READIT-2007 - Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research

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information to new forms of less formal, unpublished material, we must be willing to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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