traditional cataloging and classification
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and chooses tagging, tag clouds, folksonomies, and user-driven content descriptions
and classifications where appropriate. He connects the users to expert discussions,
conversations, and communities of practice and participates there as well and uses the
latest tools of communication (such as Skype) to connect content, expertise,
information coaching, and people. He encourages user driven metadata and user
developed content and commentary and understands the wisdom of crowds and the
emerging roles and impacts of the blogosphere, Web syndicasphere and wikisphere. It
is essential that librarians start preparing to become Librarian 2.0 now.
REFERENCES
1. What is Web 2.0 : Design Patterns and business model for the nest generation of the
software, Tim O’Reilly 2005.
URL : http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-
20.html
2. Web 2.0 Building the New Library, Paul Miller, ARIADNE Issue 45 2005.
URL: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue45/miller/
3. Beyond Library 2.0, Walt Crawford, Cites & Insights Vol 6. Issue 3 2006.
URL: http://cites.boisestate.edu/civ6i3.pdf
4. Web 2.0, Library 2.0, and Librarian 2.0: Preparing for the 2.0 World ,Stephen Abram,
SirsiDynix OneSource, Vol2, Issue 1 2006.
URL: http://www.imakenews.com/sirsi/e_article000505688.cfm
5. Library 2.0 The challenge of disruptive innovation, Paul Miller, Talis White Paper
2006.
110

ROLE OF ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE AND
SECURITY SYSTEMS IN ACADEMIC LIBRARIES
L. Rajendran * and G. Rathinasabapathy **
Abstract
Academic libraries are not always safe and secure places and they are facing a wide variety
of security concerns which includes the theft and mutilation of library materials. The results of a
number of library studies reported that a majority of the academic libraries across the globe are
having problems with security. However, it is the duty of any academic library to keep the library
buildings, shelves and stacks open and free without losing items to make available or putting
individuals at unacceptable risk from the malicious, avaricious or senseless acts of others. Arresting or
expelling a member for material theft or book/periodical mutilation is common in libraries of
developed countries. But, things are different in Indian conditions. In this context, the technological
advances made it possible to install electronic security systems to overcome the security threats to
some extent. These electronic security systems typically provide alarm notification to the appropriate
authorities, entry control, and site surveillance. The major elements of these systems include burglar
protection, collection security, access control, and video surveillance. This paper attempts to discuss
various electronic surveillance and security systems available to ensure academic library security.
Keywords: Electronic Surveillance, Security Systems, Collection Security, Access Control,
Video Surveillance, Academic Library
1. INTRODUCTION
A library forming part of or attached to a university, college or any
educational institution is known as academic library. Academic libraries differ from a
public library and special library in purpose and of its services. The main function of
an academic library is to function as an auxiliary to parent institution in carrying out
its objectives mainly the education. Library is an important intellectual resource of the
academic community and helps them for their self-development to fulfill the
curriculum requirements and to promote studies and research.
2. ACADEMIC LIBRARY
The importance of academic libraries was aptly recorded by the Education
Commission headed by Prof. D.S. Kothari in its report that “the academic library
should provide library facilities and services necessary for success of all formal
programmes of instruction, open the door to the world of knowledge that lies beyond
the boundaries of own field of qualification and bring books, students and scholars,
together under conditions which encourage reading pleasure, self discovery, personal
growth and the sharpening of intellectual curiosity”.
Therefore, the academic library has to build a strong collection in the form of
physical, electronic and digital to cater to the knowledge requirements of students,
faculty members, research scholars and scientists of the academic institution. The
digital collection can easily be preserved on computer systems or other suitable media
* Assistant Librarian, Department of Library Science, Madras Veterinary College, Chennai – 600 007
** Assistant Librarian, Tamilnadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Chennai – 600 007
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and access can be given through computer networks, local area networks, wide area
networks or the Internet. The digital content cannot be tampered or stolen by the
library users as the original content is available with the server with back up. But, it
is not so easy in the case of physical collections. The library has to preserve the
physical collections for the use of its clients as well as preserve for future generations
for which it has to overcome the unethical means of losses.
3. LIBRARY SECURITY
It is important to provide a safe and security facility for library staff, library
resources and equipment, and library users. It is also important that the security
system should perform these functions as seamlessly as possible, without interfering
with the library’s objective of easily and simply providing user services. Library
security includes safety of staff, users and the protection of the library and its
collections, fire protection and disaster planning. But, this paper restricted its scope
only to the protection of the library collection from theft and vandalism.
4. UNETHICAL MEANS OF LOSSES
Most of the academic libraries follow open access system which allows its
users directly to the stakes to ensure optimum utilization of the knowledge resources
available in the library. Due to this, books are often found on the library shelves with
pages torn from the spine. Sometimes books are damaged beyond repair and almost
all academic libraries including libraries in advanced countries are suffering from
book or document theft by its members. Theft of library materials is not a new
problem, not just an Indian problem. It is a universal problem which includes
developed countries including USA, UK and European Union.
It was traditional, particularly before the invention of the printing press when
books were all hand written manuscripts, to letter a curse into the book to prevent
theft. Two such letters of curse are as follows:
For him that Stealeth a Book from this Library,
Let it change into a Serpent in his hand and rend him.
Let him be struck with Palsy and all his members blasted.
Let him languish in Pain crying aloud for Mercy,
Let there be no Surcease to his Agony till he sink to Dissolution.
Let Bookworms gnaw his Entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not,
When at last he goeth to his final Punishment,
Let the flames of hell consume him for ever and aye.
Steal not this Book my honest Friend
For fear the Galows should be your hend,
And when you die the Lord will say
And wares the Book you stole away?
-Old letters of curse on Book Thieves
Unfortunately, these curses did not seem to have worked very well, as the
books also had to be chained into place. Even chains had limited effect as we can
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witness many ancient libraries where there are still chains in place, but no books.
Further, some of the library users willfully, maliciously, or wantonly write
upon, injure, deface, tear, cut, mutilate or destroy library books or documents in other
forms. Because of the rising incidence of library theft and mutilation of library
materials, libraries across the globe are suffering serious losses of books and other
library property.
In order to assure that the library materials are available for genuine use, the
American Library Association and Association of College and Research Libraries
have come out with some guidelines.
5. ALA AND ACRL GUIDELINES
The American Library Association (ALA) and the Association of College and
Research Libraries (ACRL) have come out with some guidelines to minimize the
material theft in libraries in 2003. The following are the gist of guidelines proposed
by ALA and ACRL.
1. Appointment of a Library Security Officer
2. Forming a Security Planning Group
3. Communication with the Public Relations Department
4. Communication with Law Enforcement Agencies
5. Work for Institutional and Legislatic Support
6. Report Library Groups
The guidelines also suggest installation of security cameras that cover special
collections reading rooms and any access points that security professionals deem
appropriate. If security camera uses tapes, these should be retained for at least one
month.
6. LIBRARY SECURITY SYSTEMS
Library collections and other materials can be secured both by physical
(non-electronic) and electronic security systems which are detailed below.
Physical Security Systems (Non-Electronic)
The library security should be planned when the library building is constructed
wherever possible, through architectural considerations which includes the site design
and building design.
Further, the security personnel should be employed to undertake patrol within
the library and to enforce appropriate library access at the main lobby. Inspection
of bags and other belongings of library users while entering and leaving the library,
by security/library staff is being followed in almost all libraries. This will avoid
unethical loss of library materials to some extent. Most of the libraries do not allow
the users with notebooks, record notes, etc. and they insist depositing such things in
the property counters provided exclusively for this purpose. They permit the users to
take loose sheets or small scribbling pads only inside the library.
Visual inspection by library staff through floor walks is another manual
method followed by librarians to overcome the unethical practices viz., malicious
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writes, injures, defaces, cuts, mutilates and destruction of library materials within the
library premises.
The other non-electronic security systems include various types of window
protection with locks, grills, guards, bars, screens and films, door protection, display
case protection and dummy security devises which ensure that criminals and
miscreants do not have uncontrolled access to the library collections.
Electronic Security Systems
In the middle ages, books were protected by curses as there were no
electronic security systems. But, today, we have electronic security systems which can
help the libraries to control, minimize or avoid library material theft and unethical
losses.
Electronic security systems are not only available in advanced countries like
USA and UK. They are available in the developing countries as well. The following
are some of the major electronic security systems available for libraries viz., (a)
Electromagnetic System; (b) Electronic Surveillance Cameras; and (c) Radio
Frequency IDentification (RFID) System.
Electro-Magnetic System
The Electro-magnetic (EM) security system is little bit old technology which
was used in libraries for decades. It is dominant in Europe and used by many libraries
around the world. In this technology, a magnetic, iron-containing strip with an
adhesive layer is attached to the library material. This strip is not removed at
checkout; it is simply deactivated by a scanner that uses a specific highly intense
magnetic field. One of the advantages of the EM strip is that it can be re-activated and
used at a low cost.
Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) System
RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) is the latest technology widely used
by academic libraries to combat library material theft. RFID-based systems move
beyond security to become tracking systems that combine security with more efficient
tracking of materials throughout the library, including easier and faster charge and
discharge, inventorying, and materials handling.
RFID is a combination of radio-frequency-based technology and microchip
technology. The information contained on microchips in the tags affixed to library
materials is read using radio frequency technology regardless of item orientation or
alignment and distance from the item is not a critical factor except in the case of
extra-wide exit gates. The corridors at the building exit(s) can be as wide as four feet
because the tags can be read at a distance of up to two feet by each of two parallel exit
sensors.
RFID tags replace both the EM security strips and barcode. It simplifies user
self check-out and check-in. It can handle any type of material including video and
audio tapes. RFID anti-theft detection is really innovative and safe. It ensures highspeed
inventory and identification of items that are out of proper order in the library
collection.
RFID security system has been installed in the Libraries of Indra Gandhi
Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Kalpakkam and Anna University, Chennai.
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The library authorities reported that this system is really very useful for them to
ensure better security to the valuable collection of their libraries.
The RFID system offers the following advantages to the library managers and
users;
• Reduction in the amount of time required to perform circulation operations
• Simplified user self-charging and discharging
• Highly reliable (up to 100% detection rate)
• High-speed inventorying
• Automated materials handling
• Long tag life
7. ELEMENTS OF ELECTRONIC SECURITY SYSTEMS
The use of electronic security equipment components typically provides alarm
notification to the appropriate authority, entry control, and site surveillance. The
major elements of any electronic security system include (a) Burglar protection; (b)
Collection security; (c) Access control and (d) Video surveillance.
Burglar Protection
A burglar protection system includes sensors to detect an intrusion, alarms,
and notification to the appropriate authorities. There are different ways of classifying
the types of sensor systems. Sensors can be active or passive, covert or visible,
volumetric or line detection. They can also be defined by their mode of application.
Active sensors transmit some type of energy and detect a change in the received
energy created by the presence or motion of the intruder. Passive sensors detect some
type of energy emitted by the intruder, or detect a change of some natural field of
energy caused by the intruder. Covert sensors are hidden from view and visible
sensors are in plain view. Volumetric sensors detect intrusion in a volume of space,
where line detection sensors detect intrusion across a line.
Collection Security
There are many methods of ensuring that no materials leave the library
without being checked out. These systems always contain a security device that is
placed on the materials(including books, magazines, videocassettes, audiocassettes,
CDs, and DVDs) as well as a detection device that is typically located at all library
exits. The detection devices must be safe for magnetic media and usually have audible
and/or visible alarms. If desired, the audible alarm can be a voice alarm. There are
two major methods currently used for detection: electromagnetic detection and radio
frequency identification (RFID).
Electronic Access Control
Electronic access technology is the best system for controlling access to
library buildings, facilities, and rooms. Authorized people are allowed to enter a
controlled area by automatic unlocking of the door. Plastic access cards are
inexpensive and software can be programmed to restrict access to certain areas while
recording the time, date, and location of authorized and unauthorized access attempts.
For extra security, access control can be used in conjunction with video surveillance
to control and monitor large facilities. Access cards can be integrated as photo ID
cards for library employees and can be used as temporary “keys” for library clientele
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to have access to restricted areas. The access system also can be used for monitoring
employee time and attendance, security patrols of the property, and can limit access to
sensitive areas, information, or equipment. It has been proved that electronic access
control systems enhance safety and protect valuable library assets.
Video surveillance
Nowadays video surveillance and closed-circuit television (CCTV) systems
serve as a way to monitor and record security, deter crime, and ensure safety in
academic libraries. Advances in CCTV technology and reduction in costs have also
made video surveillance a cost-effective management tool for academic libraries.
Academic libraries can use CCTV to identify visitors and employees, monitor work
areas, deter theft, and ensure the security of the premises and other facilities. The
system can also be used to monitor and record evidence on clientele and employee
misconduct. CCTV systems are quickly becoming one of the most important and
economical security and safety tools available to libraries.
8. PROS AND CONS OF ESS
Electronic Security Systems (ESS) were felt by the majority of library
authorities to be effective in reducing levels of theft, and cost effective too and they
offer the following advantages.
• Effective in reducing levels of theft of library materials
• Effective in controlling the unethical practices within the Library premises
• Cost effective
• Easy to install and maintain
Though the ESS offers many advantageous, it is not affordable to all libraries
as installation and maintenance of such systems require huge money. However, while
considering the value of library materials, it is the need of the hour to install such
systems to prevent unethical losses occurred in academic libraries.
9. CONCLUSION
Academic libraries should create and implement security policies, procedures
and plans in an effective and efficient manner. As the price of books and journals is
rising exponentially, and the libraries are to diversify into other expensive ‘non-book’
materials, not forgetting the latest technology, it is the need of the hour to the
academic library to consider installation of electronic security systems to prevent and
minimize the unethical losses occurred to the academic library collections. Further,
there is no point in spending millions of rupees on new acquisitions of information
resources without installing such security systems.
REFERENCES
1. American Library Association. "Guidelines Regarding Thefts in Libraries." (2005).
Available at http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/guidelinesregardingthefts. htm
(Accessed 05-06-2007)-
2. Brown, K.E. and Patkus, B.L. (2003). “Collections Security: Planning and Prevention
for Libraries and Archives.” Available at http://www.nedcc.org/plam3/tleaf312.htm
(Accessed 01-06-2007)
3. Burrows, J. and Cooper, D. (1992). “Theft and Loss from UK Libraries:
116

A National Survey”. Home Office Police Research Group, Crime Prevention Unit
Paper No.37,Home Office Police Research Group
4. Jadhav, M.N. and Kulkarni, S. (2000). Electronic Security: A Case Study of IIT,
Bombay Central Library. In: Proceedings of the CALIBER 3. Available at
www.library.iitb.ac.in/~mnj/caliber3.pdf (Accessed on 10-06-2007).
5. Kothari, D.S. (1966). “Education Commission Report”, University Grants
Commission, New Delhi.
6. Rathinasabapathy, G. (2005). Application of Radio Frequency Identification
Technology (RFID) in Libraries. In: Proceedings of the VII Tamilnadu Librry
Conference, Dr.MGR-JCFW, Chennai. TLA.
7. White, M.H. (2004). “It’s Easy Mmmkay.” www.marlboro.edu/resources/
library/docs/citizen_article32304.html (Accessed 07-06-2007)
117

Internet Usage by Research Scholars and Faculty in
Sciences: A study of M D University, Rohtak
Sanjay K Kaushik * and Vijendra Singh **
Abstract
Personal computers have played a vital role in our everyday lives today. Everywhere, right
from the retail shops to the Atomic Research centres, computers are being used. The growth in
popularity and networking of computers led the phenomenon called Internet. Internet is believed to be
a very powerful tool for information searching. Today from teens to old persons, everyone is using
internet. The researchers and faculty in the discipline of sciences are not exception to it. The present
paper reports the results of a study through questionnaire conducting on the research scholars and
faculty members in science discipline of M D University, Rohtak. The results indicate that 96.55%
respondents have the knowledge of computers. Majority of respondents know the basic tools and
techniques of Internet. All the respondents make use of internet. The purpose of using INTERNET is
sending and receiving e-mail, visiting websites, chatting, reading newspaper, online learning and
accessing the e-journals, etc. As many as forty-six respondents are strongly agreed that internet is
useful in their study and research. The internet facility available in central library is being used more
frequently by the researchers and faculty in sciences as compared to other places of internet like cyber
café, etc. Thirty-one respondents spend one hour daily on internet surfing in central library, whereas
sixteen spend half an hour daily. While comparing on the basis of their sex, it is found that the Chisquare
value of Sex X Need for training is 6.495, the degree of freedom is 2 and the significance is
.039. Hence there is a significant difference among the respondents on the basis of their sex as far as
the need for training on internet use is concerned.
1. INTRODUCTION
Information touches all human activity and is communicated in a
multitude of ways, which includes speech, pictures, video, text, etc. Access to
information is generally recognized as contributing significantly to the efficiency of
any organization. Recent developments in computer, communication and networking
technology have given new meaning to information retrieval systems. Today
information sharing is achieved through networks. The network of network on the
global scale is known as the Internet, the information super highway, and it is growing
at the rate of 10 percent monthly, connecting 1,300,000 domains having about 500
million users. Of all the technological developments that have taken place in the last
century, the Internet is the one that has had the most profound impact globally. The
geographical boundaries and distances, which used to act as barriers in the way of free
exchange of data and information, have been rendered irrelevant. As a natural
corollary, the Internet has also affected the way one earns and www (World Wide
Web) dot com has opened up new avenues & opportunities, by which a person, with
the right skill set and drive, can earn from the comforts of ones home. Logon to the
Internet, go to any site and here we are in a world of our own, in which we will be lost
for the time we work on it, a world full of fun, excitement, styles and a world beyond
imagination.
*
**
Assistant Librarian, M D University, Rohtak-124001.
E-mail: kaush_s@rediffmail.com
Assistant Librarian, HINDALCO industries Ltd., Renukoot, Distt. Sonebhadra.
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Internet is the largest worldwide network linking more than 140 countries with
3 million host computers. It is a network of networks. The primary mission of the
Internet is communication – of ideas, work, play – we name it. Everything else is a
means towards that end. The research scholars and faculty members of any research
organization make use of internet. The present study is aimed to find out the usage of
internet facility available in Central Library of M D University, Rohtak by the
research scholars and faculty members in the filed of sciences.
2. OBJECTIVES
The specific objectives of the study are as under:
• To determine computer literacy among research scholars & faculty members.
• To identify their awareness about internet & its tools.
• To determine the use of internet in their study & research work.
• To assess internet facilities provided by the central library.
• To study their purpose of using the Internet.
• To study problems faced by them in using Internet.
3. RELATED STUDIES
Biradar and others (2006) 1 conducted a study on internet usage by the
students and faculties in Kuvempu University. The results indicated that 42.1 %
students use internet twice a week and 31.25% faculties use it every day. The majority
of students as well as faculties use internet for study/ teaching purpose. The favorite
place for using internet is library followed by commercial places. A thumping
majority of respondents are satisfied with internet sources and services. Asemi
(2005) 2 shows that all the respondents were using the Internet frequently because all
faculties were provided connection to the Internet. It was revealed that the researchers
of the university were getting quality information through the Internet. Fifty-five
percent of the respondents searched for scientific information through the Internet
because the university library had provided access to various databases and online
journals for all the students and staff. Mishra, Yadav and Bisht (2005) 3 conducted a
study to know Internet utilization pattern of the undergraduate students of G B Pant
University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar. The findings of the study
indicated that a majority of the students (85.7%) used the Internet. Out of the Internet
users 67.7% were male students and 32.3% female students. The findings of the study
also showed that 61.5% of the males and 51.6% of the females used Internet for
preparing assignments. A majority of the respondents i.e. 83.1% male and 61.3%
female respondents indicated that they faced the problem of slow functioning of
Internet connection.
Robinson (2005) 4 examined the Internet use among African-American
college students. The respondents were surveyed by using the 43-item questionnaire
to determine the frequency of Internet. The results of the study indicated that most of
the African-American college students (76%) had used the Internet for more than
three years. The use of the Internet for most African-American college students
occurred at school or at the work place with 49% of the responses at home. 47% of
the responses indicated that they spent an average of two hours per day on-line. A
small percentage of the students spent 5-6 hours per day on the Internet. 43% of the
students used the Internet primarily to learn and find school resources. Rajeev
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Kumar and Amritpal Kaur (2004) 5 studied the use of internet by teachers and
students in Shaheed Bhagat Singh College of Engineering & Technology, Ferozepur
(Panjab). They found that 46.7% teachers and 36.7% students daily use the internet.
About 90% respondents use internet at their college. Yahoo is found as the favorite
search engine. Only 31.7% respondents were fully satisfied, whereas 36.7% were
partially satisfied with internet facilities.
4. METHODOLOGY
The study has been conducted through the survey method of research.
A structured questionnaire was designed and used for collecting the data. The sample
for the study was selected purposefully because the research scholars and faculty in
sciences have been noticed in the internet lab more frequently. The questionnaires
were distributed among 92 research scholars and faculty members. Out of which as
many as 58 filled in useable questionnaires were received back. The data so obtained
was coded and analyzed with the help of SPSS (Statistical Package for Social
Sciences). The data is also analyzed on the basis of independent variables like Status
and Gender of the respondents.
5. RESULTS
First of all to use the internet the basic knowledge of computer is necessary.
The study found that 96.55% i.e. fifty six out of fifty eight respondents have the basic
knowledge of computers. Only two respondents mentioned that they do not have the
basic knowledge of computers. All the research scholars and Lecturers have the basic
knowledge of computers, only one Research Scholar and One Lecturer mentioned that
they do not have the basic knowledge of computers. On the other hand all the male
respondents have the basic knowledge of computers whereas only two female
respondents do not have.
Table 1
Knowledge of computers
Total
No
Yes
Male 24 24
Female 2 32 34
Total 2 56 58
Table 2
Knowledge of Computer Total
No
Yes
Professor 3 3
Reader 9 9
Lecturer 1 7 8
Research scholar 1 37 38
Total 2 56 58
Twenty five respondents know the internet and its tools to full extent, whereas
thirty two respondents know it to some extent. Only one respondent mentioned that
she do not know the internet and its tools. Again all the males have the knowledge but
120

only one female lacking of the same. However, all the respondents have mentioned
that they use the internet. A thumping majority of respondents i.e. 79.33% use the
internet for Sending and receiving e-mails, visiting websites, on-line learning and
accessing e-documents. Eleven respondents use it only for on-line learning and
accessing e-documents. Only one respondents use it only for sending and receiving e-
mails.
Table 3
Knowledge of internet and its tools
Total
To full extent To some extent Not at all
Male 12 12 24
Female 13 20 1 34
Total 25 32 1 58
Table 4
Purpose of Using internet
Total
Sending and
receiving e-mails
on-line learning and accessing
e-documents
All
mentioned
Male 1 4 19 24
Female 7 27 34
Total 1 11 46 58
As far as the usefulness of the internet is concerned forty six respondents
mentioned that it is very useful in their research and teaching. Another twelve
respondents mentioned that it is useful in their research and teaching. On the basis of
their sex twenty one male respondents assessed the internet very useful whereas three
as useful. Twenty nine female respondents assessed it as very useful and rest nine as
useful. The results indicated that the research scholars and lecturers have assessed
internet more useful as compared to the readers and professors.
Table 5
Usefulness of Internet
Very useful Useful Not useful
Total
Male 21 3 0 24
Female 25 9 0 34
Total 46 12 0 58
Thirteen respondents most frequently use the internet in the central library
whereas twenty nine respondents use it frequently in the central library. Twelve
respondents use internet occasionally in central library whereas only four respondents
rarely use internet in central library. As many as six, thirteen, five male respondents
and seven, sixteen, seven female respondents use internet in central library most
frequently, frequently and occasionally respectively. Only four female respondents
rarely use internet in central library. The research scholars have been found using
internet in central library more frequently as compared to the faculty members. Only
eight respondents most frequently use internet at a place other than the central library
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whereas fifteen respondents use it outside the central library frequently and same
number rarely. Twenty respondents occasionally use internet at a place other than
central library.
Table 6
Use of internet in central library
Most Frequently Frequently Occasionally Rarely
Total
Male 6 13 5 24
Female 7 16 7 4 34
Total 13 29 12 4 58
Table 7
Use of internet at a place other than Central library
Most Frequently Frequently Occasionally Rarely
Total
Male 3 8 9 4 24
Female 5 7 11 11 34
Total 8 15 20 15 58
Thirty one respondents spend one hour daily on internet surfing in central
library whereas sixteen spend less than half an hour daily. Only five respondents
spend about two hour daily on internet surfing in central library whereas six
respondents spend more than two hours daily. The results show that female
respondents spend slightly more time on internet surfing in the central library as
compared to male respondents. Eighteen respondents spend less than half an hour
daily on internet surfing at a place other than the central library whereas twenty eight
respondents spend one hour daily. Only five respondents spend about two hour daily
on internet surfing at a place other than central library whereas seven spend more than
two hours daily. Hence it can be stated that the research scholars and faculty in
sciences use the internet at central library and at other places almost equally.
