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of Intellectual Capital which is the focus of the study and provide a general overview about
public university libraries in Tanzania. Unfortunately there is indeed too little information
about Tanzania public university libraries found in secondary sources. The statement of the
problem, the aim of the research and the objectives are included in this chapter along with
research questions, the justification for the study and the definition of terms. Further
discussion about Intellectual Capital and knowledge sharing and their relationships in this
research are treated in chapter three. Knowledge management is treated in this research as the
umbrella term for knowledge sharing and Intellectual Capital.
Since knowledge management came into being early 1990‟s, the controversies of its origin
and sense are not yet resolved. Tom Wilson in his paper entitled „the nonsense of knowledge
management‟ suggested that what is called knowledge management is nothing but
information management with a new label. He argued that;
“Various techniques are described as 'knowledge management tools', but in all cases it
turns out that these involve not knowledge but, for example, information about the
intellectual resources of a firm, or software 'agents' that function on the use of
information. It all appears to be part of the attempt to re-sell expert systems under a
new label” (Wilson, 2002).
Larry Prusak in his attempt to address the origin of knowledge management suggested that
some sceptics may argue that consultants developed knowledge management to replace
declining revenues from the waning re-engineering movement. Others may feel that
knowledge management is just a “re-badging” of earlier information and data management
methods (Prusak 2001, p.1002). The definition of Knowledge Management chosen to
underpin this research is stated below in section 1.8.
Even though there is no consensus on the term many practitioners will agree that knowledge
management refers to 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 (Hawkins, 2000).
Knowledge Management can be used in libraries to promote the exchange of knowledge
between library staff, to excite the library staff‟s eagerness and abilities for learning and
restructure the library into a learning organization. Best practices, later known as lessons
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