Table 8
Time spent daily in central library
Total
Less than half an hour About an
hour
About 2
hours
More than
2 hours
Male 8 14 2 24
Female 8 17 3 6 34
Total 16 31 5 6 58
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Table 9
Time spent daily at a place other than central library
Total
Less than half an
hour
About an
hour
About 2
hours
More than 2
hours
Male 9 10 3 2 24
Female 9 18 2 5 34
Total 18 28 5 7 58
Forty three (73.14%) respondents mentioned that the library do not provide
any training on internet use whereas fifteen mentioned that it provides training.
Eighteen respondents strongly feel that library should provide training on How to use
internet? Thirty three respondents feel that library should provide such training. Only
seven respondents feel that there is no need for such training. The female respondents
feel more need for training as compared to the male respondents. However the authors
are of the view that the library should conduct some formal training programmes on
internet use.
Table 10
Does library provide any training
Total
No
Yes
Male 18 6 24
Female 25 9 34
Total 43 15 58
Table 11
Need for training by library
Strongly agree Agree Disagree
Total
Male 6 12 6 24
Female 12 21 1 34
Total 18 33 7 58
Only four respondents are fully satisfied with the speed of internet in central
library whereas thirty two respondents are little satisfied with the speed. Eighteen
respondents are dissatisfied with the speed whereas four respondents are strongly
dissatisfied with the speed. There is no significant difference on the basis of their
gender and status as far as speed of internet in central library is concerned. Thirty two
respondents are satisfied to some extent on the availability of nodes in the central
library whereas only two respondents are fully satisfied. Another twelve respondents
are little satisfied with the availability of nodes whereas eight respondents are not
satisfied at all. However after this survey the internet lab in central library has been
extended.
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Fully
satisfied
Table 12
Satisfaction over speed of internet
Little Dissatisfied Strongly
satisfied
dissatisfied
Total
Male 3 12 7 2 24
Female 1 20 11 2 34
Total 4 32 18 4 58
Table 13
Fully
satisfied
Satisfaction over availability of nodes
Little Dissatisfied Strongly
satisfied
dissatisfied
Total
Male 1 13 6 4 24
Female 1 23 6 4 34
Total 2 36 12 8 58
Sixteen respondents mentioned that the library staff in internet lab most
frequently helps them whereas twenty respondents mentioned that it helps frequently.
Sixteen respondents mentioned that library staff in internet lab occasionally helps
them whereas six respondents mentioned that it never helps them.
Table 14
Helpfulness of library staff
Most Frequently Frequently Occasionally Rarely
Total
Male 6 8 8 2 24
Female 10 12 8 4 34
Total 16 20 16 6 58
6. CONCLUSION
The results of the study indicate that the internet facilities in the central library
are being well used by the research scholars and faculty in sciences. Although most of
the users are well aware about the internet and its tools but still the library
professionals can contribute a lot. As library professionals are well versed with
indexing and searching techniques hence these techniques can be taught to the users
of internet. The major problems of the respondents are down of internet server, speed
of internet and timings of the internet lab. The library should take some steps for
enhancing the speed of internet and timings of the lab.
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REFERENCES
1. Biradar (B S), Rajashekar (G R) and Sampath Kumar (B T). A study of internet usage
by students and faculties in Kuvempu University. Library Herald. 44(4); December
2006. pp 283-294.
2. Asemi (A). Information searching habits of Internet users: A case study on the
Medical Sciences University of Isfahan, Iran. Webology, 2(1).
http://www.webology.ir/2005/v2n1/a10.html
3. Mishra (O P), Yadava (Neelam) and Bisht (Kamini). Internet Utilization Pattern of
Undergraduate Students. University News. 43(13); March 28-03 April 2005; pp. 8-12.
4. Robinson (Jannie W). Internet Use among African-American College Students: An
Exploratory Study. Retrieved from http://wwwlib.umi.com/
dissertations/fullcit/3156015.
5. Rajeev Kumar and Amritpal Kaur. Use of internet by Teachers and Students in
Shaheed Bhagat Singh College of Engineering and Technology: A Case study.
Journal of Library and Information Science. 29(1&2); June & December 2004; pp.
81-94.
125

Information Security: The role of
DOI (Digital Object Identifier)
N. Valarmathy * and K. Kaliyaperumal **
1. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, Internet plays a vital role in the Information exchange. The
consumer of the Information need relevant and authenticated Information where as
the publisher needs copyright protection to the content. So, Information security is
essential to protect the valuable information from misuse and manipulations.
Intellectual Property Right (IPR) comprises of all those things that come from human
intellect whether they are ideas, inventions, words, music, theatre or art. This would
include books, periodicals pamphlets etc that are subject to patent coverage.
2. OBJECTIVES OF THIS PAPER
Intellectual property is the fruitful or useful out come of the efforts of
individual or intellectual creativity. If this effort can be allowed to exploit or copy by
others, there will be adverse effect in the context of creativity. But, there are some
arguments that the Important creative efforts should not be used for only individual,
but it should be used for the betterment of social, technological and cultural
development of the Nation. Thus, these rights will encourage human resources of the
country for innovative and technical progress. However, there are some mechanisms
and procedures available in the Digital environment to preserve the e- resources. This
paper intend to focus on the pros and cons of the mechanism such as DOI (Digital
Object Identifier)
3. AN OVERVIEW OF EXISTING COPYRIGHT
Copy right is a set of exclusive rights regulating the use of particular
expression of an idea or information. It is a most important type of Intellectual
Property Right. The copy right policies are different from one country to another It
protects skill, labor talent of an author who are responsible for publication of a
document, a piece of music photograph, TV serials and other creative works.
According to the copyright, the owner has right to prevent others from
copying selling, hiring out performing broadcasting or amending the work
/innovations publications developed by them. The copy right law is subject to
international treaties. The important international treaties are Berne convention and
Universal copyright convention. Berne convention allows following minimum basic
copyright laws and allowing for reciprocal protection for Nationals of different
countries. for example, a UK author can enjoy the US copyright laws and as well as
USA author enjoy UK copyright laws. But different countries follow different
copyright laws. As a result, it is very difficult to have uniform laws among them. And
many authors advocated that infringement of laws is worse in the networked
environment. Many opined that the establishment of single uniform law throughout
the World for networked environment will minimize copyright laws. But, it is not
easy to establish such laws.
* Anna University, Chennai 600 025
** Madras University, Chennai 600 005
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4. GENESIS OF DOI
It is a simple method developed by Association of American Publishers. The
existing ISSN and ISBN are not able to solve the above discussed problems, since
they are in fixed number. The DOI has remarkable changes in the area of Digital
Publishing. Iisa unique, reliable, internationally manageable content identifier which
will be assigned when a article or content accepted for digital publications. Thus
Norman Parking defined as “It is a unique identifier of a piece of content and a system
to access that content digitally – in essence an ISSN for the 21 st century.
In the year 1995, few scientific publishers joined together and introduced a
unique identification system called PII (Publisher item Identifier). These scientific
publishers such as American Institute of Physics, IEEE and Elsevier identified a list of
characteristics for an online document identifier which solves many problems. Later
in the year 1996AAP, International Publishers Association (IPA), Book Industry
Communication (BIC) and other International Organizations are participated and
constituted a committee called Enabling Technologies Committee. The Committee
then accepted joint recommendations made by R.R Bowker &Co and the corporation
for National Research Initiative (NRI) and thus the DOI has been managed
international DOI foundation.
5. AN OVERVIEW OF DOI (DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIER)
To solve the problems there is a requirement for development of new
identification system. This demand results in the origin of DOI. Digital object
identifier shortly called as DOI solves both the purposes of providing unique
identification of contents and copy right protection. DOI is a standard for persistently
identifying a piece of Intellectual property on a digital Network and associating with
related data, Metadata in a structured extensible way. DOI has been called the
barcode for Intellectual property like the physical barcode, they are enabling tools for
use through out supply chain to add value and save cost. The development and
deployment of DOI was also designed to enable automated copyright management
which should offer additional copyright protection, preserve data integrity and help
prevent piracy.
Structure of DOI
Digital Object Identifier has the following structure
• . Identifier
o Prefix
o Suffix
• Directory
• Database
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Identifier
Owner suffix
10-1003 / 0-571-48053
Prefix Suffix
Identification of
ownership/the agency
which published the
content
Owner
rights
prefix
Like ISBN, DOI . has a set DOI has a set of digits, in the sense the identifier
is build with is build with two elements viz., prefix as first element and suffix as
second element.
Prefix: It consists of directory code and registrant’s code. The no 1003 given
in the above diagram is related to publisher (the ownership) and this No is assisted by
directory manager. All prefixes begin with 10(Directory code)
Suffix: It begins with an optical code designator in square brackets which is
helpful as signal to software. Many publishers preferred to use ISBN number as their
suffix. It can be assigned to granularity of books, articles, album, song and any
multimedia object, etc.
DOI system depends directory, the resolves them to internet addresses which
are internet URLS.
Performance of DOI
If a clientele clicks on a DOI then the message is sent to the central directory
and the content will be sent to the clientele system after verifying the validity of the
clientele If the object / content move other folder or other company server. The
information will be sent to all the valid users along with new address.
Database: In the database the publisher will have both content and as well as
information about the content. The URL will hold DOI directory that will point to a
response screen rather than to the digital object directly and it will be maintained by
owner or publishers. DOI is a unique numbering system. Unique number will be
assigned to each content and there is no possibility of using same to identify different
content. To assign DOI number alphanumeric characters will be used.
Metadata
Metadata is an important component of the DOI. Each DOI is associated with a
series of metadata, a set of bibliographical and commercial information concerning
the content (title, author, publication date, copyright, price, etc.) and its
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position within the whole registrant's publishing offer (the belonging of a title to a
series, of an article to a serial, the availability of one publication in more formats
and/or through different media, etc.). By means of metadata, the DOI configures not
simply as an identifying string, but takes the form of a powerful and unambiguous
tool for data storage and exchange.
Metadata, as well as the DOI they are associated to, are persistently connected to the
object they describe, so they can be easily communicated to other subjects across the
productive and distributive chain, enhancing a content producer's ability to trade
electronically. Furthermore, metadata represent the key for the development of DOIbased
services, such as transnational databases and search engines for different kinds
of contents. Asserting that metadata are persistent does not mean they are
unmodifiable: registrants may update metadata about their contents any time they
wish (whether some publication data change, when the primary URL the DOI
resolves to is modified, etc.).
6. ADVANTAGES OF DOI
• Persistent Identification: each DOI unequivocally and permanently identifies
the object to which it is associated
• Network Action ability: through Handle System technology, each DOI
resolves to one or more web pages assigned by the publisher
• Semantic Interoperability: metadata allow to unambiguously communicate - to
any user, from any place, at any point of the productive/distributive chain - all
the pieces of information about the related objects and their hierarchical
relationships
• It helps to maintain online transactions of all kinds including E-Commerce and
digital distribution
• It is a model for online copyright and ways for copyright protection
• It is a supercharged barcode for internet based resource.
• It also supporting interlibrary lending and document delivery service.
• It supports and useful for web OPAC
7. DOI IN INDIAN CONTEXT
Now E- Journals are widely used by many libraries in India, which requires
link Information resources in meaningful way for optimum use by the end users.
And also Internet Plays a vital role in the Information exhange, the publisher requires
copyright protection. So, DOI is essential for all the libraries which are having digital
publications. But assigning and maintaining DOI is costly. In India it is difficult to
implement DOI system in all the Libraries, because lack of co ordination among the
Publishers and libraries . The major drawback is that lack of technical knowhow.
8. CONCLUSION
DOI is the system for protecting intellectual l Properties that need continuous
enhancement according to the development of hardware and software technologies.
Irrespective of its benefits, it is also to remember that assigning DOIs and maintaining
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is costly affair. However, it is a required phenomena for the digital environment.
REFERENCES
1. Prasad, K.N. Intellectual Property rights in Information systems, networks and
services in India, ED by Neelamegham A and Prasad K.N. Ranaganathan center for
Information studies : Bangalore, 1998 Pp 31 -60
2. Oppenheim, C et al. The Aslib guide to copyright , Aslib; London, 1994
3. Norman Paskin discusses the DOI,OCLC , Newsletter 239: 1999 at
http://www.ocic/new/n239/research/01/research.htm.
130

Cyber Crimes and Information Frauds: EMERGING
CHALLENGES FOR LIS PROFESSIONALS
G. Rathinasabapathy * and L. Rajendran*
"The modern thief can steal more with a computer than with a gun. Tomorrow's terrorist may be
able to do more damage with a keyboard than with a bomb".
– National Research Council, "Computers at Risk", 1991.
Abstract
Remarkable achievements in the IT sector is really a matter of pride to India but the associated problem
that is causing serious concern is the rapid raise in cyber crimes. With increased use of computers and Internet in
homes and offices, there has been a proliferation of cyber crimes in India. Cyber crime which is also known as
‘Internet crimes’ or ‘Computer crimes’ is any criminal activity that uses a computer either as an instrument, target
or a means for perpetuating further crimes or offences or contraventions under any law. These offences involve not
only the use of computers but the Internet, cyberspace and the tools and techniques of World Wide Web as well.
While the worldwide scenario on cyber crime looks bleak, the situation in India is also not better. Major cyber
crimes reported in India are denial of services, defacement of web sites, spam, computer virus and worms,
pornography, cyber squatting, cyber stalking and phishing. Especially, cases of spam, hacking, cyber stalking and
email fraud are rampant in India. In the first half of 2006 itself, around 1000 Indian websites were attacked. The
Library and Information professionals are now handling huge databases, access to online journals and web-enabled
online public access catalogues, etc. Further, most of the big libraries especially academic libraries are now having
various kinds of networks like Local Area Network, Wide Area Network, etc. Library services are also being offered
in networked digital environment. Hence, the Library and Information Science professional should also be aware of
the cyber crimes and the ways and means to combat cyber crimes. In this context, this paper attempts to brief the
cyber crimes, its relevance to LIS professionals and suggests some precautious measures to combat cyber crimes.
Keywords: Cyber Crime; Computer Crime; Internet Crime; Information Frauds; LIS
Professionals
1. INTRODUCTION
The use of computers, Internet and network based services have increased in the libraries
of India. Indian libraries especially the academic and research libraries are widely using
computers for various purposes viz. circulation, cataloguing, information services, collection
development and serial control.
Integrated library automation software packages like SOUL, LIBSYS, AUTOLIB are
being widely used by the libraries. Most of the academic and special libraries have their own
web site and they provide Web enabled Online Public Access Catalogue (Web OPAC) services.
Some universities and research institutes have already started their own Institutional Repositories
* Madras Veterinary College Library, Vepery, Chennai – 600 007, Tamilnadu.
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(IR) and providing their own digital contents through Web. The number of digital libraries with
web presence is increasing day by day. Accessing the library services over Local Area Network
(LAN), Wide Area Network (WAN) and World Wide Web (WWW) become popular in Indian
universities. Most of the multi-campus universities provide their library services through their
Intranet connectivity.
All Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) have already formed an electronic journal
consortium in the name of INDEST and it is functioning well. A remarkable achievement in this
sector is the UGC-INFONET, an electronic journal consortium of University Grants Commission
of India, which provides access to thousands of electronic journals to more than one hundred
universities in India. The CSIR is having its own journal consortium and the Indian Council of
Agricultural Research which is the apex body for the 40 State Agricultural Universities (SAU)
functioning in India is in the process of establishing Consortium for e-Resources in Agriculture
(CeRA) to provide access to the electronic journals published in the area of Agricultural Sciences
which will benefit all Agricultural Universities and ICAR institutes functioning in India. It is
clear that the academic libraries in India are going more digital and the library services are being
offered in networked digital environment.
The above remarkable achievements made by Indian libraries in using computers, digital
networks and information technology is really a matter of pride to LIS professionals and others
involved in this regard but the associated problem that is causing serious concern is the rapid
raise in cyber crimes. With increased use of computers and Internet in homes and offices, there
has been a proliferation of cyber crimes in India. Since the LIS professionals are now using huge
computerized databases, e-mails, Internet, web-based networks, web-based OPACs, web-based
LIS services, resource sharing through digital networks, etc. it is need of the hour to familiarize
with the cyber crimes and information frauds that are taking place in India. In a situation where
around 1000 Indian web sites were attacked in the first half of 2006 itself, it is high time that the
LIS professionals should equip themselves to combat cyber crimes. In this context, this paper
attempts to brief the cyber crimes, its relevance to LIS professionals and suggests some
precautious measures to combat cyber crimes.
2. CYBER CRIMES
The invention of the computers has opened new avenues not only for the LIS
professionals but for the fraudsters as well. It is an evil having its origin in the growing
dependence on computers in modern life. There is a great talk about the cyber crimes nowadays.
The crimes such as frauds, forgery are traditional and the abuse of computer and the related
electronic media has given birth to a gamut of new types of crimes generally known as ‘Cyber
Crimes’ which has some peculiar features.
Cyber crimes which are also known as ‘Computer crimes’ ‘Internet crimes’ can be
defined as ‘any criminal activity that uses a computer either as an instrument, target or a means
for perpetuating further crimes or offences or contraventions under any law’.
The Cambridge dictionary defines Cyber Crimes as “Crimes committed with the use of
computers or relating to computers, especially through the Internet”.
These offences involve not only the use of computers but the Internet, cyberspace and the
tools and techniques of World Wide Web as well. A simple definition of these crimes would be
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“unlawful acts wherein the equipment transforming the information be it a computer or a mobile
is either a tool or a target or both”.
Joseph-Marie Jacquard, who devised a loom which was capable of doing repetition of a
series of steps in weaving of special fabrics, was discouraged by his own employees by acts of
sabotage as they were feared that their traditional employment and livelihood were threatened by
his device. This incident is treated as the ever first cyber crime in the history which had taken
place in 1820.
3. TYPES OF CYBER CRIMES
Cyber crimes can be categorized in to four broad categories viz., (i) data-related crimes;
(ii) network-related crimes; (iii) crimes of access; and (iv) computer-related crimes;
3.1 Data-related crimes
Data-related crimes include interception, modification, and theft.
3.2 Network-related crimes
Network-related crimes include interference and sabotage.
3.3 Crimes of access
Crimes of access include hacking and virus distribution;
3.4 Computer-related crimes
Computer-related crimes include aiding and abetting cyber criminals, computer
fraud, and computer forgery.
Duggal classified Cyber crimes into three major categories viz., (i) Cyber crimes against
persons; (ii) Cyber crimes against persons; and (iii) Cyber crimes against property).
3.5 Cyber crimes against persons
Include various crimes like transmission of child-pornography, harassment of any
one with the use of a computer such as e-mail
3.6 Cyber crimes against property
These crimes include computer vandalism (destruction of others' property),
transmission of harmful programmes.
3.6 Cyber crimes against Government
Cyber-terrorism is one distinct kind of crime in this category.
4. MAJOR CYBER CRIMES IN INDIA
Cyber crimes have gained momentum in India only in the recent past. According to the
Union Home Ministry of India, cyber crimes in India have sharply increased. There are no
concrete statistics but, according to Duggal, an advocate of Supreme Court of India and an Cyber
Law Expert, Indian corporate and government sites have been attacked or defaced more than 780
times between February 2000 and December 2002.
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As per the data of Home Ministry of India, 481 cases were filed under the IT Act in 2005
and Gujarat ranks first in cyber crimes which is followed by Andra Pradesh. Gujarat, Karnataka
and Punjab noted the sharpest increase in these crimes. It is also interesting to note that the
number of cyber crimes in Andra Pradesh and Tamilnadu declined as compared the previous
years. The following are some of the major types of cyber crimes came to light.
4.1 Financial crimes
Financial crimes are happening since time immemorial. But, the computer and the
Internet have given a new face for these criminals. Cheating, Credit Card Frauds, Money
laundering are the major crimes come under this category.
Recently, a website offered to sell Alphonso mangoes at a throwaway price which was
attracted a very few people. They have responded to and supplied the website with their credit
card numbers. The dot com company actually sent the Alphonso mangoes to those ordered in the
first phase. This thing was spread like wildfire which attracted thousands of people from all over
the country. They have responded and ordered mangoes by providing their credit card numbers
to the dot com operator. The web site owners took huge amounts of money using the credit card
numbers and then fled who are not traceable.
An employee of the Bank of India tapped his organisation’s computer network and
gathered data on all keys pressed, including passwords, by monitoring the CCTV. Finally, he
was caught.
Even though the actual value of losses accruing to cyber crime in India might not be
substantial, nearly 39 per cent of these cases are related to banks and financial institutions
excluding those of the government departments. The inference here is that criminals find banks
to be a lucrative target.
4.2 Cyber pornography
Cyber pornography crimes include pornographic websites; pornographic magazines
produced using computers to publish and print the material and the Internet to download and
transmit pornographic pictures, photos, writings etc.
The Air Force Balbharati School case (Delhi) is a recent case comes under this category
where a student of the School was teased by all his classmates for having a pockmarked face. He
who is tired of the cruel jokes, decided to get back at his tormentors and scanned photographs of
his classmates and teachers, morphed them with nude photographs and put them up on a website
that he uploaded on to a free web hosting service. The father of one of the class girls featured on
the website came to know about this and lodged a complaint with the police.
In Mumbai a Swiss couple gathered slum children and then forced them to appear for
obscene photographs. Then they upload these photographs to websites specially designed for
paedophiles. The Mumbai police arrested the couple under cyber pornography crime.
4.3 Sale of illegal articles
The law prohibits the sale of illegal articles but the Internet paves the way for the sale of
illegal articles. This crime would include sale of narcotics, weapons and wildlife etc., by posting
information on websites, auction websites, and bulletin boards or simply by using email
communication. It has been reported that many auction sites in India are believed to be selling
cocaine in the name of 'honey' or traditional medicine. The clip of the DPS students was kept for
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selling on the site called Bazee.com by a student from IIT Kharagpur is a recent case comes
under this category.
4.4 Online gambling
Online gambling is a general term for gambling using the Internet. There are millions of
websites which are hosted on servers abroad. They offer online gambling where gamblers upload
funds to the online gambling company, make bets or play the games that it offers, and then cash
out any winnings. In fact, it is believed that many of these websites are actually fronts for money
laundering. Cases of hawala transactions and money laundering over the Internet have been
reported.
Recent Indian case about cyber lotto was very interesting. Kola Mohan has invented the
story of winning the Euro Lottery. He himself created a website and an email address on the
Internet with the address 'eurolottery@usa.net.' Whenever accessed, the site would name him as
the beneficiary of the 12.5 million pound. After confirmation a Telgu newspaper published this
as a news. Kola Mohan collected huge sums from the public as well as from some banks for
mobilization of the deposits in foreign currency. However, the fraud came to light when a cheque
discounted by him with the Andhra Bank for Rs 1.73 million bounced. Mohan had pledged with
Andhra Bank the copy of a bond certificate purportedly issued by Midland Bank, London stating
that a term deposit of 12.5 million was held in his name.
4.5 Intellectual Property crimes (or) Cybersquatting
Recent researches indicate that Intellectual property crime or Cybersquatting is one of the
fastest-growing areas of criminal activity in the world which include software piracy, copyright
infringement, trademarks violations, theft of computer source code etc.
In India, Satyam Vs. Siffy is the most widely known case which comes under this
category. Bharti Cellular Ltd. filed a case in the Delhi High Court that some cyber squatters had
registered domain names such as barticellular.com and bhartimobile.com with Network solutions
under different fictitious names. The court directed Network Solutions not to transfer the domain
names in question to any third party and the matter is sub-judice. Similar issues had risen before
various High Courts earlier.
4.6 Email spoofing
A spoofed email is one that appears to originate from one source but actually has been
sent from another source. e.g. Rama has an e-mail address rama@yahoo.org. His enemy, Ravana
spoofs his e-mail and sends obscene messages to all her acquaintances. Since the e-mails appear
to have originated from Rama, his friends could take offence and relationships could be spoiled
for life. This kind of email spoofing is very common in India and recently one such incident took
place for one of our LIS colleague. Email spoofing can also cause monetary damage.
Email spoofing becomes a big problem in India. Gujarat Ambuja’s Executive case is a
best example for this crime where he pretended to be a girl and cheated an NRI who is based at
Abu Dhabi for crores of rupees by blackmailing tactics.
4.7 Forgery
Forgery has becoming a booming business in India. Counterfeit currency notes, postage
and revenue stamps, mark sheets etc can be forged using sophisticated computers, printers and
scanners.
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4.8 Cyber Defamation:
Cyber defamation is nothing but defamation takes place with the help of computers and /
or the Internet. e.g. someone publishes defamatory matter about someone on a website or sends
e-mails containing defamatory information to all of that person’s friends.
India’s first case of cyber defamation was reported when a company’s employee started
sending derogatory, defamatory and obscene e-mails about its Managing Director. The e-mails
were anonymous and frequent, and were sent to many of their business associates to tarnish the
image and goodwill of the company. Finally, the company was able to identify the employee
with the help of a private computer expert and moved the Delhi High Court. The court granted an
ad-interim injunction and restrained the employee from sending, publishing and transmitting e-
mails, which are defamatory or derogatory to the plaintiffs.
4.9 Cyber stalking
Cyber stalking involves following a person’s movements across the Internet by posting
messages on the bulletin boards frequented by the victim, entering the chat-rooms frequented by
the victim, constantly bombarding the victim with emails etc.
The first cyber stalking case filed by a lady was Ritu Kohli’s case. A friend of her
husband gave her telephonic number in the general Internet chat room. The general Internet
chatting facility is provided by some websites like MIRC and ICQ where any person can easily
chat without disclosing his/her true identity. The friend of her husband also encouraged this
chatters to speak in slang language to Mrs. Kohli. Finally the culprit was identified and taken
before law.
4.10 Email bombing
Email bombing refers to sending a large number of emails to the victim resulting in the
victim’s email account or mail servers crashing.
Simla Housing Board case is of this kind where a foreigner who had been residing in
Simla, India for almost thirty years wanted to avail of a scheme introduced by the Simla Housing
Board to buy land at lower rates. But, his application was rejected by SHB on the grounds that
the scheme was available only for citizens of India. The foreigner decided to take his revenge
and started sending thousands of mails to the Simla Housing Board till the SHB’s servers
crashed.
4.11 Data diddling
Data diddling is nothing but altering raw data just before it is processed by a computer
and then changing it back after the processing is completed. The NDMC Electricity Billing
Fraud Case that took place in 1996 is a typical example. The computer network was used for
receipt and accounting of electricity bills by the NDMC, Delhi. Collection of money,
computerized accounting, record maintenance and remittance in he bank were exclusively left to
a private contractor who was a computer professional. He misappropriated huge amount of funds
by manipulating data files to show less receipt and bank remittance.
4.12 Salami attacks
Salami attacks are used for the commission of financial crimes preferably in financial
institutions. The key here is to make the alteration so insignificant that in a single case it would
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go completely unnoticed. e.g. a bank employee inserts a program, into the bank’s servers, that
deducts a small amount of money (say Rs. 5 a month) from the account of every customer. No
account holder will probably notice this unauthorized debit, but the bank employee will make a
sizeable amount of money every month.
4.13 Denial of Service attack
This involves flooding a computer resource with more requests than it can handle. This
causes the resource (e.g. a web server) to crash thereby denying authorized users the service
offered by the resource. Another variation to a typical denial of service attack is known as a
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack wherein the perpetrators are many and are
geographically widespread.
It is very difficult to control such attacks. The attack is initiated by sending excessive
demands to the victim’s computer(s), exceeding the limit that the victim’s servers can support
and making the servers crash. Denial-of-service attacks have had an impressive history having,
in the past, brought down websites like Amazon, CNN, Yahoo and eBay.
4.14 Virus / Worm attacks
Viruses are programs that attach themselves to a computer or a file and then circulate
themselves to other files and to other computers on a network. They usually affect the data on a
computer, either by altering or deleting it.
Worms, unlike viruses do not need the host to attach themselves to. They merely make
functional copies of themselves and do this repeatedly till they eat up all the available space on a
computer’s memory. The VBS_LOVELETTER virus (better known as the Love Bug or the
ILOVEYOU virus) was reportedly written by a Filipino undergraduate. In May 2000, this deadly
virus became the world’s most prevalent virus. It struck one in every five personal computers in
the world. When the virus was brought under check the true magnitude of the losses was
incomprehensible.
4.15 Logic bombs
Logic bombs are event dependent programs. This implies that these programs are created
to do something only when a certain event (known as a trigger event) occurs. E.g. even some
viruses may be termed logic bombs because they lie dormant all through the year and become
active only on a particular date e.g. Chernobyl virus.
4.16 Trojan attacks
A Trojan is an unauthorized program which functions from inside what seems to be an
authorized program, thereby concealing what it is actually doing. There are many simple ways of
installing a Trojan in someone’s computer.
4.17 Internet time theft
This connotes the usage by an unauthorized person of the Internet hours paid for by
another person. In May 2000, the economic offences wing, IPR section crime branch of Delhi
police registered its first case involving theft of Internet hours. On detailed enquiry, the police
arrested Krishan Kumar, son of an ex-army officer, working as senior executive in a corporate
company who had stolen 107 of Internet time from other person’s account.
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4.18 Web jacking
Forceful taking of the control of a web site by cracking the password, is termed as ‘web
jacking’. In this case, actual owner of the website does not have any more control over what
appears on that website.
4.19 Phishing
Phishing is the act of sending an email to a user falsely claiming to be an established
legitimate business in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will
be used for identity theft. The email directs the user to visit a Web site where he or she is asked
to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social security, and bank
account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has issued. The Web site, however, is
bogus and set up only to steal the user’s information. Phishing combines the power of the
internet with universal human nature to defraud millions of people out of billions of dollars
across the globe. It is very important to note that nearly every internet user has received a
phishing email by now.
5. CYBER CRIMINALS
Any person who commits an illegal act with a guilty intention or commits a crime is
called an offender or a criminal. In this context, any person who commits a Cyber Crime is
known as a Cyber Criminal. It seems really difficult to believe but true that most of the amateur
hackers and cyber criminals are teenagers in the age group of 9 to 16. To them, who have just
begun to understand what appears to be a lot about computers, it is a matter of pride to have
hacked into a computer system or a website. These young rebels may also commit cyber crimes
without really knowing that they are doing anything wrong.
Persons who hack web sites with political motive are known as Hacktivists. The attacks
on approximately 200 prominent Indian websites by a group of hackers known as Pakistani
Cyber Warriors are a good example of political hacktivists at work. Hacking of web sites with
religious and social motive is also increasing across the globe. Sometimes displeased employees
of an organization can be turned as hacker. Earlier they had the option of going on strike against
their bosses. Now, with the increase independence on computers and the automation of
processes, it is easier for disgruntled employees to do more harm to their employers by
committing computer related crimes, which can bring entire systems down and cause heavy
monetary loss. It is a well known secret that extensive computerization has resulted in business
organizations storing all their information in electronic form. So, rival organizations employ
hackers to steal industrial secrets and other information that could be beneficial to them. The
temptation to use professional hackers for industrial espionage also stems from the fact that
physical presence required to gain access to important documents is rendered needless if hacking
can retrieve those.
6. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ACT 2000
Realising the importance of the enactment of suitable Act to combat cyber crimes,
the Government of India after careful consideration passed the Information Technology Act
2000. But, experts felt that the IT Act, 2000, is primarily meant to be a legislation to promote e-
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commerce and it is not very effective in dealing with several emerging cyber crimes like cyber
harassment, defamation, stalking and so on.
7. CYBER CRIMES AND ITS RELEVANCE TO LIS PROFESSIONALS
Most of the libraries in India, especially the academic libraries use of computers, Internet
and network based services to extend effective and efficient library and information services to
the students, research scholars, faculty members and scientists who form the membership base.
They are widely using computers for various purposes viz. circulation, cataloguing, information
services, collection development and serial control. Somebody either the library users or a
mischievous staff may unknowingly or intentionally, conceal (hides or keeps secret), destroy
(demolishes or reduces), alter (change in characteristics) or causes another to conceal, destroy,
and alter any computer source code used for a computer, computer program, computer system or
computer network in the Library. So, the LIS professionals should be very careful in this regard.
Further, LIS professionals are handling huge bibliographical databases to cater to the
information requirements of their user community. So, they should be aware of the data diddling
where somebody may alter the raw data just before a computer processes it and then changing it
back after the processing is completed. They should ensure enough safety and security to their
databases.
Most of the academic and special libraries have their own web site and they provide Web
enabled Online Public Access Catalogue (Web OPAC) services to its members. Some
universities and research institutes have already started their own Institutional Repositories (IR)
and providing their own digital contents through Web. The number of digital libraries with web
presence is increasing day by day. Considerable number of university libraries allows their users
to access the library services over Local Area Network (LAN), Wide Area Network (WAN) and
World Wide Web (WWW). So, the LIS professionals should be very careful about unauthorized
access to computer systems, networks and web sites which are known as hacking. It is important
to note that the Pakistan Hackerz Club, an active hacker’s group based at Pakistan, had hacked
the web sites of the Indian Parliament, Telephone Exchange of Ahmedabad, United Nations
(India) and Engineering Export Council. So, we must be prepared to prevent such hacking by
ensuring necessary safety and security measures.
Forming of E-journal consortium among universities and institutes with similar interest is
increasing while already the UGC has established UGC-Infonet consortium where access to
journals is fully in electronic. This facility can be disturbed by cyber criminals through Denial of
Service (DoS) attack i.e. flooding a computer resource with more requests than it can handle
which causes the resource e.g. a web server, to crash thereby denying authorized users the
service offered by the resource. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is another threat
wherein the perpetrators are many and are geographically widespread. It is very difficult to
control such attacks. The attack is initiated by sending excessive demands to the victim’s
computer(s), exceeding the limit that the victim’s servers can support and making the servers
crash. We should not forget the past incidences where websites like Amazon, CNN, Yahoo and
eBay faced this kind of attacks.
The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) reported that 430 websites
were attacked by cyber criminals during December 2006 alone.
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Under the circumstances, the Library and Information professionals may face any kind of
cyber crimes discussed in this article at any point of time. So, it is the need of the hour that the
LIS professionals should be aware of the different types of cyber crimes.
8. CYBER CRIME POLICE CELLS
Since the number of cyber crimes increases in India, the Central Bureau of Investigations
(CBI) has established a separate cell to look after the cyber crimes. Further, State Governments
were also requested to establish separate cells to take care of cyber crimes and Karnataka was the
first state to set up a Cyber Crime Police Station in 2001 to register and investigate cyber crimes
under the jurisdiction of Karnataka state. Following Karnataka, few other states started
establishing cyber crime cells and the details are furnished in Table-1.
Sl.
No.
Table: 1: URL of Cyber Crime Police Cells in India
City / State
Uniform Resource Locator
1 Bangalore, Karnataka www.cyberpolicebangalore.nic.in
2 Chennai, Tamilnadu www.chennaicitypolice.org/cyber.htm
3 Cuttack, Orissa http://orissapolice.nic.in/news/cyber.htm
4 Delhi, CBI Cyber Crime Cell http://cbi.nic.in
5 Hyderabad, Andra Pradesh www.cidap.gov.in/cybercrimes.aspx
6 Mumbai, Maharashtra http://www.cybercellmumbai.com/
Now, Cyber Labs are also being established in India to help cyber crime police and the
first Cyber lab in South India was established in Bangalore. Already such labs are functioning in
Thane and Mumbai. The cyber lab will provide training to police officers, prosecutors, military
police officers, bank officials, and others. It will train state police officers on cyber crime and
related issues.
9. PREVENTION OF CYBER CRIMES
‘Prevention is better than cure’ is not only meant for human health but for computers as
well. It is always better to take necessary steps to prevent cyber crimes. The following are some
of the useful tips to prevent cyber crimes to some extent.
DOs
• Ensure using a security program that gives you control over cookies that send
information back to Web sites.
• If your Web site serves up dynamic content from a database, consider putting that
database behind a second interface on your firewall, with tighter access rules than the
interface to your server.
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• Make sure web servers running your public site are physically separate and individually
protected from your internal corporate network.
• Put in a firewall and develop your content off line.
• Send credit card information only to secure web sites.
• Thoroughly check out the site you are doing business regularly.
• Use the latest anti-virus software, operating systems, Web browsers and email programs.
DON’T
• Allow your children to download files or software without your permission
• Allow your children to have face-to-face meetings or send their photographs online
• Arrange meetings with strangers
• Believe everything you read or see online
• Forget to check out the site you are doing business with thoroughly.
• Forget to make sure web servers running your public site are physically separate and
individually protected from your internal corporate network.
• Forget to protect your databases.
• Forget to put in a firewall and develop your content off line.
• Forget to take back up your Web site after every update, so you can re-launch it
immediately in case of a malicious defacement, if any.
• Forget to watch traffic and put host-based intrusion detection devices on your servers, if
you have a web site.
• Give out any information about yourself in a chat room
• Let all cookies in without monitoring them
• Post / host inappropriate content
• Respond to inappropriate messages or emails
• Respond to strangers who asks personal questions
• Reveal personal information which will help others to personally identify you e.g. real
name, address, telephone number, etc.
• Send credit card information to unknown sites
• Send your photos to people you don’t know very well
• Share your password with other people
• Tell others about personal or private information about your friends or family members
• Use adult / pornography sites
• Use obsolete / pirated anti-virus software, operating systems, Web browsers and email
programs.
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10. CONCLUSION
Cyber crimes in India are slowly evolving from a simple e-mail crime to more serious
crimes like hacking and source code theft. It is a known fact that given the unrestricted number
of free Web sites, the Internet is undeniably open to exploitation. Further, cases of spam,
hacking, cyber stalking and email fraud are rampant and, although cyber crimes cells have been
set up in major cities, the problem is that most cases remain unreported due to a lack of
awareness.
Therefore, the LIS professionals should be aware of the variety of cyber crimes taking
place across the globe and they should be prepared to combat such crimes in the library
environment.
REFERENCES
1. Arellano, N. (2007). “Computer Crime: Top Threats in 2007”. Available at http://www.crimeresearch.org/articles/Computer-crime-Top-threats-in-2007/2
Accessed on 10.06.2007.
2. Babu, M. and Parishat, M.G. (2004). “What is Cybercrime?” available at http://www.crimeresearch.org/analytics/702/
(11.10.2004). Accessed on 16.06.2007.
3. Chawki, M. (2006). “Phishing in Cyberspace: Issues and Solutions” available at
http://wwww.crime-research.org Accessed on 12.06.2007.
4. Cyber Crime Cell, Chennai City Police available at http://www.chennaicitypolice.org/cyber.htm
Accessed on 12.06.2007
5. Jose, R. (2007). Beware! Cyber Crime Net is Expanding. Financial Express 28.05.2007.
Available at www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=165434 Accessed on
15.06.2007.
6. Joshi, M.S. “Full Guide on Cyber Crimes in India” available at
http://www.indiaforensic.com/compcrime.htm Accessed on 10-06-2007
7. Lovet, G. (2007). “How Cyber Crime operations work and why they make money” available at
http://www.crime-research.org/analytics/2524/ (22.02.2007) Accessed on 10.06.2007.
8. Mohana Sundari, T. and Rathinasabapathy, G. (2005). “Emerging Challenges in using
Pharmacological Resources from the Internet”. Proceedings of the National Seminar on
Veterinary Pharmacology in Post WTO Era and 5 th Annual Conference of the Indian Society for
Veterinary Pharmacology and Toxicology, 24 –26, November 2005, Madras Veterinary College,
Chennai-7 pp.89.
9. Rathinasabapathy, G. (2005). “Cybermedicine: A Study on the Problems with Online Healthcare
Information Resources”. In: Proceedings of the Annual Conference of Medical Library
Association of India, NIMHANs, Bangalore.
10. Vijayashankar, N. (2005). “Understanding Cyber Crimes in India” available at
http://sify.com/news/internet/fullstory.php?id=13924964&page=2 Accessed on 15.06.2007
142

Digital Infrastructure and Technology Integration in
State Agricultural University Libraries in South
India: A Study
G. Rathinasabapathy * and A. Amudhavalli **
Abstract
The State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) are playing a pivotal role in education, research
and extension activities in the fields of agricultural sciences in India. The core activities of SAUs are
mainly depending on its library and information centres as information is an essential input for
education, research and extension. Since the prosperity of the country and the welfare of the vast
majority of the population are interconnected with the efficient harnessing of agriculture, further
strengthening of the library and information centres of SAUs is absolutely necessary. In this context,
this paper attempts to present the digital infrastructure available and the technology integration
activities of eight State Agricultural University (SAU) libraries in South India viz., Andra Pradesh
N.G.Ranga Agriculture University, Hyderabad; Sri Venkateswara Veterinary University, Tirupathi;
University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore; University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharward;
Karnataka Animal, Veterinary and Fishery Sciences University, Bidar; Tamilnadu Agricultural
University, Coimbatore; Tamilnadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Chennai and Kerala
Agricultural University, Mannuthy.
Key words: Digital Infrastructure, Technology Integration, State Agricultural University
Libraries, South India,
1. INTRODUCTION
India is an agricultural country and the share of agriculture including the allied
sectors in GDP is 18.6% in 2005. Agriculture accounts for 8.56% of India’s exports
and around 60% of the country’s population is employed in these sectors. Despite a
steady decline of its share in the GDP, agriculture is still the largest economic sector
and plays a significant role in the overall socio-economic development of India. The
achievements of Indian agriculture are possible due to the industrious efforts taken by
the educators, researchers and extension professionals in the field of agricultural
sciences. The State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) are playing a pivotal role in
education, research and extension activities in the fields of agricultural sciences in
India.
The core activities of SAUs are mainly depending on its library and
information centres as information is an essential input for education, research and
extension. Since the prosperity of the country and the welfare of the vast majority of
the population are interconnected with the efficient harnessing of agriculture, further
strengthening of the library and information centres of SAUs is absolutely necessary.
In this context, this paper attempts to present the digital infrastructure
available and the technology integration activities of eight State Agricultural
University (SAU) libraries in South India.
* Tamilnadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Chennai -600 007
** Professor and Head, Department of Information Science, University of Madras, Chennai – 600 005
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2. STATE AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITIES IN SOUTH INDIA
India has built in a strong base of agricultural education. Organized instruction
in agriculture at university level was introduced in the beginning of 20 th century when
five agricultural colleges were established in 1907. At the time of Independence, India
had only 17 Agricultural colleges, 3 Veterinary colleges and one Agricultural
Engineering College.
In 1964, the Kothari Commission headed by Dr. D.S.Kothari specifically
recommended the establishment of at least one Agricultural University in each state.
At present, there are 40 State Agricultural Universities in India which are governed by
the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), an apex body of the Government
of India. In South India which is comprising of Andra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and
Tamilnadu states and Puducherry Union Territory, eight State Agricultural
Universities are functioning are listed below with the year of establishment of each
university.
I. Andra Pradesh
(1) Andra Pradesh N.G.Ranga Agriculture University (ANGRAU),
Hyderabad (1964)
(2) Sri Venkateswara Veterinary University (SVVU), Tirupathi (2005)
II. Karnataka
(3) University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), Bangalore (1964)
(4) University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), Dharward (1986)
(5) Karnataka Animal, Veterinary and Fishery Sciences University,
(KAVFSU),Bidar (2005)
III. Kerala
(6) Kerala Agricultural University (KAU), Mannuthy (1971)
IV. Tamilnadu
(7) Tamilnadu Agricultural University (TNAU), Coimbatore (1976)
(8) Tamilnadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (TANUVAS),
Chennai (1989)
The Puducherry Union Territory which forms part of South India does not
have State Agricultural University.
3. AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
The Indo-American Agricultural Survey and Study Team in its final report on
ICAR Institutes and Agricultural University Libraries, recommended that every
agricultural university library is a special library which must be oriented to the service
of agriculture. Its collection and the clientele are both discreet. The agricultural
universities have recognized the need for proper library and information services and
established libraries with a planned collection of books, periodicals, reports and other
documents to meet the study and research needs of the specific clientele.
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4. DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE
A ‘Digital Infrastructure’ consists of computers, storage devices, network
cabling, switches and operating systems that support an organization's digital
operations. A survey had been conducted among the eight SAU libraries to know the
digital infrastructure available in the libraries.
4.1 Computers, Printers, Scanners
The survey conducted at the select eight SAU libraries revealed that all the
libraries are provided with computer systems and other digital infrastructure and the
details are furnished in Table-1.
Table-1: Digital Infrastructure available in SAU Libraries of South India
S.No. SAU Computer Printer Scanner
1 ANGRAU 20 3 2
2 KAU 25 4 1
3 KVAFSU 2 1 1
4 SVVU 2 1 1
5 TANUVAS 20 5 1
6 TNAU 15 2 1
7 UAS-B 15 2 1
8 UAS-D 14 1 1
4.2 Storage Devices
Another important component of digital infrastructure is storage device.
Earlier only magnetic tapes were used as storage devices. The advent of latest
techniques brought a variety of storage devices which include floppy disks, CD-ROM
disks, DVD, Optical disks and pen / flash disks where we can store gigabytes of
information. The study revealed that all the eight SAU libraries are having required
storage devices.
4.3 Network
The technology to connect or 'network' all these computers is another
component of Digital Infrastructure. The widely accepted standard that we all use
Ethernet, is faster and more affordable than ever before, and is the common carrier of
digital data in today' business world. Networking used to mean carrying a magnetic or
optical disk from one computer to another. Nowadays, Gigabit Ethernet is the
standard data highway for moving large files. It should already be the backbone of our
Digital Infrastructure, connecting our file server to our LAN switch to provide the
fastest access to files for users. The study revealed that out of eight SAU libraries, six
libraries have library network and connectivity to its LAN whereas only three libraries
are accessible over the Intranet of the university which connects its campuses. The
particulars in respect of library network facilities are furnished in Table-2.
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Table- 2: Library Network facilities in SAU Libraries
S.No. SAU Within the Library LAN Intranet
1 ANGRAU Y Y Y
2 KAU Y Y N
3 KVAFSU N N N
4 SVVU N N N
5 TANUVAS Y Y Y
6 TNAU Y Y N
7 UAS-B Y Y Y
8 UAS-D Y N N
Y = Yes. N = No
5. TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION
Technology Integration is a term used by educators to describe effective uses
of technology by teachers and students in education and research. Teachers use
technology to support instruction. When teachers integrate technology into their
classroom practice, learners are empowered to be actively engaged in learning.
6. TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION IN LIBRARIES
Technology integration is not only done by teachers but LIS professionals as
well. Earlier, librarians were putting people together with the books, journals,
magazines and information they need. But, today librarians are expected to be expert
at troubleshooting their computers, creating web pages and to do virtual reference
services.
Therefore, librarians are using all available technologies in library and
information centre management to extend effective and efficient LIS services to the
user community and try their level best to cater to the ever increasing information
requirements of their clients. Integration of technologies in library and information
centres empowers their user community to be actively engaged in learning, teaching
and research.
Most of the Librarians are integrating technologies to achieve the following
which will ensure optimum utilization of the valuable library resources by the user
community.
1) Automation
2) Networking
3) Digitization
4) Electronic surveillance
5) Electronic Library
6.1 Automation
In libraries, automation refers to the process of automating functions such as
acquisition, circulation, cataloging and serial control. Library automation ensures
effective and efficient services to the user community. Nowadays, most of the
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libraries, especially academic libraries have automated their services. In some
libraries, at least the circulation functions are automated so that the charging,
discharging and reservation of documents can be done effectively.
As far as the automation of SAU libraries are concerned, the ICAR has
liberally funded the libraries to procure SOUL (Software for University Library),
developed by INFLIBNET, an Inter-University Centre of the University Grants
Commission. The SAUs were also supported by ICAR under NATP for
retroconversion of bibliographical records, procurement of hardware and other
components required for automation.
As far as the select eight SAU libraries in this study are concerned, all the
libraries had automated their libraries except Sri Venkateswara Veterinary University,
Tirupathi. The details to what extent they automated their library functions are
furnished below in Table-3.
Table-3: Library Automation in SAU Libraries
S. No. SAU
Automation
Acquisition Circulation Technical
Processing
Serial
Control
1 ANGRAU N Y Y Y
2 KAU Y Y Y Y
3 KVAFSU N Y N N
4 SVVU N N N N
5 TANUVAS Y Y Y Y
6 TNAU N Y N N
7 UAS-B Y Y Y Y
8 UAS-D N Y N N
Y = Yes.
N = No
6.2 Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC)
Most of the automated libraries are providing Online Public Access Catalog
(OPAC) which provides access to the library's holdings via a computer monitor,
replacing the traditional card catalog. Nowadays, libraries started providing OPAC
services over the Intranet / Web which is known as Web OPAC. The Web OPAC
services offered by the SAUs are accessible over the LAN/Intranet of the university
but not made available on public domain through World Wide Web. Details of OPAC
facility offered by SAU libraries are furnished in Table-4.
6.3 Library Networking
Networking is nothing but connecting two or a group of computers including
the hardware, software using cables or other suitable tools and techniques to share the
resources. Library networking refers to the networking of the computers available
within the library and Local Area Network / Intranet of the University. Library
networking within the library connects only the computers available in the library
alone whereas the LAN connectivity, which usually connects all the departments of a
campus, enables the users to access the library services over the LAN. The Intranet
connects all the campuses of a university so that the library services can be utilized by
all the campuses of the university. The particulars in respect of library networking are
furnished in Table-2.
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Table- 4: OPAC / Web OPAC Facilities in SAU Libraries
S.No. SAU OPAC WEB OPAC
1 ANGRAU Y Y
2 KAU Y Y
3 KVAFSU Y N
4 SVVU N N
5 TANUVAS Y Y
6 TNAU Y Y
7 UAS-B Y Y
8 UAS-D Y N
Y = Yes. N = No
6.4 Digitization
Digitization means acquiring, converting, storing and providing information in
a computer format that is standardized, organized and available on demand from
common system. Digitization enables us to convert the manuscripts into compressed
digital signals with specialized scanners and stored systematically for future
reference. SAU Libraries started digitizing the Theses / Dissertations submitted by
their research scholars as part of their master’s and doctoral programmes since these
are valuable documents come under primary source of information and contain
information with research value. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)
started funding the SAU libraries for digitizing the abstracts of the theses /
dissertations and the full-text of award won theses through a World Bank funded
project ‘National Agricultural Technology Project’. Under this project, the SAUs
under study received grants exclusively for digitization. The details of digitization
facility available at these universities are furnished in Table-5.
Table-5: Digitization Facilities available in SAU Libraries
S.No. SAU Is there a
Digitization
Unit?
148
No. of
computers
available in
the DU
Software used for
Digitization
1 ANGRAU Y 2 Vicidocs
2 KAU Y 2 Aligator Retriever
3 KVAFSU N N N
4 SVVU N N
5 TANUVAS Y 1 Digit
6 TNAU Y 2 NA
7 UAS-B Y 5 NA
8 UAS-D Y 4 Docushare
6.5 Electronic Library
Electronic Library is another example for technology integration in Libraries.
Electronic library is nothing but the Library's collection of electronic resources which
includes full text journals, books, theses, newspapers and other documents that the
Library has electronic access to as well as references to thousands of journal articles
and links to useful web sites. Electronic libraries are becoming very popular among

students, research scholars, faculty members and scientists as they facilitate them to
(i) search for a particular journal or newspaper article; (ii) full text book titles; (iii)
browse electronic resources by subject; (iv) access many full text journal and
newspaper articles both on and off-campus; (v) find good websites relevant to a
particular subject area, discipline, topic, etc.
Establishing an electronic library in the library is become possible only by
technology integration and Librarians are playing a pivotal role in design and
development of electronic libraries.
As far as the SAU libraries under this study are concerned, the TANUVAS,
ANGRAU and TNAU are subscribing electronic journals at present and the other five
libraries are yet to start subscribing e-journals. It is very important to note that the
TANUVAS ranks first in e-journal subscription with 81 titles. As far as the CD-ROM
databases and other CD-ROM products are concerned, all these libraries had
established a good collection and the details are furnished in Table – 6.
Table -6: CD-ROM databases/Products available in SAU Libraries
S.No. SAU CD-ROM databases CD-ROM Products
1 ANGRAU 5 -
2 KAU 16 203
3 KVAFSU 1 NA
4 SVVU 2 NA
5 TANUVAS 5 35
6 TNAU 2 -
7 UAS-B 4 NA
8 UAS-D 14 NA
NA = Not available
It has been observed that none of the above SAU library has acquired
electronic books under collection development. Though there are 40 SAUs in India
and 8 in South India, none of them put their OPAC in public domain which can
facilitate access through World Wide Web.
Though the subscription cost of print and e-journals are sky rocketing, there
are hundreds of open source full-text journals available on the Internet where a good
number of journals are of scholarly in content and peer reviewed. So, even there is no
sufficient financial support from the universities for e-journal subscription, the
librarians can compile the URLs of all open source e-journals and put it on the
library’s web site / OPAC to ensure optimum utilization of these valuable resources
by their clients.
The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has taken a major
initiative in this regard through a World Bank funded project ‘National Agricultural
Innovation Project’ (NAIP) to form an e-journal consortia which is named as ‘CeRA
(Consortium for e-Resources for Agriculture). Under the consortia all the 40 State
Agricultural Universities, Central Agricultural University and major ICAR Institutes
functioning in India will be provided with access to e-journals and other scholar e-
contents.
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6.6 Electronic surveillance
Libraries are not always safe and secure places and they are facing a wide
variety of security concerns which includes the theft and mutilation of library
materials. Therefore, the mission of a library includes library security which aims to
protect the library resources by creating a secure and peaceful environment to enhance
educational and professional pursuits of all those concerned with the library.
Technology integration plays a vital role in this context and the librarians are
making use of the technological advancements in this area. They are installing
electronic security systems to overcome the security threats to a greater extent. These
electronic security systems which typically provide burglar protection, collection
security, access control and video surveillance are good examples for technology
integration in libraries.
The present survey revealed that out of eight SAU libraries, only the
TANUVAS has established Electronic Video Surveillance facility in its central
library. The other libraries are yet to establish such facilities.
It is also observed that none of the SAU libraries covered by this study has
established Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) system in the library which is
highly essential in these days to prevent unethical losses suffered by the libraries.
7. CONCLUSION
Establishing required digital infrastructure in libraries especially
academic libraries is absolutely necessary and need of the hour to ensure optimum
utilization of information resources available in the library. Keeping this in view, the
study had been undertaken among the eight State Agricultural University Libraries in
South India. The study revealed that almost all the eight libraries are equipped with
required digital infrastructure except the two newly established viz., Sri Venkateswara
Veterinary University, Tirupathi and Karnataka Veterinary, Animal and Fishery
Sciences University, Bidar.
Further, the study revealed that most of the digital infrastructure available in
the libraries were procured under NATP, a World Bank funded project of the Indian
Council of Agricultural Research. Thus, the role played by the ICAR in modernising
the libraries of SAU libraries is really laudable. It is also suggested that the ICAR
shall give priority for modernisation of the SAU and ICAR institute libraries under
National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP), which is funded by the World Bank.
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REFERENCES
1. Bhatia, J.S. (2001). “Agricultural Education: A Career Guide”. Indian Council of
Agricultural Research, New Delhi – 110 002, pp. 1-10.
2. Breeding, M. (2000). “Technologies for sharing library resources”. Information
Today & Tomorrow 17.9: pp.60-62.
3. Kalam, A.P.J.A. (2004). “The Second Green Revolution and beyond”. University
News 42.5: pp.16-19.
4. Library Automation / Technology Glossary available at http://www.libraryhq.
com/glossary.html Accessed on 10-06-2007
5. Mahadevappa, M. (2001). “Addressing Financial Constrains of State Agricultural
Universities”. University News, 39.43: 3-6.
6. Perumalsamy, K. (2000). “Role of Library in Agricultural Information System”.
University News, 38.2: pp. 6-9.
7. Rathinasabapathy, G. and Amudhavalli, A. (2005). Resource Sharing among State
Agricultural University and ICAR Institute Libraries in India through Web Portal. In:
Proceedings of Delivery of Information Services through Distributed Digital
Environment. 23 rd Annual Convention and Conference of SIS. Andhra University:
268-277. Visakapatnam: SIS.
8. Rathinasabapathy, G. and A. Amudhavalli (2006). AGRILIBNET: (Agricultural
Libraries Network): A Web Portal for Information Sharing. International Conference
on Digital Libraries 2006 Conference Papers Vol. I. pp. 188-199
9. Rathinasabapathy, G. and A. Amudhavalli (2006). ICT Implementation in State
Agricultural University Libraries in South India: A Study. NACLIN 2006 Seminar
Volume. pp. 182
10. Vibhuti, N.B. (2003). “Need for Networking in Agriculture Libraries and Information
Centres”. ILA Bulletin, 39.3: pp. 33-36.
151

Knowledge Management in Academic Institute and
Role of Knowledge Managers
Sanjay Gupta * , Vasundhra Kumari ** and Anukampa Negi ***
Abstract
The rapid advancement in the means of communication has changed the way of handling,
storing and disseminating the information. The digital revolution has altered the intellectual functions
of libraries and information managers. The huge data, which is being created in the database systems,
is of no use if not being handled and stored properly. The information managers have to play a
significant role in managing internal as well as external resources so that the scholars, researchers
and faculty of an academic institute/university can make optimum use of the available data resources
to carry out their research work. The importance of managing the knowledge has been recognized from
the day of evolution of mankind. However the systematic study of knowledge management as an area of
study came into existence in the 90’s. The present paper describes the evolution of knowledge
management; the important issues of knowledge management related to academic libraries and the
role of knowledge managers in disseminating the right information to right reader in right way at right
time effectively and efficiently.
INTRODUCTION
The term knowledge is the fact or condition of knowing something with
familiarity gained through experiences or associations. The most commonly used
definition of knowledge is “the ideas or understandings which an entity possesses that
are used to take effective action to achieve the entity’s goal.” Knowledge is the full
utilization of data and information, coupled with the potential of people’s skill,
competencies, ideas, intuitions, commitments and motivations. Knowledge
Management is a new discipline in the library and information environment. The
technological revolution i.e. the growth of global networks has accelerated the use of
knowledge management in many organizations including those in the library and
information environment.
There is no universal definition of Knowledge Management. Knowledge
management is the explicit and systematic management of vital knowledge and its
associated processes of creation, organization, diffusion, use and exploitation. It is a
framework within which the organization views all its processes as knowledge
processes. It focuses on ‘Doing the Right Thing’ instead of ‘Doing Things Right’
based on the common saying ‘Prevention is better than cure’
The term is used loosely to refer to a broad collection of organizational
practices and approaches related to generating, capturing, disseminating know how
and other content relevant to the organizational business. In a broader sense
Knowledge management can be defined as an organization or community’s planned
approach to collecting, evaluating, cataloging, integrating, sharing, improving and
generating value from its intellectual and information based assets.
* Librarian, Sant Longowal Institute of Engg. & Tech., Longowal 148 106
** Librarian, KV No.1, Patiala Cantt. Patiala 147 001
*** M.Lib.I.Sc. Student
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Knowledge Management may be defined as a process of creating, storing,
sharing and re-using organizational knowledge (Know – How) to enable an
organization to achieve its goal and objectives.
Organizations actually go about acquiring, sharing and creating new
knowledge. The various interpretations of KM are given below to have a better
understanding of its organizational impact:
• It is the process of collecting, organizing, classifying and disseminating information
throughout an organization, so as to make it purposeful to those who need it.
• It refers to policies, procedures and technologies employed for operating a
continuously updated linked pair of networked databases.
• It aims to capture the knowledge that employees really need in a Central repository
and filter out the surplus.
• It is a means of ensuring a complete development and implementation environment
designed for use in specific function requiring expert system support.
• It concerns organizing and analyzing information in a computer databases. This
knowledge can be readily shared throughout the organization.
• It involves identification of categories of knowledge needed to support the overall
library activities.
• It combines indexing, searching and push technology to help libraries in organizing
data stored in multiple sources and deliver only relevant information to users.
• It, in general, tries to organize and make available important know how wherever and
whenever it’s needed.
• It involves mapping knowledge and information resources both online and off line;
training; guiding and equipping users with knowledge access tools and monitoring
outside news and information.
• It incorporates intelligent searching, categorization and accessing of data from
disparate databases, e-mail and files.
• It involves understanding the relationships of data; identifying and documenting rules
for mapping data; and assuring that data are accurate and maintain integrity.
• It helps in facilitation of autonomous coordination of decentralized subsystems that
can state and adapt their own objectives.
EVOLUTION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT (KM)
Dr. Ranganathan was the first person who abruptly marked that Universe of
subjects is synonymous to Universe of Knowledge and he had proposed the concept
of knowledge management explicitly. Knowledge Management is an approach for
addressing the information overload that has evolved over the last few years. The
importance of knowledge has been recognized from the very first day of mankind
evolution; however the systematic study of knowledge as a management and scientific
discipline began during 1990s. A holistic view considers knowledge to be present in
ideas, judgments, talents, root causes, relationships, perspectives and concepts.
Knowledge is stored in the individual brain or encoded in organizational processes,
documents, products, services, facilities and systems. The table given below
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summarizes evolution of Knowledge Management during last five decades:
2000-
Knowledge Management
Knowledge Sharing Culture
Enterprise Integration
Intellectual Capital Harnessing
The 90s
Learning Organization
Market Valuation
Information Systems
Intranets/Extranets
Re-engineering
The 80s
TQM
Downsizing
The 70s
Strategic Planning
Portfolio Management
Automation
The 60s
Centralization and Decentralization
Conglomeration
The 50s
Diversification
EDP
Quantitative Management
Management by Objectives (MBO)
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PROCESS
Davenport explains that Knowledge Management (KM) is viewed as a
‘process is about acquisition, creation, packaging and application of reuse of
knowledge’. It includes all the terms and technologies described below:
1. Tacit Knowledge: individual’s expertise, memories, values and beliefs,
viewpoint and values.
2. Explicit Knowledge: process of communication from one place to another in a
systematic way and is more formal and codified.
3. Corporate Memory: Know-How of an organization. It relates to problem –
solving, project experiences, and human resource management.
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4. Intellectual assets/Knowledge assets: similar terms which comprises
knowledge assets regarding products, technologies and market that a business
own.
5. Information Economics: study of the clear value of information to an
organization.
6. Data Mining: the exploration and analysis of automatic and semiautomatic
means of large quantities of data in order to discover meaningful patterns and
rules.
7. Knowledge Representation: the process of describing and presenting usable
way of knowledge known by a person.
8. Knowledge Mapping: finding existing knowledge in an organization and
creating a detailed picture of skills.
9. Concept Mapping: the visual summary of ideas or topics is related to each
other.
10. Knowledge Engineer: a person responsible of acquiring knowledge and
developing data and rules for expert systems.
STEPS IN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
1. Knowledge Capture: a systematic procedure for organizing, structuring
knowledge to make it accessible and usable to users.
2. Knowledge Organization: an organization that values and uses its own
knowledge in reflective ways that lead to profound shifts in directions, values,
beliefs and operating assumptions.
3. Knowledge Preservation: after collecting and codifying the knowledge, it must
be stored in suitable form in the organization’s knowledge base.
MODULES OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
The KM system is primarily based on eight vital modules. These modules are
(i) Information (ii) Expertise (iii) Collaboration (iv) Team (v) Learning (vi)
Intelligence (vii) Knowledge Transfer and (viii) Knowledge Mapping
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN ACADEMIC LIBRARIES
The main functions of an academic institute are education and research. To
achieve these functions there is a need to use the whole knowledge and information
accurately, precisely and systematically. Academic libraries, now a days known as
information centers, are established in support of the mission of their parent
institutions to generate knowledge, and people equipped with knowledge in order to
serve the society and advance the well-being of mankind. In the digital age, academic
libraries face challenges from both within (academia) and without (the business
sector).
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To prove their relevance and value, academic libraries must strive to provide
the right amount of information to the right clientele properly with appropriate
financial and human resources to improve organizational performance. The role of
knowledge management in libraries today has become more vital along-with the
development of knowledge economy. The major components of knowledge
management in libraries are:
1. Human Resource Management
2. Knowledge innovation
3. Information Technology
4. Knowledge Dissemination
The academic libraries should adopt new policies, strategies and
implementation of knowledge management for rendering qualitative services to its
users so as to increase faith in the organization. The main objective of an academic
library is to serve as an institution to nurture a reading society and to provide the
required information to promote reading and knowledge. Successful knowledge
system involves “package knowledge” in the process of doing real work.
OBJECTIVES OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN LIBRARIES
In the knowledge economy era, the libraries will attach importance to
vocational training and lifelong education of library staff to raise their knowledge
level and ability of acquiring and innovating knowledge. The main objectives of
implementing knowledge management in an academic library are:
• An all-round improvement of library staff’s
• To promote relationships in and between libraries and library users.
• To promote knowledge innovation.
• To strengthen knowledge internetworking and to quicken knowledge flow.
• To carry out searches on development and application of information
resources.
TECHNIQUES AND TOOLS OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
1. Financial Management: Information resources are the basic components of
academic library. Without finance information resources can not be acquired
and accessed.
2. Cost Analysis: For efficient and effective knowledge management cost
analysis is the need of the hour.
3. Application of IT: Knowledge is the application of IT in an information
handling activities. The induction of IT in libraries has to be addressed more
as a major change in management exercise than providing technological
solutions to the existing problems.
4. Standards: Standards are important for knowledge management,
standardization in materials techniques and pattern of service
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is quite important. The exchange of information is possible only if compatible
standards and techniques for information and knowledge transfers are
followed.
5. Information Retrieval Tools: It does not matter how much information is
available in the databases unless and until it is being retrieved for use.
Information retrieval offers the required knowledge through free text search
and search with advanced algorithms so that all the relevant knowledge can be
retrieved.
6. Meta Data: Metadata is simply data about data which helps the users to
retrieve the required information easily.
BARRIERS TO IMPLEMENT PROPER KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
SYSTEM
To keep pace with the challenges the academic librarians have to increase their
operational efficiency within the limited budgets allocated. The most effective tool
that can help in this reference is Knowledge Management. O’Dell and Grayson have
listed the following barriers in the proper implementation of knowledge management:
• Ignorance-not knowing who has the right information required for the job.
• Lack of time to find out and absorb the best practices recommended
• Lack of a relationship between the source and recipient of knowledge
• Time lag taken to implement best practices recommended across departments.
BENEFITS OF IMPLEMENTING KM
The benefit of implementing KM in academic library are:
Benefits:
• Better ROI (Return on Investment)
• Improved measures of performance
• A greater understanding of organizational goals
• Lesson learned on organizational change
• Understanding user’s requirement through constant evaluation of the services
and its improvement
• An opportunity to see oneself not just service oriented, but mostly value
oriented
THE ROLES OF KNOWLEDGE PROFESSIONALS FOR KNOWLEDGE
MANAGEMENT
Knowledge Management has emerged as a key concern of organizations. Earlier
librarians have been regarded as part of the supportive staff of the organization,
working quietly in the background, often uninvolved in any of the critical
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functions of the organization. Patricia Battin and Brian Hawkins made the following
observation:
“Librarians can no longer meet the information needs of faculty and students through
the traditional avenue of simply adding to their collections.” As librarian one must
extend their expertise beyond collection management to knowledge management. The
librarians have to extend their expertise in selecting, organizing, and preserving
information to new forms of less formal, unpublished material, we must be willing to
get outside the routines and the walls of the traditional library and work more directly
with technologists, faculty, and students. It means librarians will not be merely the
custodians of information but they will act as knowledge managers who will work
with users in collecting and analyzing strategic intelligence and to act as trainers and
consultants to transfer knowledge throughout the organization. In this new role the
knowledge managers will be:
• Knowledge management developers, working more closely with faculty and
students to design, organize, and maintain a broader range of digital assets;
• Knowledge management integrators, having a more active role in the
educational and research mission of university, integrating information
resources and services in course and research projects;
• Knowledge management educators; teaching and training students and faculty
information literacy and how to organize, preserve, and share their own
information resources;
• Knowledge management researchers, applying library and information science
and new digital technology to create new organizational (metadata), retrieval,
and storage (preservation) options.
CONCLUSION
In the present scenario of change where everyday new technologies are
emerging so knowledge management is the only tool to keep oneself in the race.
Knowledge management is a powerful tool for promoting innovation, realizing and
reengineering the various aspects of day to day activities of an organization. The
utility of knowledge management in an academic organization / library can not be
ignored. The knowledge is growing very fast pace in each and every aspect of life and
it is very difficult for the professionals to disseminate the available information to the
deserving person without using the emerging techniques. The application of
knowledge management is the only solution to acquire, store and retrieve the
information effectively. The knowledge management helps library professionals in
improving the services being rendered to their users. Information professionals have
to recast their roles as knowledge professional. The librarian's roles should not be
limited to being the custodians of information but they have to acquire skills to keep
themselves updated so as to cope intelligently and objectively for the effective and
efficient knowledge management in an academic institute.
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REFERENCES
1. Abram, Stephen. 1997 Knowledge Management: Is this the Answer?
http://www.informart.ca/sla/km/abram
2. Ahmed, P. K., Lim, K.K., and Loh, A.Y.E. (2002). Learning through Knowledge
Management. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
3. Branin, J.J. (2003). Knowledge Management in Academic Libraries: Building the
Knowledge Bank at the Ohio State University. Journal of Library Administration,
39(4):41-56
4. Broadbeht, Marianne. 1996 The Phenomenon of Knowledge Management: What Does it
Mean to the Information Profession? http://informationoutlook.com/may/ broadben.html
5. Davenport, Thomas H. and Lawrence Prusak. 1993. Blow Up The Corporate Library.
International Journal of Information Management 13, no. 6: 405-412.
6. DiMattia, S. and Oder, N. (1997). Knowledge Management: Hope, Hype, or Harbinger?
Library Journal, 122(15):33-35.
7. Holsapple, C. W. (2003). (Ed.). Handbook on Knowledge Management. Berlin: Springer.
8. Jantz, R.C. (2001). Knowledge management in academic libraries: special tools and
processes to support information professionals. Reference Services Review, 29(1):33.
9. Murray, Philip C. 1995. Information, Knowledge, and document management technology
http://www.ktic.com/topic6/
10. Rao, J N. Knowledge Management by Library and Information Centers. University News
vol.40, no.44; 2002 pp 4-10
11. Shukla, A. and Srinivasan, R. (2002). Designing Knowledge Management Architecture:
How to Implement Successful Knowledge Management Programs. New Delhi, India:
Response Books.
12. The International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) 69th General Conference
and Council, (Berlin, Germany, August 2003). http://www.ifla.org/ IV/ifla69/prog03.htm
13. Townley, C.T. (2001). Knowledge Management and Academic Libraries. College &
Research Libraries, 62(1):44-55.
14. Warier, Sudhir. Knowledge Management. New Delhi, India: Vikas, 2003
159

Knowledge Communication in Academic and Research
Environment
D. S. Thakur *
Abstract
Like business and industry organizations, communicating professional knowledge in
educational organizations is a key activity in the organization. The paper focuses on the transfer of
knowledge through communication across the organization and it highlights different approaches of
knowledge communication adopted to communicate in educational organizations. The tree of
knowledge grows with the communication and sharing of knowledge. Every organization identifies key
approaches to communicate and share the existing knowledge across the organization to achieve the
desired goals. Interaction and knowledge communication give a new dimension to the existing
knowledge and ongoing projects. Knowledge team should develop a mechanism or network of
knowledge specialists who have treasure house of human knowledge. Platform of communication and
sharing of ideas, insights and knowledge resides among the intellectuals must be developed to nurture,
strengthen and regenerate the knowledge. New ICT tools enhance the communication through
knowledge sharing capabilities. It also highlights barriers in communication of knowledge among
experts and decision makers.
Keywords: Knowledge Communication; Knowledge Management.
KNOWLEDGE COMMUNICATION
Knowledge is one of the most important resources to an organization whether
it is academic, research, business and industrial organization. Educational, learning
and research organizations are facing a lot of pressure to process, manage and
communicate knowledge in the fast changing world. Like business and industry
organizations, communicating professional knowledge in educational organizations is
a key activity in the organization. The paper focuses on the transfer of knowledge
through communication across the organization and it highlights different approaches
of knowledge communication adopted to communicate in educational organizations
and workout the complex issues. Higher education organizations are the ocean of
knowledge that can best be leveraged for exploiting the results of researches. There is
a need for change in traditional culture of higher education due to the growing
complexities, differentiation and multidisciplinary academic and research work.
Traditional knowledge of books, journals, documents, reports, articles, case studies,
dissertations, theses and other tools are known as knowledge assets of the
organization and these traditional knowledge assets are being converted into digital
form, which can be easily stored, accessed, transferred, preserved and reused to
strengthen the knowledge base among the community of researchers and improve
organizational performance. The efficient and effective transfer and communication
of knowledge, experiences, and insights among the intellectuals can be done
effectively through the information and communication technology (ICT) tools. “…
Knowledge depends very much on the point of observation. Where you stand or what
you know determines what you see or what you choose to be relevant”. 1
Organizations are making efforts to capitalize on what they know and reuse it for
value addition and further innovations. Most successful organizations of today are
* National University of Educational Planning and Administration, 17-B, Sri Aurobindo Marg, New
Delhi – 110016, INDIA ,dsthakur@hotmail.com
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those, which are more adaptable, resilent, and quick to change directions and care to
the anticipated demands of their clients and employees.
A great deal of organizational information and knowledge is stored in various
forms, in the form of data that are collected through the daily activities and operations
of the research organization. In some cases, it is important to offer immediate access
to the data and information in order to make short-term decisions, in other cases
information is aggregated, verified and summarized to provide a longer-term
perspective. Sometimes, knowledge cannot be fully utilized in the absence of
adequate communication infrastructure. Knowledge rich organizations generate value
from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. One of the most important
knowledge management activities of any academic organization is to collect,
disseminate and communicate knowledge in the organization. “In order to manage
knowledge assets, we need not merely to identify them but to understand them – in
depth – in all their complexity: where they exist, how they grow, how managers’
actions affect their viability”. 2 Through effective communication of knowledge,
people can work and think over cross-purposes with each other on different facets of
the issue. As a result, the tree of knowledge grows more with communication, sharing
of ideas and transfer of knowledge through talks and discussions, lectures, debates
and conversations, face-to-face communication, conferences, workshops and
seminars. Knowledge communication practices are best supported through IT tools
and Web-enabled infrastructure and practices. Web-enabled opportunities and
practices not only deploy the new best practices to communicate, transfer and share
knowledge but also offer new avenues to preserve and reuse the existing knowledge
to spur innovations. The development of wireless communication technology has
enabled the people to carry networked digital devices such as cellular phone, PDA,
notebook computers and several other communication tools such as telephone, video
conferencing, chat rooms, instant messaging, SMS (Short Message Service), E-mails,
discussion forums, audio and video messages, unified messaging, etc., which offer
new ways to enrich communication, learning and knowledge transfer. However, some
issues relating to proper timings of communication for correct planning, quality of
knowledge transfer, management’s attitude towards views of experts and intellectuals,
lack of proper recognition, exposition, appreciation and involvement of experts in
discussions and important decisions are hurdles in the communication of knowledge.
APPROACHES OF KNOWLEDGE COMMUNICATION
In this article, some significant approaches of knowledge communication have
been discussed which are being followed in the National University of Educational
Planning and Administration (NUEPA) and the National Council of Educational
Research and Training (NCERT) to communicate and share knowledge among
individuals, groups and organizations. These approaches are being pursued to bring
qualitative change in the working and services across the organization to achieve the
desired goals.
National University of Educational Planning and Administration is a premier
organization established by the Ministry of Human Resource Development,
Government of India. It is dealing with capacity building and research in planning and
management of education not only in India but also in South Asia. In recognition of
the pioneering work done by the organization in the field of educational planning and
administration, the Government of India have empowered it to award its own degrees
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y way of conferring it the status of Deemed to be University in August 2006. Like
any Central University, NUEPA is fully maintained by the Government of India.
With specialization in policy, planning and management in education, NUEPA
is the professional wing of the Government of India. The prime concerns of NUEPA
are with capacity building and research in educational policy, planning and
management through research, training, consultancy and dissemination. NUEPA's
origin can be traced to UNESCO Regional Center for Educational Planners and
Administrators in 1961-62, in 1965, it was renamed as Asian Institute of Educational
Planning and Administration. On the completion of the 10-year contract with
UNESCO, the Government of India took it over and renamed the Institute as National
Staff College for Educational Planners and Administrators in 1970. Subsequently the
institute was renamed as National Institute of Educational Planning and
Administration in 1979 emphasizing on research besides staff development.
Promoting regional cooperation and international understanding in the field of
human resource development is one of its major goals. Sharing of experience and
resources, exchange of expertise and information, are some of the steps that NUEPA
takes in the direction of achieving such collective self-reliance among the developing
countries. Both national and international delegates are encouraged to visit the
institute. Study visits, regional seminars, workshops and short and long term training
courses in educational planning and administration are organized for them. In the past,
foreign participants have come from a wide array of regions including South, East and
West Asia; Far East; Latin America; the Pacific; East, West and Southern Africa;
Canada; Australia; USA and UK. NUEPA has also organized special tailor-made
course for the benefit of international delegates e.g., from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka,
China, etc.
NCERT is an apex resource organization established in New Delhi on 1 st
September 1961 as an autonomous organization registered under societies
Registration Act of 1860 to assist and advise the Central and State Governments on
academic matters related to school education in India. It is fully funded by the
Government of India and provides academic and technical support for improvement
of school education in India. It undertakes research, development, training, extension,
publications and dissemination, and exchange programmes. NUEPA and NCERT
both organizations are pursuing some key approaches to communicate knowledge to
bring qualitative change in the academic research, training, transfer and dissemination
of knowledge and services to achieve the desired goals. In this article, some
significant approaches of knowledge communication such as arrange talks and
discussions, lectures (teaching in classrooms), environment of debates and
conversations, conferences, workshops and seminars, capture and appreciate the
talents at workplace, sharing among intellectuals, strengthen knowledge repository,
intranet, extranet and internet, etc. have been discussed which will reinforce the
intellectuals to communicate and share the knowledge and expertise among other
employees across the organization. These approaches will also encourage the
academicians to contribute their intellectual works, skills and expertise to strengthen
the knowledge base to the future generation.
Now the question arises why knowledge is pre-requisite for academic
excellence? How it can be created, communicated and shared to grow the tree of
knowledge across the organization. Burk (1999) stated, “knowledge management is
not a project that begins and ends, but an ongoing and evolving change in the way an
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organization operates.” 3 The knowledge communication techniques can be helpful in
developing curriculum, preparing project for research studies, arrange seminars and
conferences. Through the knowledge management system, the information can best be
used in ways that best promote the organization’s objectives and enhance services to
the users.
Talks and Discussions
Organizations must arrange talks and discussions on the latest developments
and complex issues to generate new ideas and communicate the research results. Such
interactions can be fruitful and bring useful results for the betterment. Weekly talks
and discussions among faculty and intellectuals brings collaborative, innovative and
develop knowledge communication and sharing culture for the activity of learning
and creation. Organizations should take an initiative to create an environment to
refines, reinvents and interprets knowledge and develop sharing and open exchange of
ideas, emotions and behavior. Knowledge is a social construct and it originates and
spreads with the interaction and communication to each other or with others.
Interaction and knowledge communication give a new dimension to the existing
knowledge and ongoing projects.
Lectures
Lectures at the classrooms and training programmes are excellent way to
communicate knowledge. Knowledge can be created and communicated by asking
questions and watching the responses that provoke excited environment of
conversations, responses and interactions. During classroom lectures sometime new
ideas are created and developed through interaction between the teacher and students
and these become the issues of debates, discussions and create knowledge. The
brainstorming sessions must be recorded in the form of knowledge repositories.
Debates and Conversations
Access of knowledge can be enhanced from the heads of few intellectuals to
the other workers of the organization through better interaction and sharing and it is
widely diffused around the organization through debates and conversations. Now-adays
most of the knowledge enterprises are paying more attention to capture the tacit
knowledge and insights, which comes to light through communication, interaction,
collaboration and innovation. Tacit knowledge that remains in the heads, expertise
and experience of the people and it is communicated and shared through
conversations and debates. Lanzara and Patriotta argue “knowledge is always the
outcome of interactive and controversial social processes.” Sometimes Confusions
and misunderstandings among the intellectuals and skilled manpower cause downfall
of the organization. Such type of situation can be handled by arranging meeting,
joining the organization’s gatherings and arranging talks and debates.
Conferences, Workshops and Seminars
Best practices of sharing knowledge are through exhibitions, demonstrations
and training sessions. Knowledge is diffused to the wide range of community through
latest information and communication technology (ICT) tools. These tools help to use
and reuse knowledge several times to solve the real-world issues. Moreover, the
World Wide Web (WWW) can greatly enhance the sharing of knowledge both within
and outside organizations and geographically dispersed units. Conferences and
workshops break the silence on various disciplines and issues and offer good results
to solve the real world issues. Besides it offers an opportunity to discuss the issues
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through face-to-face conversation. Moreover, a faculty member can call meeting of
colleagues and intellectuals working in the organization to take collective approach
towards the new projects and assignments s/he takes.
Freedom to Take Risks and Experiments
Experiments and innovations are the sources of creating new knowledge.
Organizations must offer greater room to intellectuals and faculty to take risks and
experiments for innovations and new projects. This will be a base for the creation of
new knowledge. This autonomy leads the professionals to give a new direction for the
development of knowledge. Sometimes people don’t take risks to nurture and promote
innovative culture of learning and sharing of knowledge due to the jealousy and fear
of the loss of job. Such autonomy of the organization offers opportunities to
intellectuals to head their experiments towards the creation of new ideas without any
fear.
Strengthen Knowledge Repository
Knowledge repository that covers organizational policies, procedures, meeting
agendas, minutes, reports and other important published and unpublished documents
for the future use of faculty, researchers and administrators. Knowledge workers
should strive to capture the electronic products whether it is published or unpublished
works from the faculty, intellectuals and project staff to preserve and enable them
accessible and communicate the same through the networks to others. Its storage and
retrieval process must be user friendly which sometimes poses many organizational
and technical challenges for the designers of organizational knowledge management
system. All organizational policies, procedures and official documents require a very
efficient search procedure to retrieve thousands of organizational publications stored
on the intranet and extranet environment of the organization and communicate to the
needy users in right time.
Network of Knowledge Communication Workers
Knowledge team should develop a mechanism or network of knowledge
specialists who have treasure house of human knowledge. The team should identify
the knowledge experts within the organization that can contribute and communicate
their expertise and experience. Organizational knowledge maps and directory of
expert profiles containing information of backgrounds, skills and expertise of
individuals who are knowledgeable on multidisciplinary areas may help individuals to
rapidly locate an expert who has knowledge to solve the current problem in the
organization and its sub-units. Furthermore, organization must focus on the creation
of talented expertise rather than attracting talented expertise. The most important
resource in the knowledge economy system is the talents and expertise that grasp
knowledge. Only talented stars can participate and communicate about knowledge
innovation and create important link in organization’s knowledge innovation chain. 4
Knowledge Communication through Sharing Workspace
Platform of sharing of ideas, insights and knowledge resides among the
intellectuals must be developed to nurture, strengthen and regenerate the knowledge.
Communication of knowledge among the intellectuals and their units is significant
approach of knowledge management. Web Space collaboration applications are new
tools which enhance the communication through knowledge sharing capabilities.
Through dynamic communication environment, an organization can become more
productive and responsive. Other collaboration tools such as e-mail, Web
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conferencing, discussion groups, alerts, workflow and document sharing are essential
components. This approach assists to preserve, leverage and share the tacit knowledge
easily and effectively – both inside and beyond the firewall. E-mail works well for
sharing of information but Web Space in the organization offers rich sharing
environment to workout the critical issues, or powerful way to get work done in a
more systematic and effective way. It eliminates the geographic boundaries by
providing online workplace to the team of faculty, research scholars, planners and
intellectuals working in the organization to accomplish the mission together online to
collaborate on policies, procedures, documents, issues, discussions, complicated tasks,
evaluations and assessments.
This can be done only if organization has well IT infrastructure and shared
space. It integrates employees and knowledge workers on a single and open platform
and facilitate thinking over the issues in a collective manner. The users can work
together and respond more quickly, accurately and efficiently in single point of
access.
Electronic Mail
Electronic mail is popularly known as E-mail. All organizations whether it is
academic, business and research require ways to efficiently communicate and
distribute information such as news releases, seminar announcements, memos,
training programmes, resource sharing, electronic document delivery and other
academic work across teams, customers, suppliers and functional departments. E-mail
is also used for group discussions and automatic alerting services. It is a very useful
and convenient method to send notices, short notes and memos in the office. It has
made publishing, discussing and communicate the academic conferences, seminars
very easily and inexpensively in academic, research and business world. It is very
popular means of faster communication that takes only a few seconds for a message to
reach to any place of the world. It is not limited to transfer the text but also allows the
transfer of drawings, pictures, maps, images, graphics, sound and programmes on
different working sites at different locations. The objective of electronic mail is to
improve the efficiency and effectiveness of written communication by utilizing
the power of the computer and the speed of data transmission. Its purpose is to
make it faster, cheaper and easier to transmit information from Office to Office by
applying the latest developments in data processing technology. Communications
through e-mails can be archived. Many information technologies related organizations
keep their important messages and records in electronic form than printed. It is helpful
in solving he space problem and helps the management to speed up the better
decisions on important matters quickly and makes easy and more convenient
for readers to share the knowledge and information resources of other libraries
promptly. Some good IT companies have developed a mechanism to archive the e-
mails that bring solution of automatic classification of messages and enrich and
content of e-mail messages.
Other ICT tools to communicate professional knowledge are electronic
discussion forums, audio and video messages, web conferencing, SMS (short message
service), instant message are also the best ways of communication of knowledge.
These offer facilities to clients to manage their e-mails, faxes, SMS, voicemail in an
integrated system. These messages can be filtered, stored, forwarded and retrieved.
These messages are also archived for the very future purposes. These methods of
communication help people to get in touch with each other and communicate during
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hurdles. Instant message are delivered/sent immediately and the same are ready by the
receiver. SMS is also a text messaging service that is provided through mobile
phones. This type of text messaging service is phone-based instant messaging. This
service can be used to receive important news and alerts.
Intranet, Extranet and Internet
Organization must develop the strategy to capture, nurture and strengthen the
intranet activities of the organization to handle various types of internal knowledge
and expertise among employees. Easy access to the knowledge management system is
important for timely and effective decision making during meetings. Major goal of
any knowledge management system is to structure the unstructured information
scattered in the organizational units in such fashion that can be easily accessed and
shared in the organization. Further, it will assist to the management and decisionmaking
body to make decisions, evaluation of faculty members and observe to what
extent the organization has achieved its goals. Knowledge Management team should
fix the responsibility to train the faculty, administrators and management to access
and use the tools and information to make effective use of sharing in the organization.
This team needs to strengthen and give responsibility to department to assist in the
designing and development of knowledge management system to communicate
knowledge according to their work culture so that research studies, data analysis and
other information tools could be utilized in pursuit of excellence. Sharing of
organization’s activities such as institutional assessment, research, training and
planning to furnish the information without any hesitation strengthen the knowledge
pool of the organization. Through this the management and decision making body can
take decision regarding recruitment of faculty and staff for research, training, group
meetings, research technology, education planning and policy and web development.
Every organization must emphasize to build a system which could capture all
the organization’s internal knowledge and integrate the same with useful outside
knowledge such as educational news from the Web and e-mail communications with
intellectual groups, discussions, talks etc. The main purpose of the intranet is to create
one-stop-pool for knowledge rather than having to go to several places for the
information you need. The site can also feature other organizational information such
as budget information, financial benefits, work-in-progress documents, sale of
documents, archived e-mail discussions of internal and external intellectuals, data and
manpower directory, etc. Outdated, irrelevant and inaccurate data and information
should be obsolete from the intranet on the feedback of the internal as well as online
users. Moreover, other information, which cannot be uploaded on the Web site is
accessible and shared on intranet, e.g. online databases and information about official
circulation. Sharing of ideas on intranet radically improve an organization’s
development and breaks communication barrier across the organization. Indeed, an
intranet is one step closer to the paperless office and probably it is a one of the major
benefit to the entire organization such as reduce paper expenses, increase the
productivity and morale, save the time of the staff and bring closer to each other.
Norris et al (2003) states, “Transactable e-knowledge and knowledge networking will
become the lifeblood of knowledge sharing. They will support a Knowledge Economy
based on creating, distributing and adding value to knowledge, the very activities in
which colleges and universities are engaged. Yet few colleges and universities have
taken sufficient account of the need to use their knowledge assets to achieve strategic
differentiation. 5
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PROBLEMS/BARRIERS IN KNOWLEDGE COMMUNICATION
However, some issues relating to proper timings of communication for correct
planning, quality of knowledge transfer, management’s attitude towards views of
experts and intellectuals, lack of proper recognition, exposition, lack of appreciation
and involvement of experts in discussions and important decisions are hurdles in the
communication of knowledge. Martin J Eppler 6 in his study knowledge
communication has defined problems in communicating knowledge among experts
and decision makers. Some barriers, which become obstacles in the communication of
professional knowledge are as:
1. Sometimes experts lack the sense of interpretation of the problem, poor feedback,
and follow short cuts to quick gain are obstacles in the communication of
knowledge.
2. Knowledge communication is a reciprocal action and it depends on the tuning of
sender and receiver. It fails in the absence of tuning of sender and receiver.
3. It fails because of hesitation and fear of exposure between expert and decision
maker.
4. Experts do not communicate, transfer and share their experiences, insights and
ideas due to hostile, strenuous/arduous relationships, politics and lack of interest
of decision makers.
5. Knowledge communication remains silence and absent during the hostile, nonconducive
and unfriendly environment.
6. Decision makers do not use acquired knowledge in on going projects when it is
needed. They prefer collective knowledge than unique advice.
7. Ignorance of experts’ expertise, insights, advice and claims by the decision
makers or management team.
8. Decision makers do not integrate new received information in their decision
making process because of information overload.
9. Limited capacity or ability of decision makers to grasp the knowledge delivered
by experts because of their limited ability to receive information.
10. It is difficult to articulate the tacit knowledge and convert the same in explicit
form.
11. It fails when colleagues do not attend meetings, discussions because of jealous
and support of management to one person.
12. It fails when hoarded/received knowledge not used for the betterment of on going
complicated issues.
13. It fails when it is not interpreted and translated rightly in the absence of language
experts.
CONCLUSION
Colleges and universities are the ocean of knowledge and it is a great scope to
apply knowledge management practices in these organizations to accumulate,
communicate and share the knowledge. Knowledge-work in the academic and
research environment has changed with the emergence of globalization of education.
Their survival not only depends on the acquisition, storage, publication and retrieval
but also how the knowledge is filtered, organized and communicated to achieve the
desired mission. Innovations in ICT has motivated the knowledgeable generation of
today to understand the traditional culture of university and higher education and
prepare a new blend and understanding of the work and culture of the universities.
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Knowledge communication network of the educational organizations should be
equipped with the next generation of tools, perspectives, e-knowledge, skilled
manpower and practices of knowledge sharing. Knowledge Communication does
not mean what is communicated alone; it is also how one communicates. Knowledge
communication requires reciprocal interactions among the intellectuals and decision
makers to work on a complex issue and reconstruct or redesign the structure of issue.
Effective communication and transfer of knowledge across the organization and
beyond the firewall can best be leveraged through the use of new practices and
technologies and by avoiding misunderstandings among the experts and decision
makers. The advantages of technology-based communication are that all messages
and communications can be archived electronically. These archived communications
are very valuable for the experts and decision makers if these are exploited fully when
needed.
Transfer of university and other academic environment in to knowledge-based
organizations requires good practices of knowledge sharing and communication in the
university and higher education setups like corporate sectors. The tree of knowledge
grows with the culture of sharing and communicating knowledge. No doubt effective
and efficient techniques of communication of knowledge in the organization provide
improved and qualitative research results. Academic and research organization must
develop the network of people who can communicate their experiences, expertise and
knowledge whatever they have and available across the organization.
REFERENCES
1. G. Von Krogh and J. Roos, “Five Claims of Knowing”, European Management
Journal. Vol. 14, 1996, pp. 423-426.
2. D. Leonard-Barton, Wellsprings of Knowledge, Boston: Harvard Business School
Press, 1995.
3. Mike Burk, “Knowledge Management: Everyone Benefits by Sharing Information”,
Public Roads, Vol. 63, No. 3, 1999. http://www.tfhrc.gov/ pubrds/novdec99/km.htm
4. D. S. Thakur and K. S. Thakur, “Knowledge Management: A Growing Discipline”,
Library Herald, Vol. 41, No. 4, 2003, pp. 259-274.
5. Donald M. Norris and others. “A Revolution in Knowledge Sharing”, EDUCAUSE
Review, September/October 2003, pp. 14-26.
6. Martin J. Eppler, Knowledge Communication, In: David G. Schwartz, Encyclopedia
of Knowledge Management, Hershey: IDEA Group Reference, 2006. 317-325.
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IT enabled KM System/Tools Development in
Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL)
P.B. Mishra*, J.P. Moolani*, R. Mago * and U. Chandra *
Abstract
This paper summarizes the experiences and the future plans towards IT enabled KM
System/ Tools Development in Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL).
In order to facilitate generation, transformation, preservation and dissemination of
knowledge resources of NPCIL, a corporate wide approach has been adopted for
development of IT enabled KM System/ Tools. Many new projects towards work flow
automation, specifically targeting training/learning processes, are being undertaken. Some
processes such as engineers’ selection, induction training, placement, licensing &
qualification have been fully automated.
A company-wide web-application called ‘Corporate Human Asset, Review and
Management System (CHARMS) has been developed and launched to capture, identify and
map knowledge assets within the organization.
Web based application called ‘Licensing and Qualification Information &
Development System (LIQUIDS)’ is continuously fine tuned to capture problem solving
/diagnostic skills.
KM portal facilitates involvement of ‘Subject Matter Experts’ for knowledge
creation/transformation and knowledge sharing and development of Computer /Web Based
Training (CBT/WBT) has been launched.
A web application tilted ‘Glossary’, for development and management of
definition/drill-down description of commonly used technical terms, has been developed.
Taxonomies for definition sources, references, related subjects, developer / reviewer
references and such other are continuously being updated and refined.
1. EVOLUTION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IN NPCIL
From year 2000 onwards, expansion of organization and retention of
knowledge resources became the key issues in NPCIL to meet country’s energy need.
Superannuation of experienced personnel and attrition of young engineers needed a
makeover in erstwhile corporate policy of knowledge management and training, for
preserving existing knowledge and generating new knowledge for competitive
business advantages. The basic need of uniform and systematic knowledge
management approach in NPCIL was to inculcate confidence towards preparedness of
NPCIL to undertake massive expansion program by ensuring adequate knowledge
resources and competent trained staffing.
2. THE APPROACH ADOPTED BY NPCIL FOR KM
In order to achieve above, across-the-board approach was adopted. A
dedicated KM group under leadership of senior management personnel was created at
corporate office in order to ensure uniform and systematic KM approach at multiple
NPP sites across the country (a few sites with multi reactor technologies such as
BWR, FBR, PHWR and PWR – also of different generations).
* Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL), VS Bhavan, Anushaktinagar, Mumbai 400 094.
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As KM and learning activities for operating personnel were already streamlined,
focused attention was given for qualification development for
construction/project/engineering personnel. Committees and facilitator groups were
constituted in the corporate offices for finalization of qualification procedures.
Corporate interventions were made to ensure embedding knowledge elements in all
the new business process automation projects (core business as well as commercial
systems) so that the generated knowledge can be transformed, stored and
disseminated for business needs.
The practices and methods followed in NPCIL for development, establishment and
maintenance of knowledge management programs were primarily designed to achieve
the following:
• Enhance effectiveness of overall knowledge management methods based on
identification of functional areas requiring improvement.
• Incorporation of knowledge management systems/tools to promote capturing
of implicit knowledge and for supporting of effective dissemination of
knowledge.
• Design and development of KM tools and improvements based on users’
feedback.
Three major subgroups (‘Development and Implementation of Knowledge
Dissemination Programs’, ‘KM System and Tools Development’ and ‘Management of
KM Establishments’) were constituted for enhancing the KM activities.
This write-up summarizes the outline of on-going / proposed knowledge
management system/tools development activities for tapping and disseminating
organization’s intellectual assets — both explicit (known externally – recorded) and
tacit (personal know-how) for positive business results. The guiding factors for
development of IT enabled KM systems/ tools are:
• Development of new approach for human asset management - acquisition and
retention. Identification, career progression and redeployment of intellectual
assets to organization’s best advantage.
• Work Flow Automation of Training/Learning processes and development of
knowledge management tools including web based automated tools, e-
learning, and computer based training packages etc. Enhancement of
effectiveness of KM systems/tools already developed.
• Development of management system for various training /qualification
Programs required for developing and maintaining required competencies
among technical personnel for effective discharge of their duties.
• Making corporate information accessible to employee through knowledge
portal, knowledge bank , communities of practices/ interests , groups of
subject matter experts and sharing of the best practices
• Analysis of manpower requirement, interface and co-ordination for engineer’s
recruitment, allocations, follow up with training centers at various sites for
ensuring training as per curriculum and their placement.
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• Harness IT infrastructure effectively for maximum advantage and to promote
e-learning.
• Knowledge support and co-ordination for development of Fuel Handling
System (FHS) simulators for pressurized heavy water reactors.
3. DEVELOPMENT OF CORPORATE HUMAN ASSET REVIEW AND
MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
A company-wide web-application called ‘Corporate Human Asset,
Review and Management System (CHARMS) has been developed and launched to
capture, identify and map knowledge assets within the organization. The information
captured on skill profile, area of expertise/interest etc was suitably integrated with job
qualification requirement for finalization of employees’ knowledge dissemination
programs across technologies and processes. This has also helped organization in
redeployment of personnel. The CHARMS will be able to generate dynamic, user
defined, screen based queries with exportable reports (typically in portable document
format file, excel file, rtf/word file, ASCII text file and A4 size print file) in graphical
and formatted text structure. The system is envisaged to support the host of analytical
queries and reports for generating decision support information on HR and knowledge
base.
4. WORK FLOW AUTOMATION OF TRAINING/LEARNING PROCESSES
Many new projects towards work flow automation, specifically targeting
training/learning processes, are being undertaken to capture undocumented explicit
knowledge /convertible tacit knowledge. The major objective for such automation is
to embed by Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) knowledge capture activities during
execution of routine work processes so that the captured knowledge can be
manipulated, transformed and disseminated through alternate KM processes.
Typically some of processes such as engineers’ selection, induction training,
placement, licensing & qualification have been fully automated.
Licensing and Qualification Information & Development System (LIQUIDS)
Web based application for managing work flow of licensing and qualification
processes for operation and maintenance personnel of Indian NPPs called ‘Licensing
and Qualification Information & Development System (LIQUIDS)’ is continuously
fine tuned to capture problem solving /diagnostic skills. Formal on-job-training (OJT)
is specifically embedded in LIQUIDS to promote mentoring and coaching through
supervisors. The LIQUIDS addresses the following:
• Regulatory guidelines prescribe implementation of systems approach to
training (SAT) for identification of performance requirement and development
of the training / verification system for all the O & M positions. The
LIQUIDS addresses the above requirements by providing an automated
method for design and development of training and verification system, where
training / learning objectives are derived through systematic analysis of jobs /
tasks. LIQUIDS also provides flexibility to accommodate changes in training
procedure and training contents arising due to regulatory feedback, operating
experience, plant modification/design changes, performance feedback from
line managers, feedback through peer review and other feedback.
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• Operation personnel are required in commissioning phase of nuclear power
project; therefore, development and approval of licensing procedure related
documentation becomes a pre-criticality regulatory requirement for a new
NPP. As a practice, preparation of such documents and systems is achieve
involving commissioning engineers, newly deployed operation & maintenance
personnel from various disciplines (including station training personnel),
subject matter experts from HQs/ other stations and HQ SAT facilitators.
LIQUIDS helps these personnel in following ways:
a. LIQUIDS is available to users through NPCIL intranet in form of a web
application which stores data at a central location. Therefore, it facilitates
speedy, concurrent and multiunit collaboration for development /
documentation and approvals of training content and procedures.
b. LIQUIDS facilitates involvement of subject matter experts by
i. Making the training system available in form of web application at his
desk.
ii. Guiding entry/modification of information in a systematic and
progressive manner to ensure completeness of data entry and
consequently achieve SAT compliance.
iii. Providing sufficient training system triggers to ensure
comprehensiveness of new training courseware development.
iv. Relieving subject matter experts from information linking, formatting,
deciphering complex training terminology, avoidable rework / repeated
iteration and avoidable coordination with station / HQ training
personnel.
• Licensing and Qualification System is linked with the Qualification Incentive
Scheme (QIS). For older stations, it has been observed that QIS for personnel
from operation function is implemented at the early stage of plant operation
(for new NPP mainly - due to regulatory requirement of availability of
licensed staff) whereas implementation of QIS is generally delayed for other
functions (maintenance, chemical lab and such others). This delay is mainly
due to pre-occupation of station personnel in commissioning activities
resulting to non availability of comprehensive QIS documents required for
approvals. LIQUIDS provides solution for above by cutting down the
development time for document generation. This is achieved by facilitating
involvement of subject matter experts as explained above in sub-paragraph 2.b
and by providing a uniform and concurrent approach for QIS development and
documentation methodology for all the positions in different functions.
• LIQUIDS provides a uniform approach in training system development across
different operating stations. This helps in monitoring and auditing of
implementation of QIS and SAT across the operating stations.
• LIQUIDS provides a system for
a. Licensing/qualification Examination management for all the positions
b. Checklist program management for all the positions
c. Training and verification record management
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d. Verifying / validating the effectiveness of training program
Figure-1: Home page for LIQUIDS
Promoting Communities of Practices and Groups of Subject Matter Experts through
Web Application for Examination Management System
Communities of O&M personnel and groups of subject matter experts have
been established for licensing and qualification activities. The sharing of experiences
during development of courseware, syllabus, questions/question papers, checklist and
evaluation are one of the important tools for capturing convertible tacit knowledge.
Examination Management System is workflow automation of qualification
examination for operating stations. The module has been implemented fully
(schedule, nomination, paper generation, answer-sheet management, marks entry,
result declaration) for conduct of examinations for all the stations through HQs. The
module also includes development and maintenance of ‘Question Bank’ for licensing
examination for all operating stations. The ‘Question Bank’ module has capability to
capture and evaluate objective type questions also.
Similar system would be developed for HQs personnel also. A typical
snapshot of first screen of web application is given below:
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Figure-2: Home page for Centralised Licensing Examination Management System
Automation of recruitment of engineers
Selection process for fresh engineers were revisited and revised. Webapplication
for Engineers’ Recruitment through BARC Training School was
developed and implemented. The application is a comprehensive Internet portal for
publishing all the important information related to engineer’s recruitment. Some of
the salient features of the application are listed below:
• Publish online advertisement and associated information
• Submission of online application form by candidates
• View/Print ‘data filled net form’ and application status by candidates
• Online application screening
• Online application status update by NPCIL
• Issue of online admit card and written test information
• Generation of reports required for written examination such as
center/discipline wise candidate list, application status, Demand draft related
reports etc.
• Automated evaluation of written examination test
• Automated written test examination evaluation and preparation of merit panel
• Interview schedule/information
• Updation of Interview results and medical examination status/ result
• Publish final selection panel / information to selected candidates
• Method for interaction/response to candidate queries
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Placement Module
Figure-3: Home page for Engineers’ recruitment website
It is a web-based module, through which, NPCIL training centres (conducting
classroom, field training and med term/final viva) can update trainees’ final marks
and choice for placement on central server located at HQs. The module has expedited
the process of final placement and we are able to inform TSOs about their place of
posting well in advance before their proceeding for final vacation (earlier method was
to inform about their place of posting at their place of residence through email or
post). The system automatically:
• Calculates the overall weighted marks for all the trainees in different streams
of reactor technology and prepares a merit panel for each stream and each
‘discipline within stream’
• Calculates the overall weighted marks for all the trainees across the streams of
reactor technology and prepares a merit panel across the streams
• Calculates the number of increments to be awarded on absorption based on the
specified criteria
• Allocates place of posting to each TSOs based on the merit of TSOs, choice
exercised and vacancies at NPCIL units
• Generates relevant reports including report for final viva, final placement and
award of increments
A typical snapshot of first screen of web application is given below:
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Glossary Development
Figure-4: Home page of Placement module for Trainee Engineers
GLOSSARY is intended to provide:
• A comprehensive reference and development portal for important definitions
of technical terms used in NPCIL.
• A comprehensive feedback mechanism for continual improvement / upgradation
of technical terminology and the in-house developed system.
• A reference portal for definitions of important technical terminology from
other agencies (provided as linked web-site / approved published document).
The initial version of GLOSSARY is being released with sample definitions
extracted from glossaries of AERB, IAEA, US-NRC, European-Nuclear-Society,
World Nuclear Association etc. It supports the following activities:
• Text search of definitions of glossary terms
• View structural categorization such as definition sources, references, related
subjects, developer / reviewer references etc.
• Development of new glossary terms with structured categorization
• Review/approval of new glossary terms
• Multi-level user definitions and graded user interface
• Capture /view feedback on individual glossary items
A committee for monitoring and approving glossary content has been formed
for enriching the technical content. A few key persons are to be identified from major
groups of HQs for development of new terminology. A typical snapshot of first
screen of web application is given below:
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Figure-5: Screen print for Glossary
Development of Knowledge Management Portal
Knowledge Management portal is envisaged to be gateway to knowledge
repository and provides systems/ tools to tap/ disseminate tacit knowledge. It
provides a platform for knowledge contribution, sharing information and providing
feedback for the employees of the organization. It provides interface to KM systems/
tools/programs/aids and facilitates involvement of ‘Subject Matter Experts’ for
knowledge creation/transformation and knowledge sharing. Important knowledge
gaps can be identified and promoted here.
At present, templates for KM portal have been developed and needs
exhaustive knowledge resource structuring, formatting and storage. A typical
snapshot of first screen of portal is given below:
Figure-6: Home page for Knowledge Management Portal
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Extension of Qualification Systems for Corporate Personnel
Qualification schemes have been development for construction/project/
engineering personnel in line with the scheme in existence for operation personnel. A
generalized approach of qualification is described below:
• For qualification structure purpose, multi-layered qualification structure for
each directorate/ group would be defined.
• Level-V would be for Tradesman/ draughtsman, level-IV would be for
Scientific Assistants and level-III to I & ‘management’ level would be for
engineers.
• Level-V and IV would primarily be ‘performers’ level. Two levels of
competence namely ‘supervisors’ and ‘performers’ would be arrived at for
engineers. While performers needed to be trained to execute the tasks
considering all the micro level activities in the “Before”, “During” and “After”
phases in the tasks, the supervisory personnel needed to plan, verify, guide and
liaise with upper management for communication on the tasks executed and
those anticipated.
• The functional performance requirements would be compiled for each
directorate/group and would be structured in major and minor categories of
technical skills (responsibility and duty elements). Also, technical subjects and
associated hardware of identified group/ directorate would be identified.
• The compiled information would form main reference for training need
analysis and as a basis for analysis of position-wise responsibilities, duties and
tasks.
• For management positions, interface, services, specific design, safety and
regulatory requirements would be the additional basis.
• Based on above need analysis, a short list of assortment of important tasks
would be finalized in consultation with each directorate / groups to ensure that
the assorted tasks cover all the activities towards each of the key objectives
and performance indicators of respective directorate/group.
• Accordingly, training programs for these tasks would be covered under initial,
update, upgrade and refresher training module.
• There would be definite credit point for each training courses. There would be
credit points for development of training material as well as for conduct of
training session.
• A candidate for identified level would be allowed to appear in formal
assessment examination only if he acquires minimum definite credits points.
• The enlarged view of identified tasks to cater to varied job conditions,
conceptual design, academic aspects reliability and life management aspects,
would be structured in the examination syllabus of each level for formal
assessment.
• A candidate would be declared ‘qualified’ for identified level, once he clears
qualification examination and assessment interview. A reward system for
‘qualified’ employee may also be developed.
Above development approach is depicted below in activity flow diagram:
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Functio
Positio
Task list
Task to
Training
Matrix
•Initial
•Update
•Upgrad
Function
analysis
Responsibilit
y/ Duty
Task
analysis
Design
Res. /
Duty
Conditio
Standard
Learning
Objective
Subject
Duty area
Knowledg
Skill
Template
Sequence
/
Syllabus/Exa
m papers
Exam
Management
CHES
Entrylevel
Verification
Learning
steps
Development
Test/ Lesson
plan
Lesson
Pl
Credit
oi t
Content
developm
Reference
Figure-7: Activity flow diagram of
E-learning and Technical Information Resource Centre
A project on e-learning for development of Computer /Web Based Training
(CBT/WBT) has been launched. Technical Information Resource Centre, a repository
of a wide variety of technical documents, e-books, reports and journals in electronic
and physical form is being continuously strengthened. Reference document Section
(RDC) which serves to retain/provide the archived reports, design documents and
manufacturers’ manuals is also under up-gradation.
5. CONCLUDING REMARKS
The practices and methods knowledge management in NPCIL have evolved
with a built-in knowledge capture mechanism for disseminating the required quality
of knowledge to NPP personnel. The focus has been to master and manage high
technology while producing good financial results without compromising on safety.
The Corporation is seized with the installation of systems approach to knowledge
management methodology and information management system in all its traditional
qualification systems so as to make it fully knowledge resource sensitive.
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Nuclear Knowledge Management (NKM) at IGCAR:
A case study on Fast Reactors
A.Narayanan*, J.Srinivasan*, V.Rajendran* and M.Somasekharan *
Abstract
Knowledge is increasingly being recognized as a primary source of wealth that makes a difference
between success and failure. Managing knowledge can be seen as the process governing creation, the
dissemination and utilization of knowledge. Any organization carrying out research & development
activities in nuclear engineering, especially in diversified areas of Fast Reactor technology to solve topical
problems based on experiences, model-oriented experiments and fundamental research, needs a
continuously updated body of knowledge.
The loss of organizational memory of nuclear knowledge in governments, organizations,
academia and research institutes could become the precursor in dealing with the problems in nuclear
safety, security and non-proliferation. Thus knowledge management of fast reactor technology has emerged
as a growing challenge in recent years.
This paper covers the general aspects of Knowledge Management including fundamental concepts
and overview model for KM depicting explicit and tacit knowledge transfer on fast reactors. It also briefs
the IAEA’s initiatives on KM activities practiced in their member countries on fast reactors. The authors
are dwelling upon the procedures and methods for creating module for knowledge preservation and
maintenance to be followed in IGCAR – taking FBTR as a case study.
An effective KM tool is needed to assist, understand, benchmark the current practices followed
against their past performances. Examples of KM performance indicators include savings due to the reuse
of knowledge; availability of expertise networks; time to create new knowledge, accessibility and
availability of various KM & information sharing tools to peers and contributors as well.
1. INTRODUCTION
The fast reactor technology, the mission oriented endeavour of this centre, relies
heavily on a vast amount of accumulation of knowledge, in inter-disciplinary scientific
research, engineering analysis, design documentation, operational data, maintenance
records, regulatory reviews and countless other pieces of technical information. This
organizational knowledge combined with an immense and complex reservoir of people
such as scientists, engineers and technicians of many disciplines having the requisite
educational and technical background, expertise and acquired insight to apply that
body of knowledge safely and effectively to further the cause of energy security and
environmental perspective of India.
The effective knowledge management process of fast reactor includes ensuring
the continued availability of the above essential reservoir of knowledge, experience
available in explicit, implicit and tacit form from the qualified personnel that need to be
developed and preserved. The critical issues of knowledge management on fast reactors
are to ensure safety, security, and encouraging new innovation and also to ascertain
harnessing benefits of nuclear energy remains available for future generation.
* Scientific Information Resource Division, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam,
Email: an@igcar.gov.in
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We are striving to take the fast reactor knowledge to future generation for the
following two emphasized resolutions:
i) IAEA Convention on Nuclear Safety insists all the member states to “take the
appropriate steps to ensure that sufficient numbers of qualified staff with
appropriate education, training and retraining are available for all safety-related
activities in or for each nuclear installation, throughout its life”.
ii) General Conference Resolution (44)/RES/21 states: “the development and
management of safe nuclear power, science and applications in those Member
States which have chosen or will choose the nuclear option require the
preservation of knowledge and experience and the maintenance of an adequate
technologically and scientifically competent human resource potential in the
nuclear sphere”,
2. ASPECTS OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Knowledge Management defines as an “integrated, systematic approach to identifying,
acquiring, transforming, developing, disseminating, using, sharing and preserving
knowledge, relevant to achieving specified objectives” [2]. Knowledge Management
consists of three fundamental components: people, process and technology. Knowledge
management focuses on :
- people and organizational culture to stimulate and nurture the sharing and use
of knowledge;
- processes or methods to find, create, capture and share knowledge;
- technology to store and make knowledge accessible and to allow people to
work together without being together without any duplicity and repetition of
work flow.
Knowledge can broadly be categorized as explicit and tacit. Explicit knowledge
includes technical information gathered while carrying out R&D activities and further in
the fields of ‘Applied Sciences’ and data that can be transferred easily to interested
parties. However, documents never comprise experts’ knowledge fully, and a novice
reading those instructions or information might not end up with the same results as the
expert. The tacit knowledge of the experts including scientists, engineers and
technicians, is required over a long period and may never be fully articulated.
Processes
Technology
People
Fig.1
Fundamental components of
knowledge management
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Knowledge Sharing Environment
(1) By getting into an organisation’s CULTURE (values and behaviours) in
otherwords identifying the ‘core-values’ of an organization [3]:
i) making EXCELLENCE through Innovation, Learning continuously
so as to expertise and Agility in adopting and moving fast with
flexibility and decisiveness.
ii) building TEAMWORK through Relationship, Respecting each other
for their diverse cultures and Sharing knowledge, experience,
resources and opportunities.
iii) building LEADERSHIP with Courage, Vision and Integrity.
(2) By Adopting PROCESS/STRUCTURES of an organization effectively
and constantly changing its course for value addition. This knowledge on
structural characteristics and procedures are shared.
(3) Using appropriate TECHNOLOGY. Technology should be seen as a
manifestation of culture, rather than as some kind of opposing force.
3. FAST REACTOR DEVELOPMENT - GLOBAL SCENARIO
Owing to two main reasons, viz. (i) emission of greenhouse gas effect to the
atmosphere is very minimum, and (ii) cost of electricity generation through FBRs is very
competitive, people’s acceptance to nuclear energy for electricity generation, especially
on fast breeder reactors, is very much encouraging on high safety regulations and
stringent licensing procedures followed on the development of fast reactors.
Early 1960’s witnessed many countries undertaking important fast breeder reactor
development programs. Constructions and successful operations of such reactors were
undertaken in a number of countries, including Rapsodie (France), KNK-II (Germany),
FBTR (India), Joyo (Japan), DFR (UK), BR-10 and BR-60 (Russia) and EBR-II, Fermi,
FFTF (USA).
Consequently commercial size prototypes like, Phenix, Superphenix (France),
SNR-300 (Germany), MONJU (Japan), PFR(UK), BN-350 (Kazakhstan), BN-600
(Russia), PFBR(India), are either just under construction coming on line, or experiencing
long-term operation[4].
4. INITIATIVES ON FAST REACTOR KNOWLEDGE PRESERVATION
Fast reactor development programmes were at peak by 1980 when the countries
started operating their demonstrative type fast reactors. And then they started commercial
prototype reactors. From this time onwards, fast reactor development in general began to
decline. By 1994 in the USA, the Clinch River Breeder Reactor (CRBR) had been
cancelled and the two fast reactor test facilities, FFTF and EBR-II had been shutdown –
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with EBR-II permanently and FFTF in a standby condition. Thus effort for fast reactor
development essentially disappeared. Similarly, programmes in other nations were
terminated or substantially reduced. In France, Superphenix was shutdown at the end of
1998, SNR-300 in Germany was completed but not taken into operation, and KNK-II was
permanently shutdown in 1991 (after 17 years of operation) and dismantled by 2004; in
UK, PFR was shutdown I 1994, BN-350 in Kazakhstan was shutdown in 1998. Loss of
the fast reactor knowledge should be taken seriously. The delay and economic impact of
restoring the fast reactor option a few decades from now without the present knowledge
would be enormous. By the time, all the facilities needed to generate the information
originally, and the people who possessed the knowledge would be long gone.
Realising all these impediments on the knowledge on fast reactors, International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has started an initiative to coordinate and facilitate the
various national FRKP (Fast Reactor Knowledge Preservation) efforts. The objective of
the initiative is to develop a Knowledge Base into which existing Knowledge
Preservation System will fit, and which will complement and integrate future Member
States’ efforts to preserve Fast Reactor Data and Knowledge. Its outcome will be an
International Knowledge Base, widely used through a WWW-portal established and
maintained by the Agency. The initiative relies on both IAEA and Member States
contributions. The Agency contributes its own data and knowledge accumulated over
more than 35 years of activities performed within the framework of the TWG-FR
(formerly known as IWG-FR). It will further create a FRKP network among the
interested Member States, and will support and coordinate FRKP activities in the
Member States [5].
a) Role of the Agency
Development of appropriate structure, methodology and guidance for fast
reactor data retrieval and knowledge preservation, and providing it to the
interested Member States
Establishing pilot projects for retrieving and preserving fast reactor data and
knowledge in critical areas and for endangered installations
Facilitating partnership with other international organizations
Providing, within the TWG-FR, a forum for exchange of best practices
Integrating available information resources into a knowledge system.
5. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT METHODS FOR TRANSFER AND
PRESERVATION
The safe, reliable and cost-effective operations of FBTR require that personnel
possess and maintain the requisite knowledge, skills, and attitudes to do better job. This
includes not only the technical competencies required by the nature of the technology and
particular engineering designs, but also the “softer” competencies associated with the
effective management, communication and teamwork. Traditional worker training
programmes have addressed ‘explicit knowledge’ that is contained in written documents,
policies and procedures. However, ‘tacit knowledge’ that is held in a person’s mind has
not typically been either captured or transferred in any formal manner. Rather, new
workers have acquired such knowledge over time through their working with those who
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already possess it. As those workers who are in possession of this ‘tacit knowledge’ leave
the workplace for retirement, the effective capture and transfer of that information
becomes even more critical. Although this need has always existed as individuals
transferred to other jobs or left the organization, there have usually been others in the
organization having tacit knowledge to provide continuity of operation. It is the increased
rate of knowledgeable worker departures, along with the decreasing numbers of qualified
replacements that has made this a more significant problem. The long-term operation of
FBTR requires that this entire body of ‘explicit’ and ‘tacit’ knowledge be transferred to
new personnel as they enter the workforce. Accordingly, new and different techniques
may be required to ensure timely and effective knowledge retention and transfer.
Among the total information and knowledge available, much is not directly
relevant to the accomplishment of a particular mission with respect to the plant. Hence,
the identification of “mission-critical tacit knowledge” [6] necessitating to properly
operate and maintain the fast reactor, must be determined and be made available to those
who need it. This mission-critical tacit knowledge should encompass the total life cycle
of the plant design, construction, operation, life cycle optimization, and eventual site
closure. It also spans the spectrum of work activities including operations, maintenance,
engineering, projects and support functions.
The most common approach for transfer of tacit knowledge is through assigning
experienced personnel to coach or mentor new employees. However, by virtue of
experience, it has been found many limitations in such approach and the principal
limitation among them is the potential for variability in the quality of transfer. Thus
personal transfer should be supplemented, whenever feasible, by support systems like
guidelines, job aids, individual development plans, structured on-the-job training (OJT)
and communities of practice (CoPs) so that both personal style of transfer and support
systems would provide consistency and high quality transfer of tacit knowledge.
Knowledge Base Index by creating module for knowledge preservation
In order to create a possible knowledge base index for understanding and taking
follow-up action for future generation, contributions towards design, construction and
operation of fast reactors are to be recorded appropriately [8]. The objective is to preserve
the data and knowledge accumulated over the last 20 years and to ensure the long term
availability of fast reactor experience in a comprehensive, durable and intelligible form
which would allow future designers to apply this vast amount of knowledge.
It may be noted here that at present our centre is engaged in carrying out works on
two planks viz. R&D activities on one side, and design of FBTR/PFBR along with related
experiments on the other side. Again on the R&D plank, research oriented works related
fast breeder reactor are undertaken vigorously and other allied research activities
conducted in various laboratories housed at Kalpakkam. The results originated from such
laboratorial activities are effectively used as input to the core activities in terms of
improving the Scientific and Technological research innovations and system integration
with respect to fast breeder reactor.
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The knowledge base, on the idea depicted in the above paragraph, is structured
along two complementary axes; the main one, through 21 R&D items, covers an overall
vision of R&D works undertaken; the second one deals with the design of a fast reactor,
in our case it may be FBTR/PFBR. The focus in this second axis is on the main systems
of projected fast breeder reactor, i.e. reactor core system, monitoring systems, protection
and shutdown systems, primary systems, secondary systems and steam generator, decayheat
removal system, primary and secondary handling systems, cleaning and
decontamination systems and fuel storage system. Accordingly, it is envisaged to have
model for such a knowledge base as reproduced in fig.5.
Fig.5 Fast reactor knowledge base structure
6. PROCESS AND TOOLS FOR PREVENTING KNOWLEDGE FROM
WALKING OUT OF THE DOOR
The loss of valuable undocumented expertise has been identified as a major
problem faced by organizations. Now let us progress for effective capturing of tacit
knowledge by creating an innovative process and tools [9] for eliciting and capturing
valuable undocumented knowledge.
A process has to be developed, piloted and deployed to capture the undocumented
knowledge of the employees nearing retirement, associated with tools and support enable
the project team to:
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- identify critical “at risk” knowledge and skills, especially that associated with
the impending attrition
- evaluate the risk associated with losing this critical knowledge and skills and
focus on areas of greatest risk
- develop, implement and evaluate actions (documentation, mentoring, training,
re-engineering, sharing expertise, etc.) for managing this risk.
Challenges
Attrition, primarily in the form of retirements may cause heavily over the next
coming years. These experienced employees possess much unique undocumented
knowledge. The challenge in retaining and transferring this critical knowledge is result
oriented towards our future efficiency and effectiveness in the design, development,
operation and maintenance and ultimately decommissioning of the FBR projects.
This impending “Brain Drain” is especially relevant given nature of our nonmanagement
employees are in positions requiring technical education, training, or both.
Some highly specialized, technical employees have emerged over the years
- employees whose knowledge is critical to the O&M of the plants and transmission
facilities, and whose knowledge is adequately documented. Many of these
employees literally built the plants and facilities which they now operate and
maintain.
Driving Forces/Factors
Our success will depend upon developing and maintaining highly developed
skilled work force. Knowledge retention provides a systematic approach to ensure that
the critical knowledge of our employees transferred to the work force of the future.
Further the attrition challenge is driven by several factors
o There is intense competition because of knowledge shift to other fields
like IT than Nuclear fields
o Our ability to match a competitive environment is dependent on
maintaining a highly skilled, knowledgeable, well trained, productive,
motivated, diverse and high performing work force.
o Much of our technical knowledge is undocumented i.e. tribal knowledge
Response
A simple process of “What”, “So-What”, “Now-What” ought to be formed and
developed supported by various aids and tools the process allows the project team to
answer three fundamental questions.
i. specifically, what knowledge is being lost (What?)
ii. what are the consequences of losing each item of knowledge (So-What?)
iii. What can we do about each item (Now-What?)
What?: the first step is designed to identify positions and/are people where the
potential knowledge loss is greatest and most imminent depending upon time until
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etirement and criticality of the position. That is the project team should be able to
determine who is nearing retirement? And what unique knowledge skill do they have?.
So-What?: this face of process focuses on narrowing the long list of knowledge
items down to the critical few that truly require action. Again this screening is based on
several guest ions:
i. What is the relative importance of the knowledge?
ii. What is relative immediacy of the knowledge loss?
iii. What is the cost and feasibility of recovering this knowledge, if lost?
iv. How difficult is it to transfer this knowledge?
Now-What?: once the focus is on the knowledge and skills that are truly critical,
specific plans are established to retain the knowledge/skill or lesson impact of losing it.
In some cases it might mean assigning a new employee to shadow the retiring employee
or cross training some one who is currently in the different job. Some times it means
documenting a procedure or process that has never been written down. Perhaps person
“X” is the only one left who knows how fix an ancient piece of equipment, it may take
more sense to replace that equipment that to try to replace the arcane know-how of the
person “X”. It is advisable for the project team to consider a host of possible responses.
i. codification and documentation(procedures, checklists, inventories, etc)
ii. engineer it out (change process, update equipment, use smart tools and
technology, eliminate task, etc)
iii. education & training (including class room, simulator, one-one
coaching/mentoring, on-the-job-training, etc
iv. establish alternative resources (outside contractors, retirees as consultants,
find and buy hires, shared expertise with other plants or divisions,
communities of practice-(CoP) or other professional networks, etc
Finally, responding to the attrition challenge requires an ongoing monitoring and
evaluation of knowledge retention plans. This attention institutionalizes the process and
keeps the knowledge retention plans current. Attrition information is updated annually in
the Annual Planning Process, and new attrition dates added to existing knowledge
retention information to identify any new critical risk areas. Additionally areas identified
that may require total or partial reassessment.
Process Delivery: It is committed to the principle that the project team is
responsible for managing their resources, including their people resources. The
contribution of the human resources (HR) is to enable the project team to do this by
providing process tools and consultation. The Knowledge Retention process illustrates
some of these enabling futures:
1. processes, tools, forms, check-lists etc which are focused on meeting critical issues
2. self service, intranet based systems which provides the project team access to the
tools, firms etc,
7. PRESENT ACTIVITIES AND SUGGESTIVE MEASURES ON KM
Knowledge management in fast reactor technology is not a new area for Scientific
Information Research Division (SIRD) at IGCAR. Many activities like procurement of
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open literature, content and TOC creation for the library owned documents, like past
conference proceedings, rare and grey reports and various Plan activities that are aimed at
developing and sustaining the technical competence needed to apply nuclear technology
and operate nuclear facilities in IGCAR. There has always been a visible and vigorous
part of the SIRD’s programme focused on preserving, archiving and making available for
retrieval vast amount of scientific and technical data and documentation.
Apart from archiving more than 1000 books on fast reactors, SIRD in IGCAR is
gradually building an information base with FBR related reports containing more the
15000 in print, microform and digital form. Our model for retrieving information on fast
reactors is based on indexing and abstracting and leading to full-text retrieval to some
extent.
SIRD activities are well positioned to serve as a hub for information exchange
and cooperation on matters related to science and technology of fast reactors. By
providing better care and planning these facilities, it can very well be enhanced to
become a knowledge preservation and management centre for nuclear technology with
special reference to fast reactors. This facility is built on the existing databases of
documents, while networking with other information systems to provide enhanced
information services and knowledge management systems. In this respect, a portal
(Bodhi) is maintained in our Intranet site giving gateway information on FBR,
Reprocessing and Nuclear Fuels.
In representing this kind of “relation of relations”, as an example, experiences on
“KNK-II”, right from the R&D stages to decommissioning, are given as documentary
evidence. We have accumulated them in a single place under one touch and given it for
the users. Anybody who wants to put this effective knowledge into their use in their own
environment under similar circumstances may find and consider this sample of
knowledge management is very much useful tool. Similarly we have a separate capsule
for “Accelerated Driven System for Fast Reactors”.
Suggestive Measures:
Taking all these view in question and by virtue of experience gained through the
activities put forth in the management of knowledge, we would like to suggest that a
project knowledge preservation of fast breeder reactor becomes indispensable, especially
forming our main goal to give more the reasons of technical choices than to present basic
explanations, in order to help future designers and builders of fast reactors. Apart from
documentary evidences giving reasons of technical choices on each R&D items and
FBTR systems, a database supporting each and every object of these documentary
evidences will be created and made available rapid and easy accessible to information.
For ensuring and continuing effectively the knowledge management activities, we
put forth the suggestion to form ‘action groups’ consisting of experts and specialists from
all the sections and divisions of this centre. Success of this knowledge base lies in the
selection and availability of participating specialist and this can be achieved when there
still existing teams working in the relative fields of knowledge base and when there is
real motivation of the management. These groups must be aware of technical problems of
the base concerned and the knowledge preservation aspects.
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8. CONCLUSION
This paper concludes that by utilizing the carry forward KM, numerous benefits
can be achieved, like for example, based on conceptual design drawings, identification of
final design for fetching licensing or starting construction can be easy and smooth,
accumulation of operating experiences for passing on to fresher, knowledge accumulated
on equipment and material contaminated in a nuclear facility, will pave a successful path
for ultimate decommissioning also.
We also conclude that by highlighting the need for capturing explicit and tacit
knowledge, an innovative ‘process and tools’ for elucidating and capturing valuable
undocumented knowledge.
9. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors are gratefully acknowledging their sincere thanks to all the R&D
officers and staff of SIRD for their valuable inputs support.
10. REFERENCES
1. “Managing Nuclear Knowledge: Strategies and Human Resource Development”,
Summary of an international conference, 7-10 September 2004, Saclay.
2. Knowledge management for nuclear industry operating organizations, International
Atomic Energy Agency, International Nuclear Information System and Nuclear
Knowledge Management Section, Vienna (Austria), IAEA-Tecdoc-1510.
3. PAS 2001 - Knowledge Management: A guide to good practice, Dominic Kelleher and
Simon Levene
4. Technical meeting on decommissioning of fast reactors after sodium draining. Working
material, International Atomic Energy Agency, Technical Working Group on Fast
Reactors, Vienna (Austria), Technical meeting on decommissioning of fast reactors after
sodium draining Cadarache (France) 26-30 Sep 2005, IAEA-TM-27329 (TWG-FR--128 )
5. Consultancy on 'IAEA initiative to establish a fast reactor knowledge base'. Working
material, International Atomic Energy Agency, Technical Working Group on Fast
Reactors, Vienna (Austria) Consultancy on 'IAEA initiative to establish a fast reactor
knowledge base' Vienna (Austria) 8-10 Dec 2004, TWG-FR—121.
6. The nuclear power industry's ageing workforce: Transfer of knowledge to the next
generation, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna (Austria), IAEA-TECDOC—
1399.
7. Annual Report 2006, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Energy, Kalpakkam.
8. Technical meeting to 'Preserve fast reactor physics knowledge'. Working material,
International Atomic Energy Agency, Technical Working Group on Fast Reactors,
Vienna
(Austria)
Technical meeting to 'Preserve fast reactor physics knowledge' Daejon (Korea, Republic
of) 12-16 May 2003, IAEA-TM—25809.
9. The nuclear power industry's ageing workforce: Transfer of knowledge to the next
generation, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna (Austria), IAEA-TECDOC—
1399, ANNEX H, p.79.
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FROM MANAGEMENT OF ORGANIZATIONAL KNOWLEDGE
TO MANAGEMENT OF ORGANIZATIONAL MEMORY
K.K.Kuriakose*, H.Seetha*, S.A.V.Satya Murty*, S.Athinarayanan* and P.Swaminathan *
Abstract
Globalisation ubiquitous computing and knowledge centric view of the organization has brought
knowledge management to the central stage in many organizations. Knowledge management enables
organizational knowledge to grow flow and create more value in the organization. Knowledge Management is
the process by which organization generates wealth from its knowledge based assets.
Organizations which were initially concentrating on information management, started moving to
knowledge management then to organizational memory and organizational learning. Organizational memory is
the combined repository of data, information and knowledge across the organizational boundaries captured in
accessible repositories. These repositories consist of documents, computers, people and culture. Any
progressive organization will be continuously acquiring, updating, storing and managing the memory for
making it available to all the relevant employees and improving the organizational effectiveness. Organizational
learning uses organizational memory as its knowledge base. The effective utilization of organizational memory
will result in organizational learning and improved organizational performance.
This paper discusses the management of organizational memory and organizational learning and its
relationship to information management and knowledge management. It also discusses a conceptual frame
work for management of organizational memory in a large Research and Development Organization.
Key words: Knowledge Management, Organizational Memory, Organizational Performance
INTRODUCTION
Knowledge Management is a conscious strategy of getting the right knowledge to the
right people at the right time, and helping people share and put knowledge into action for
improving the organizational performance. The key concept is ‘organizational performance’
or ‘productivity improvement’. If the usage of computers for productivity improvement can
be analyzed, it can be seen that the starting point was basic data processing systems. Data
processing systems process transactions and produce reports. It represents the automation of
fundamental, routine processing to support operations. For this purpose Electronic Data
Processing(EDP) departments were set up in many organizations. The idea of using the
information captured in transaction processing system for decision making gave birth to
Decision Support Systems(DSS), Management Information Systems(MIS), Enterprise
Information Management (EIM) etc, though the contribution from data processing system is
minimal . In a similar way is the idea of ‘Knowledge Management’ has evolved from
‘Information Management’ ? There are contradicting views on this. In this paper we consider
‘Knowledge Management’ as different from ‘Information Management’ and the only
similarities are both aids in improving organizational productivity and both use ‘Information
Technology’ like computers , networks etc.
Organizational Memory(OM) can be defined as a set of repositories of data,
information and knowledge that the organization has acquired and retains over a period of
time. Stein and Zwass (1995) define OM as the means where by knowledge from the past is
brought to bear on present activities resulting on higher or lower levels of organizational
* Electronics and Instrumentation Group, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research
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effectiveness. Walsh and Ungson (1991) define OM as stored information from an
organization’s history that can be thought to bear as the present decisions. The main goals of
OM are to integrate information and knowledge across organizational boundaries, to assist
current activities based on past experiences and to avoid repetition of past mistakes. Basic
function of OM are perception , acquisition, abstraction, recording, storage, retrieval,
interpretation and transmission of organizational knowledge (Stein and zwass 1995). Walsh
and Ungson (1991) propose that organizational memory consist of five retention facilities:
individuals, culture, transformation, structures and ecology.
OM consists of unstructured and structured data, information and knowledge,
unstructured concepts information and knowledge that exist in the organization’s culture and
in the minds of the employees can be partially elicited and represented in electronic
documents, audio, video recordings etc. Structured concepts, data, information and
knowledge that resides in various pockets of the organization can be completely captured and
represent by electronic documents, databases etc.
From the above discussions it is obvious that OM consists of data, information &
knowledge and knowledge management is a subset of organizational memory management.
KNOWLEDGE
Knowledge may be explicitly available in the form of reports of activities, minutes of
meetings, memoranda, proceedings of conferences, other documents or databases, audio and
video recordings, multimedia presentations or implicitly as the experience, emotions, values,
hunches and understanding of the people in the organization. Hence Knowledge can be
classified in to ‘tacit’ and ‘explicit’. Tacit knowledge resides in the heads of people and
explicit knowledge is available in paper, computer etc. Tacit knowledge is what the knower
knows, which is derived from experience and embodies beliefs and values. According to
Nonanka “explicit knowledge is the knowledge that is easily expressed, captured stored and
reused. In contrast, tacit knowledge is highly personal and resides in the minds of people as
the experience, emotions, values, hunches and understanding . It is hard to formalize and
therefore difficult to communicate to others” (Nonanka, 1991). For Nonanka tacit and
explicit knowledge are not separate but mutually complimentary entities. They interact with
each other in the creative activities of human beings. Nonanka calls this as the knowledge
conversion process. This conversion process consists of socialization, externalization,
combination and internalization.
Socialization transfers tacit knowledge between individuals through observation,
discussion, demonstration etc. Externalization converts the tacit knowledge in to explicit
knowledge in the form of documents , video recordings etc. Combination re-configures
explicit knowledge through adding, combining, modifying and categorizing. Combination
also includes making available the explicit knowledge to others. Internalization translates
explicit knowledge in to tacit knowledge by absorbing the explicit knowledge by individuals.
However we use the term ‘explicit knowledge’ where the knowledge is already available
explicitly in the form of documents , audio/ video recordings etc in electronic or nonelectronic
form and the term ‘tacit knowledge’ where the knowledge still resides in the
minds of people in the form of experience, feelings, opinions, intuition etc. We feel that
certain percentage of the tacit knowledge can be converted into explicit by suitable
knowledge elicitation methods. In this paper the term ‘knowledge’ is used to refer the
combined knowledge available both in explicit and tacit form.
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Organizational Knowledge
Organizational Knowledge refers to the combined knowledge of all past and present
employees of the organization. In this sense it may not be possible to capture the complete
organizational knowledge into accessible repositories , because it involves tacit knowledge
and it involves past employees. However we use the term ‘Organizational Knowledge’ to
refer to the combined knowledge of all past and present employees of the organization
which are captured into accessible repositories.
Knowledge has often been considered as a resource, strategic asset, and most
importantly a source of competitive advantage to organizations. Knowledge unlike other
organizational resources like ‘men’, ‘money’, ‘machines’ and ‘materials’is difficult to
imitate, and strategically difficult to substitute. For a firm to gain a competitive advantage it
requires the capability to transform resources, and knowledge provide that ability. Hence in
the absence of organizational knowledge, other resources cannot be utilized
effectively.Davenport and Prusak (1998) view knowledge as an evolving combination of
experiences, expert insights, values, contextual information etc. that provides a frame work
for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. In other words,
organizational knowledge facilitates creation of new knowledge. Nonaka (1991) states that
knowledge is context specific and is about the “meaning”. This implies that for a knowledge
repository to be useful, it must also store the context in which the knowledge was generated.
The context specific nature of knowledge implies that ‘Knowledge’ as it is can not be applied
universally but new knowledge applicable for the given context need to be generated from the
available knowledge.
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
In simple terms Knowledge Management refers to Management of ‘Knowledge’
similar to Human Resource Management or Materials Management. When the ‘Knowledge’
refers to ‘Personal Knowledge’ , it is “Personal Knowledge Management”; when it refers to
the knowledge of an organization it is “Organizational Knowledge Management”; when it
refers to the knowledge of a nation, it is “National Knowledge Management” and so on.
However in general and in this paper the term “Knowledge Management” refers to
“Organizational Knowledge Management”. Knowledge management is a broad subject with
many facets. The process and terminology associated with knowledge management appears
abstract. Based on the review of the literatures presented by many academics and
practitioners, it can be concluded that there is not yet a common consensus on the definition
and the concept of knowledge management (Earl, 1999). Defining knowledge management
is akin to the old fable of the blind men and the elephant where each person touches different
part of the elephant’s body and arrives at their perception of what the elephant looks like and
really is (Bonanno, 2003).
In a broad sense there are two schools of knowledge management; one centered
around explicit knowledge and another one centered around people and tacit knowledge. For
the first group knowledge management deals with collecting and codifying the knowledge
available in different pockets of the organization and making it available to all the relevant
employees of the organization. One of the definitions appropriate for this group is
“knowledge management is the process of capturing a company’s collective expertise
wherever it resides in databases or paper or in peoples heads and distributing it to wherever it
can help to produce the biggest pay off” (Hibbard,1997). The researchers and practitioners in
this field have their education in information technology and information science. For this
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group knowledge is a tangible object which can be identified and handled in information
systems.
For the second group, knowledge management is synonymous with people
management, adding a new dimension to traditional human resource management, because
they believe that knowledge resides only in the minds of people and what is available
explicitly is only information. The researchers in this field have their education in business
management, philosophy, psychology, sociology etc. They are primarily involved in
assessing and improving human skills and behaviour. For them, knowledge is a process, a
complex set of dynamic skills, know how etc., which is constantly changing. Knowledge is
the capacity to act and it is synonymous with individual competence (Sveiby, 2001). Based
on this, we can define “knowledge management as the one which creates and nurtures the
organizational environment where knowledge sharing, creation and growth takes place in the
organization as an integral process in every role, on a continuous basis ,thereby improving
the dynamic capacity of the employees to act effectively in various situations”.
Knowledge management initiatives can be classified in to two main types. This
classification is based on the way knowledge is shared. One method is ‘indirect’ by
converting the tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge and shared. It is by the process of
exernalisation , combination and internalization . This method is also called the codification
approach where the strategy is people to document and document to people. The other
method is ‘direct’ where tacit knowledge is shared among people where the strategy is people
to people. This method is also called personalization approach. A holistic approach to
knowledge management should address both direct and indirect methods.
ORGANIZATIONAL MEMORY
Organizational Memory is the body of data, information and knowledge relevant to
an individual organization’s existence. It has two repositories – an organization's record of
activities/products , including its electronic data bases, and individuals’ memories. The
composition of OM includes prior data and information, all internally-generated
documentation related to the organizational activities such as intellectual property, details of
events, products and individuals, relevant published reference material and – importantly –
institution-created knowledge. OM can be visualized as the data, information and knowledge
captured by an organization in accessible repositories. These repositories consist of
documents, audio, video, people, culture and computers. The effective use of captured data,
information and knowledge results in ‘learning’ by individuals and organization. The
effective use is possible only if it can be accessed when required, necessitating effective
retrieval systems. It is generally expected that learning will improve organizational
effectiveness. But, it is also possible that organizations can learn incorrect behaviours. In
order to avoid such a pitfall, the contents of OM, its usage and the resultant performance need
to be continuously monitored. The basic components of Organizational Memory
System(OMS) are capturing, storing, searching, retrieving, using and assessing. In other
words OM is a subset of OMS. However we use the terms OM and OMS interchangeably.
The simplified representation of an OM is shwn in figure 1. The central repository consists of
data, information and knowledge created and used by various organizational entities. The
organizational entities can be individual employees, team, sections, task force, departments
etc.
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Central Repository
Data + Information + Knowledge
Entity ‘A’ Entity ‘B’ Entity ‘N’
Fig-1 Organizational Memory
Organizational Learning
Organisational Learning characterises how organisations learn from their
own and others' experiences. It is also known as Experiential Learning.
When it comes to experiential learning, an awareness of both the explicit and tacit
components of OM on their own is not generally enough to create new knowledge efficiently.
As a general rule it needs to be accompanied by a focussed learning phase. Most models of
experiential learning are cyclical and have three basic phases: They are awareness of an
experience or problem situation, a reflective phase within which the learner examines the
OM around the experience and draws bookish learning from that reflection, and a testing
phase within which the new insights or learnings, having been integrated with the learner's
own conceptual framework, and applied to a new problem situation or experience.The
concept’s starting point is that individuals or organizations seldom learn from experience
unless the experience is assessed and then assigned its own meaning in terms of individual
and/or the organization’s own goals, aims, ambitions and expectations. From these processes
come the insights and added meaning, which is then applied to new circumstances. The end
product is better decision-making.
Knowledge Management, which is the process of collecting and disseminating
know-how and experiences within an organization, enables the process of
Organisational Learning, or Experiential Learning, to take place. Malhotra (1996) defines
organizational learning (OL) as the process of detection and correction of errors.
Organizations learns through individuals acting as agents for them. Individual learning
activities by organizational factors which can be called an organizational learning system.
Organizational learning is the process whereby an organization assimilates experiences of its
members and uses that experience to modify the organizations potential actions. During
work employees gain experience, observe and reflect in making sense out of what they are
doing. They analyze these experiences and general abstractions are arrived. They formulate
perceptions on better methods of doing work. As these employees influence the co-workers
the “organization learns and the work culture is gradually changed”. OM is necessary to
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facilitate the processing and retention of information and knowledge needed for learning to
take place. Organizational learning uses OM as its knowledge base.
Functions of OM
The function of OM is to store the captured data, information and knowledge
applicable to the organization in accessible repositories. OM is created as a result of
individual and organizational activities and learning. Capturing the experience involves
capturing the structured explicit knowledge and the unstructured tacit knowledge. Capturing
the structured explicit knowledge is relatively easy. It can be captured from documents,
reports, publications, work procedures, data processing systems, Information Management
Systems etc.
Capturing the unstructured, abstract, tacit knowledge though difficult is important for
the OM. For this individuals act as the agents of capturing the knowledge as they synthesize
it in to their own internal knowledge base and apply to actions such as changing procedures
and work processes. The context and reasoning of such changes can be captured and stored
in OM. In addition to this limited capture of tacit knowledge, individuals themselves are the
main source of tacit knowledge. As the data, information and knowledge stored in OM are
applied over time, the organizational culture changes to reflect its use. Cultural change of
organization takes time, because organizational members need to reach a consensus that the
anticipated changes in organizational actions, norms and values are appropriate, acceptable
and beneficial to the organization. Consensus making is time consuming.
Management of OMS
The management of OMS consists of planning, identifying, capturing, quality
controlling, storing, searching, retrieving, and using the data, information & knowledge
relevant to the organization. Monitoring the benefits to the individuals and to the whole
organization is also a part of the management of OMS. It is possible to automate the capture
of certain data, information and knowledge in to the organizational memory. However, it is
also necessary to capture the relevant knowledge manually, codify and store in the OM. The
usage and benefit of OMS should be monitored. The OMS subsystems which are effective
in improving the organizational performance should be maintained and expanded and others
which are not effective should be analysed and made effective or dropped.
Approaches to build OMS
There are two approaches to building an OMS. They are process based approach and
infrastructure based approach. The process based approach focuses on the area of OM by
participants in a process, task or project in order to improve their effectiveness. This
approach identifies the data, information and knowledge needs of the process and its users,
capture them and store in OM. It has well defined users and hence it is user centric. The
infrastructure based approach focuses on building a base system to capture, store and
distribute OM for use throughout the organization. It is more concerned with the technical
details associated with identification, storage, search, retrieval and use of OM. The approach
focuses on network capacity, database, information and knowledge classification etc. The
approach is technology centric and takes longer time for visible success. Combination of both
approaches need to be used to create organization wide OM. Since, the process based
approach supports specific process and projects and identified users and knowledge
requirements.
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The infrastructure based approach integrates all OM in to a single system and hence
provides higher benefits, since it is spread across the entire organization rather than a few
process. The process based approach is more suitable for small organizations with well
defined OM goals. The infrastructure approach is preferred for large organizations, where the
OM needs are not known, but the organization knows that OM is necessary.
Studies of different OM implementations (Ackerman, 1994) reveals that, the success
rate of process based OM is high compared to infrastructure based organization wide OM.
Hence, it is suggested that even in infrastructure based organization wide OM, it is preferable
to break OM into manageable pieces, that correspond to specific process, task, project or
department and integration of these smaller pieces to form the overall OM. This hybrid
approach of having an overall plan of infrastructure based OM, identifying the components as
process based OM and finally integrating to form the complete organization wide OM has the
dual benefits of infrastructure based approach and process based approach.
Design of OMS
The basic components of OMS are capturing, storing, searching, retrieving, using and
assessing OM. The issues affecting the design of OMS are perspective of OM from different
organizational groups, information overload, quality control and security of OM, capturing
mechanism , storing, retrieval, usage and integration of memory components. OM
repositories need to be designed to accommodate different types of data like meta data,
structured data, semi structured data and unstructured data. Organization and representation
of memory and the user interfaces are the keys to success of OMS. Effective memory maps
need to be designed based on the user requirements. Capture of certain memory can be done
automatically from transaction processing system. However it is also required to capture
manually by designated personnel. Thecontent in OM ages with time and need to be purged
when it is no longer required. Methods for identifying and purging outdated memory, like
validity period and automatic/ administrator controlled purging after the validity period etc.
need to be evolved. Design of OMS should also consider the technology infrastructure like
network, servers, storage, back up devices etc. A typical OMS applicable for a large Research
and Development Organization is depicted in figure 2.
Projects HR Finance
Procurement & Materials
Management
Scientific Data
Warehouse
Quality Control & Security
Mapping
Digital Library
Performance
Department
Department Department n
Purging
Users &
Figure-2 Organizational Memory System
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The organization has various transaction processing systems like Human Resource
Management System, Finance, Projects, Procurement and Materials Management etc. The
relevant data and information from these systems can be captured in to the OM through
proper quality control and filtering mechanism. Similarly the relevant data from Scientific
Data Warehouse and Digital Library can be brought into the OM. Also information and
knowledge available in various Departments need to be consciously captured into the OM.
The performance of OM can be monitored through user feed back and performance
measurement methods. The mechanism of purging like validity period, ‘no usage’ etc. can be
used.
Effectiveness Organizational Memory Systems
When an Organization has implemented OMS, the effectiveness need to be measured
and the design of OMS should include appropriate methods to measure it. However, it is
also necessary to predict the effectiveness by appropriate methods even before the
implementation. Organizational effectiveness can be described using the competing values
model (Stein and Zwass, 1995, Quinn and Rhorbaugh, 1983). This model assumes that
organizational effectiveness is related to OMS. It uses four organizational effectiveness
criteria: integration, adaptation, goal attainment and pattern maintenance. The integration
function is the technology capability for providing access to the OM which may be
distributed across the entire organization in space and time. The adaptive function is the
ability of the organization to adapt to the changes in the organization. The goal attainment
function is the ability of the organization to set goals and evaluate the degree of their
fulfillment. The pattern maintenance function is the ability of the organization to maintain the
cohesion and the morale of the human resource.
The competing values model, though predicts the effectiveness of OMS, through the
organizational effectiveness variables, it does not predict the usage of OMS. The generalized
assessment of OMS success can be predicted by adapting the Information System Success
Model which (Jennex Adolfman, 2002, Delone and McLean’s 1992) depicted in Figure 2.
System Quality
Use
Individual
Impact
Organizational
Impact
Information Quality
User
Satisfaction
Figure 3. IS Success Model
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The ‘System Quality’ refers to the technological characteristics of the OMS. This
includes the capability of the organization to develop and maintain OMS in terms of quality
human resource(developers and users) and advanced hardware & software. It also includes
the level of integration : how much of the accessible memory is online and available through
a single interface. In addition it includes the quality of search and retrieval functions.
The ‘Information Quality’ defines the quality of the memory content in terms of its
richness, the linkages and to the extent to which it meets the needs of the users on a long
terms basis.
The ‘use’ refers to the utilization of the outputs of the system and can be used to
measure the success of the system when the usage of the system is voluntary. ‘User
satisfaction’ measures the users’ perception of the system. Use and user satisfaction will
influence each other. The usage of OMS by an individual will produce an impact on his / her
performance in the work place. Each individual impact will in turn have an impact on the
performance of the Organization, though it may not be a simple addition.
Managing Organizations Memory
It is usually perceived that an organization will benefit from using OM. However, it
does not happen always. The Organizational benefit depends on the context in which OM is
used. For example, if in a situation where a non routine response was required, the usage of
OM resulted in a routine decision, organizational performance deteriorates. Hence, effective
management of OM is necessary for improved organizational performance. Also
management actions are required for creation and implementation of OM Policies,
Procedures and Standards, ensure adequate resources to develop and maintain OM,
monitoring the usage of OM and ensure its effectiveness, adequate training to users ,
encourage the OM usage and orient the organizational culture to facilitate the effective
growth and usage of OM. The growth and usage of OM is tightly linked to the organizational
culture that promotes sharing between organizational members. Sharing culture can be
promoted through management support and by reward system used by the organization to
assess individual performance. Changing Organizational culture is time consuming and the
management need to make available the time and other resources required for this change
management.
CONCLUSION
Organizational knowledge is the combined knowledge of all employees both in
explicit and tacit form. Organizational Memory is the repository of data, information and
knowledge about the past events & activities in an organization and that possessed by
various organizational entities. It is applied to decision making regarding future events &
activities. OMS are systems built to support the capture and application of OM. In general, it
is perceived that application of OM will result in improved organizational performance.
However, it is not ensured unless the management of OMS are effective. Management of
OMS need to have strategy to identify the content and application of OM. It is also required
to monitor the usage of OM and its impact on Organization’s performance.
REFERENCES
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Memories”, Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Hawaii International Conference on
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2. Bonanno, K. (2003) “Knowledge Management : a people process” in Nimon,M.(ed),
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Management Review
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KNOWLEDGE: A MARKETABLE COMMODITY
A. Chitra Dhavaputhalvi * , and Dr. S. Ally Sornam **
Abstract
Current e-learning competition in higher education requires comprehensive planning that allows
for flexibility and opportunities to generate revenue as well as make a profit. This means that e-learning
should be viewed as a business opportunity and venture, not just as an exercise in pedagogy. In this
respect, e-learning becomes the e-commerce extension of an existing academic model.
Pedagogy should be re-evaluated in the context of “knowledge as commodity,”
in which case e-learning can be considered as the integration of pedagogy. Programs that are
pedagogically sound but not fiscally sound may not be endorsed by the administration because of financial
strain to the organization. Conversely, programs that are fiscally sound but not pedagogically sound will
not be endorsed by the faculty whom it represents. The idea approach is to develop or maintain programs
that are pedagogically and fiscally sound.
INTRODUCTION
When an economist, economics professor, or economics textbook talks
about a commodity, they mean a good that possesses the following properties:
• usually produced and/or sold by many different companies
• Is uniform in quality between companies that produce/sell it. You cannot tell the
difference between one firm's product and another.
Commodities are usually sold for their marginal cost of production, though in
the real world the price is often higher. E-Knowledge is differing from traditional
business models in a variety of ways. For example, a traditional model tends to be based
upon stability, predictability, long-range planning, formal alliances, and an aversion to
failure.
Commercialization of education refers to a situation in which education, as an
undertaking, becomes so profitable that it starts attracting entrepreneurs who are only
interested in earnings, having no commitments to uphold the ideals of education.
In the context of globalization, education / knowledge becomes a commodity
subject to trade across different countries. It involves attracting talented students from
developing countries by the advanced and affluent developed countries, both with the
intension of earnings as well as making use of potential talent in students who find
limited avenues in their own country.
KNOWLEDGE; A MARKETABLE COMMODITY
The question that comes to one’s mind is why we are now talking of
marketing of education. How and why has knowledge come to be treated as a marketable
* Kongu Engineering College, Perundurai
** Head, PG DLIS, Bishop Heber College, Trichy
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commodity? There are certain factors responsible for this development. These are
discussed at some length below.
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE?
Knowledge is a term, which is used widely and indiscriminately. Widely because
everybody is concerned with it; and indiscriminately as there is no definite universal
meaning for that. It ranges from simple information to absolute mastery over any field of
study or original contribution to theory of knowledge. On the whole, knowledge is a term
used with varied meanings depending on different contexts. “In Plato’s view knowledge
is merely an awareness of absolute, universal ideas or forms, existing independent of any
subject trying to apprehend them.
WHAT IS COMMODITY?
The word commodity is a term with distinct meanings in business. Good or a
service that is exchanged for money. Obviously, it is a product, Goods, Service and
article of trade.
MODES OF MARKETING
There are four different modes of supplying transnational (or cross-border) higher
education. The traditional mode is that in which the students moves from his country to
another country for pursuit of education. The second mode is cross-border supply, when
institutions of a member country provide distance course to another member such as
through distance education or the Internet. The third mode- commercial presence, takes
place when the supplier of education provides courses through branches or franchise in
another member country through its colleges and institutions of higher education. The
fourth is movement of natural persons, that is, when teachers of a member country move
to teach in another member country.
MARKETING STRATEGIES
Education, having acquired the status of a commodity subject to sale in the
market, has rendered it necessary for its suppliers to market their product. At the
international level it has become an important foreign exchange earner for the leading
exporters of education, viz., USA, UK, Australia, Canada etc. the policies pursued and
the strategies adopted have focused on
i) Creating awareness about their educational programmes
ii) Creating a conductive environment for foreign students.
iii) Offering courses tailored to the needs of students.
iv) Offering scholarships and job opportunities to attract students.
Business to business (B2B) models involves the sale or exchange between two
business entities. Business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions are those in which the actual
customer is the end user.
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APPLYING E-COMMERCE TO E-LEARNING
E-commerce presents an opportunity to programs offering e-learning to
access a variety of potential audiences of learners. Additionally,
e-commerce
also is about developing an online presence, but also about improving the efficiency of
any operation, which in this case can relate to optimizing the use of digitally developed
materials. This can be discerned in the types of e-commerce relationships developed
(B2B or B2C) as well as using the Internet to attract or retain learners.
A BUSINESS TO CONSUMER EXAMPLE
A B2C application relates “knowledge as marketable commodity”
directly to the end user—in this case the learners. Consider the example of an online
program for registered and practicing pharmacists that enable them to upgrade their skills
and degree.
This is a direct marketing of education to any pharmacist who is qualified
and interested in pursuing the degree. In addition, this can be marketed in a variety of
forms of offerings to attract the maximum number of users. Since the B2C model applies
directly to learners, it requires interactions with a variety of educational ancillary services
such as registrar, admissions, financial aid, library, and accreditation issues that are
associated with the provision of education and the possible awarding of a degree. Finally,
as would be expected in a B2C scenario, the financial model is based upon tuition and
expenditure, so it is imperative to capitalize upon the various opportunities that present
themselves when offering materials online.
A BUSINESS TO BUSINESS EXAMPLE
Now, take the same non-traditional pharmacy program and apply a business-tobusiness
(B2B) model. Now a distinctly different audience appears. The non-traditional
pharmacy program is sold either in its entirety or piecemeal to another college or
university that brokers the content to a third party. This type of “knowledge as
marketable commodity” arrangement is becoming more common.
Depending on what is sold, the contractual arrangement can be structured to allow
for either a lump-sum purchase of the content or a revenue-sharing arrangement where
each party gets a set percentage of the tuition generated. The second revenue model
allows for continuous income over the life of the contract and control over the content
sold, which has significant advantages.
In this B2B model, the seller is no longer in the position of dealing with registrar
issues, admissions, financial aid, library services, and, to some extent, accreditation.
There are other issues, however.
For example, with respect to copyright clearance it is no longer a question of fairuse,
but the knowledgeable sale of educational content containing copyrighted materials.
Another concern is intellectual property and ownership. The university selling the
courses for distribution may need to compensate or ensure that course ownership has
been resolved before this occurs. Finally, a purchasing school may need to ensure that the
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faculty is comfortable with the courses purchased and that these courses meet the
accreditation standards for that institution, albeit specialized or regional.
The final example is a combination of the previous two. Digitally developed
materials can easily be re-purposed for a variety of uses and audiences, in which case it is
possible to use the same product for both B2B and B2C uses.
In this case, consider a course developed to teach research methods in a health
profession program. In addition to its intended or planned audience, it is possible to look
at a variety of health profession students (pharmacy, nursing, physical therapy, etc.)
directly (B2C) as well as to health profession programs that requires a research methods
course for use with their students (B2B).
This means developing a good, highly functional Web page with online
demonstrations of lectures, access to notes, slides, audio, and possibly a video clip so
potential students can get an example of the content.
In each instance the key is to develop a Web presence that attracts new users or
gives current users a reason to come back. It is not necessary to provide an entire lecture
for viewing, but at least provide enough to allow the individual to feel like an informed
consumer. The product of knowledge is so well protected behind fire walls and
passwords that the potential user has no idea what to expect.
CONCLUSION
As programs of higher education seek new ways to increase visibility and
the competitive advantage within a changing marketplace, the integration of e-
commerce business models will become more prevalent. It is imperative that
universities provide themselves with the best possible chance for success, which may
mean integrating the Internet to become a “brick and click.” This is not to say that
the old ways of higher education should be abandoned or changed; only that new ways of
providing knowledge and education are worth considering.
There has been a lot of discussion regarding the commercialization of higher
education. Applying e-commerce principles to e-learning is not about commercializing
education, but instead increasing access to more potential learners. Now more than ever
students are becoming consumers and e-learning is a competitive marketplace. The
appropriate integration of e-commerce into higher education can benefit all involved if
done well.
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Role of Libraries in the Knowledge Commodity World
K V Satyanarayana*, Sheetal Tare *
Abstract
Libraries have been dealing with information technology for nearly four decades and it has
touched every aspect of library services, for example; circulation, reference, cataloging and so on. With the
evolution of the Internet, the change is happening at a very rapid pace. Usages of online services have
reached a frenetic pace. Information that was earlier available through books, journals in libraries or
high-cost databases is now available on the Web, sometimes free of cost. This has led to commoditization of
knowledge with information available anywhere, anytime and barriers to access of knowledge have started
disappearing. A small percentage of information is freely available on the Web while there is still a vast
pool of information available with a price and the options for end-users have increased manifold. Indeed,
users seem to be comfortable searching the Web by using Google and other search engines, rather than
visiting the library. This has created a paradigm shift for libraries. Libraries are now focusing on adding
value by 1) Suggesting sources to users and providing remote access to library sources, 2) Providing
assistance through evaluating authenticity, 3) Enhancing the quality of content for users and 4) Provide
domain specific information services.
1. INTRODUCTION
Today, knowledge is primary resource in organizations and society is moving
from being information society to knowledge society. Organizations are practicing and
implementing knowledge management techniques and technologies to improve their
efficiency, effectiveness and stay in the competition. Knowledge is becoming
commoditized in this globalized world and rapid growth of technology is intensifying
such attempts. Knowledge has not been produced in any factory, but it taken different
shapes, packaged, distributed, sold, shared, and used. The resulting learning is again
reapplied to create new knowledge and leading to new knowledge commodity. Indeed,
knowledge became externalized from knower and its utility is linked with its perceived
value to customers. Rapid advances in technology are further reducing the barriers to
direct access to information/knowledge in corporate and academic library settings. Thus
libraries are forced to adopt business models to survive and continuously add value to
customer services.
2. COMMODITIZATION OF INFORMATION/KNOWLEDGE
Before the arrival of World Wide Web, access to information was predominantly
though books. Journals, CD-ROMs and some time through paid online databases. These
resources generally used to exist in Libraries and users are restricted by lack of multiple
copies, reference collection and/or high cost of these sources. With internet growth,
access to information has changed and many such collections are now available on the
web in the electronic format. Now information is available both in structured and nonstructured
format on the web. Not only publishers, professional organization but
* Tata Consultancy Services. (Pune), k.satyanarayana, sheetal.tare @tcs.com,
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Individuals, institutions, corporate houses are publishing information on Internet. Wide
variety of information sources are now available on the web which includes journals,
magazines, news papers, books, library catalogues, dictionaries, maps, technical reports,
encyclopedias, patents, websites of companies, organizations, governments and so on.
Technology also made possible to provide access to these services remotely.
Information and / or knowledge taken in electronic format can be made available
to multiple users simultaneously, sometime even without any cost implications.
Knowledge available in patents, is now easily accessible to researchers having access to
internet. Several patent offices are providing free access to full-text of patent on their
websites. Encyclopedias, resources once usually found in libraries only are now easily
available on the web. Users are unlikely to consult libraries for referring to these
materials.
Apart from the availability of electronic information, there are few developments
that lead to rise of commoditization of knowledge. They are given below:
Government/International Organization information sources: Many
government and international agencies made their information available for free on the
web. World Bank Group makes it Project appraisal reports, Economic and Sector Works,
and studies and working papers available on their website. US government websites
provide statistics and research reports on their websites.
Growth of Search engines into information provision: Once where users
depended on libraries for news, financial or stock market information, now they can
easily get access through finance pages of Google, Yahoo, MSN and several other
websites. Sometimes, these pages provide free access to limited market research and
company analyst information. News can be accessed through news pages or RSS feeds.
Publisher subscription policies: Some societies have made available access to
their content to individuals at lower price thus providing convenient access to
information. Few publishers or information providers provide some information freely to
users. IEEE Digital Library subscription for members is available for USD 35 per month.
Hoovers website provides basic company information freely and detailed information on
subscription basis. Gartner provides some content freely on their website.
Credit card and electronic payments: Several publishers, aggregators,
document delivery service providers like ScienceDirect, Ingenta, Emerald, British
Library and university libraries started delivering single articles or services by accepting
credit card payments.
Open Archives and Open Access movement: From the mid-1990s, open archive
and access movements started gaining momentum and it became very popular in this
decade. Open access can be described as free and unrestricted online access to digital
scholarly material, primarily peer-reviewed research articles in journals. Today Directory
of Open Access Journals lists 2726 journals in its directory. These are free, full text,
quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. Similarly, institutes are encouraging
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their scholars to post their articles on institutes digital libraries. Highwire Press maintains
largest open access archive of scientific and medical journals and Pubmed Central
maintains life science journal article access. There are subject repositories like arXiv.org
for Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science and Quantitative Biology, NASA
Astrophysics Data System (ADS) for astronomy and astrophysics. NCSTRL provides
access to over 20,000 technical reports in computer science.
Search engines for scholarly information: There are several free search engines
like Google Scholar, Scirus, CiteSeer, and getCITED available which will index
scholarly literature. Some of these tools have functionality similar to subscription-based
tools like Scopus and Thomson ISI's Web of Science. Google Scholar provides links to
freely available literature on the web and also citation information.
Web 2.0 technologies and services: Second generation of web-based
communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs and
RSS are changing the way users collaboration and sharing and became very popular.
Wikipedia was started by Jimmy Wales in 2001 and now has more than 2.5 million
entries in 10 languages and became one of the popular sites. Now it extended to
Wikibooks, free open-source textbooks, and Wiktionary, an open-source dictionary,
among other creations.
3. IMPACT ON LIBRARIES
We can say today that users use Google or other services before coming to
Library. In the pre-internet world, librarians/libraries have central place in their
information requirements which now became one of the option for users in this internet
world. OCLC report, College Students’ Perceptions of Libraries and Information
Resources, indicates that most undergraduates either do not visit their campus library or
do so only one or two times per year.
Pressures from funding institutions, reduction in budgets, operational and
financial performance measures increased use of internet by users are driving librarians to
promote, advertise and sell library services and move beyond from free services. Let us
look at the ways how these roles changed. To provide reference services, librarians
moved from searching the internal library collections and one or two paid databases to
online databases, hundreds of journals, online catalogs of other libraries and vast worldwide
web. Availability of new tools, better access made reference queries complex.
People are finding simple information using websites and databases provided on their
computers, for example; price of a book, address of a company and so on. Earlier
librarians tend to provide subject bibliographies or reading lists to users. Now they started
creating WebPages with links of sites that user’s can use. Internet made sharing of
cataloging of data easier and also ability to create different catalogs for different kind of
audience. In this internet world, where knowledge is treated as commodity and priced,
Libraries can change their paths and play important role in few areas. Given below are
some of the ways for the same:
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Building digital libraries: Librarians are having rich experience of organizing
knowledge. This can help them to build in-house digital libraries to capture organizations
knowledge, codify and make available to all. Libraries can become multimedia publishers
of its staff projects. This in turn enhances the process of knowledge discovery in the
organization.
Building rich catalog of resources: Libraries now required providing access to
materials available in digital form anywhere on the web and their role as information
evaluators or navigational guides becoming important. Libraries can help users to make
choices about freely available material and or rank, evaluate different services or sources
available on the net.
Building communities: Libraries can acts as places of social and expert
networks. It can host tools for social networking, develop guides for specialized
disciplines to help researchers navigate through the subject. Further, they can provide
access and retrieval of knowledge produced through these networks for future use.
Domain experts: Libraries can develop domain expertise to provide consultation
services to researchers.
Content integrators: Libraries will be encouraged to combine various sources of
content from different sources and service providers including the internal content into
one large offering for users’ access. Thus information professionals can thrive to delivers
the right content, to the right people, at the right time by focusing on business process
management of the organization. This requires librarians to understand roles,
responsibilities and business needs of the organization. Also, they can deploy content
effectively through licensing agreements or other means.
4. CONCLUSION
Library staff requires understanding how different the world of knowledge
became and they should be flexible and agile to learn new skills required managing and
progressing in the new world. This would mean librarians to act navigation guides in
knowledge world to users, embracing new technologies and changes and finally being
proactive in dealing with information policy issues in the organization.
REFERENCES
1. Hillenbrand, C. (2005). Librarianship in the 21st century – crisis or transformation?
Australian Library Journal. 54(2)
2. Changing Roles of Academic and Research Libraries This essay derives from a
Roundtable on Technology and Change in Academic Libraries, convened by the
Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) on November 2-3, 2006 in
Chicago.
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Author Index
Amudhavalli, A., 143
Anukampa Negi 152
Athinarayanan, S., 190
Chandra, U., 93, 169
Chitra Dhavaputhalvi, A., 200
Das, P., 81
Dasgupta, D., 81
Dipa Dasgupta 100
Gayatri, D., 13
Jayadev Kadli 1
Jayakumar, C., 9
Joby Thomas 47
Joseph, J.V.M., 73
Kanthimathi, S., 86
Kaushik, K Sanjay 118
Kuriakose, K.K. 190
Mago, R., 93, 169
Mallick, B.K., 81
Mishra, P.B., 169
Moolani, J.P. 93, 169
Muttayya Koganuramath 1
Narayanan, A., 180
Nargund I N., 47
Pandurangam, M., 73
Parihar, Y.S., 37
Pattnaik, J.K., 37
Rajendran, L., 111
Rajendran, L., (Dr.) 131
Rajendran, V., 61, 180
Rathinasabapathy, G., 111, 131, 143
Saha, A.K., 81
Sampath Kumar, S., 86
Samyuktha, R., 44
Sangita Gupta 68
Sanjay Gupta 152
Sanjeevkumar. R. J., 54
Satish Kanamadi, 1
Satya Murty, S.A.V., 190
Satyanarayana, K.V., 204
Seetha, H., 190
Sheetal Tare 204
Somasekharan, M., 9, 73, 106, 180
Soundararajan, E., 9, 61, 106
Srinivasan, J., 180
Subramanian, N., 30
Swaminathan, P., 190
Thakur, D.S., 160
Tharani, K., 86
Valarmathy, N., 126
Vasundhra Kumari 152
Vijendra Singh 118
Vinitha, K., 86

Author Index
Amudhavalli, A., I-6, 143
Anukampa Negi 152
Athinarayanan, S., 190
Chandra, U., 93, 169
Chitra Dhavaputhalvi, A., 200
Das, P., 81
Dasgupta, D., 81
Dipa Dasgupta 100
Gayatri, D., 13
Jadhav, R., 54
Jayadev Kadli 1
Jayakumar, C., 9
Joby Thomas 47
Joseph, J.V.M., 73
Kanthimathi, S., 86
Kavitha Dutta, 68
Kaushik, K Sanjay 118
Kuriakose, K.K. 190
Mago, R., 93, 169
Mallick, B.K., 81
Mishra, P.B., 169
Moolani, J.P. 93, 169
Muttayya Koganuramath 1
Narayanan, A., 180
Nargund I N., 47
Pandurangam, M., 73
Parihar, Y.S., 37
Pattnaik, J.K., 37
Praveen Kumar Kumbargoudar, 54
Rajendran, L., 111, 131
Rajendran, V., 61, 180
Rathinasabapathy, G., 111, 131, 143
Saha, A.K., 81
Sampath Kumar, S., 86
Samyuktha, R., 44
Sangita Gupta 68
Sanjay Gupta 152
Sanjeevkumar. R. J., 54
Satish Kanamadi, 1
Satya Murty, S.A.V., 190
Satyanarayana, K.V., 204
Seetha, H., 190
Sheetal Tare 204
Sneh Lata Sharma, 68
Somasekharan, M., I-2, 9, 73, 106, 180
Soundararajan, E., I-2, 9, 61, 106
Srinivasan, J., 180
Subarna K Das, 22
Subramanian, N., 30
Swaminathan, P., 190
Thakur, D.S., 160
Tharani, K., 86
Valarmathy, N., 126
Vasundhra Kumari 152
Vijendra Singh 118
Vinitha, K., 86