Professionals : a survey of Central Universities in North India

The aim of the present study is to explore the perception of Library and Information Science professionals in central universities about Knowledge Management and its integration into library practices. The study is conducted through survey by using a web-based questionnaire. A wellstructured both close and open ended questionnaire was administered to 75 LIS professionals who had been working in different central university libraries in North Indian States. The findings of the study indicate that LIS professionals’ attitudes about KM varied from one another and their understanding of KM concepts also differed from person to person. But, the majority of them were of the view that KM provides enormous opportunities for LIS Professionals. The paper presents an overview of the perception of knowledge management among LIS professionals, and commends that KM skills should be imparted among LIS professionals so that they can stretch their understanding, change their long lived schemas, and to apply a rounded approach to design of KM system and library practice. KeywordsKnowledge Management; Libraries; Library and Information Science professionals; Perception; North India; Survey. Article typeResearch paper INTRODUCTION The launch of the concept Knowledge Management (KM) can be traced from the last decade of the 20th century, when it begins and faddish in the business world. Business world recognized the momentous of knowledge in the global economy of the knowledge age. In the new knowledge economy, the custody of important and tactical knowledge and its interminable regeneration empower corporate sector to addendum competitive profits. The applications of knowledge management have now reached to other sectors, encompassing Universities, Governmental units, Research and Development section etc. (Lee, 2005). Knowledge management (KM) is “a collection of processes that govern the creation, dissemination, and utilization of knowledge in an organization” (Newman, 1991). According to IFLA, KM is “a process of creating (generating, capturing), storing (preserving, organizing, integrating), sharing (communicating), applying (implementing), and reusing (transforming) organisational knowledge to enable an organisation to achieve its goals and objectives”. It includes the management of explicit knowledge (i.e. knowledge that has been codified in databases, web pages, documents, etc.) and sharing of tacit knowledge (i.e. skills, expertise, or know-how) (Ajiferuke, 2003). In libraries and information centers, explicit knowledge is created inside the organization, such as minutes of meetings, theses, memos guidelines, reports, etc. or obtained from extrinsic sources, including databases, books, government information, journal articles, etc. However, tacit knowledge, embedded in minds of workers with a comprehensive knowledge of rules and regulations, work procedures, etc. (Wijetunge, 2002). Tacit and explicit knowledge, both is deliberate as the most important sources of knowledge of a library, the management of which should be done with utmost care and should be the prime motto of any library (Ajiferuke, 2003). KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND LIBRARIANSHIP: PERCEPTION OF LIS COMMUNITY Different library and information science (LIS) professionals perceive KM differently, and the present literature suggests that there is no worldwide consent of how and to what level knowledge management is linked to library and information science. Most of the authors consider KM as an oxymoron Broadbent, 1998), a nonsense management whim (Wilson, 2002) and some of the scholars sees it as a method of management (Shanhong, 2000). According to (Koenig, 1997; Davenport and Prusak; 1998) define KM as librarianship or information management by another name (Koenig, 1997; Davenport and Prusak; 1998). In spite of a link between information management and knowledge management, many scholars made an attempt to differentiate KM from librarianship and information management (Morris, 2001; Todd, and Southon, 2001). Many scholars perceived that KM is an old concept (Hawkins, 2000) and a new name for what library professionals have been doing for years (Ajiferuke, 2003; Townley, 2001). Roknuzzaman and Umemoto (2009) delineate knowledge management as librarianship in new clothes (Roknuzzaman and Umemoto, 2009). Several studies have focused on attitude of Library professional about the knowledge management and its implementation in libraries and information centres. According to Nazim and Mukherji (2013) there is a variation in the understanding level of the KM concept among librarians (Husain, and Nazim, 2013), but the majority of them had positive attitude towards KM and its integration in libraries and information centers (Roknuzzaman and Umemoto, 2009). Although, attitudes towards knowledge management were not linked with librarians’ experience and no sector wise and gender wise major differences were examined in librarians’ attitudes (Rahmatullah and Mahmood, 2013). The majority of library professionals considers that KM creates new job opportunities and also helps in the development of libraries and the LIS profession itself (Sarrafzadeh, Martin, and Hazeri, 2006). According to Siddike and Munshi (2012) in their study found that, a large majority earliest read knowledge management in the literature and nobody has done any course related to KM. Although, most of the respondents seemed that knowledge management is another management vogue like total quality management and half of the respondents sees knowledge management as a new concept for the library professionals who were already doing (Siddike and Islam, 2011). So, despite of a wide range of perceptions and attitudes of library professionals towards KM, most of the researchers view KM from more positive viewpoints and encourage LIS Professionals to get fully involved in the process of KM (Roknuzzaman and Umemoto, 2009). OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY The aim of this study is to examine the perception of library professionals towards the Knowledge Management, how they see to it and its implementation in the development and progress of libraries. The following are the major objectives of the present study:  To explore the perception of LIS professionals of central universities in North Indian states towards KM  To express the LIS Professionals on KM is just another fad like TQM  To identify the views of LIS Professionals on Information Management is just another aspect of Knowledge Management  To examine the opportunities and threats for LIS Professionals as emerged from the origin of KM RESEARCH METHODOLOGY To explore the perception of knowledge management from the viewpoints of various LIS professionals, a web-based questionnaire using freeonlinesurvey.com was designed for the purpose of data collection. The questionnaire contained 12 statements to be measured on fivepoint Likert scale (1Strongly Disagree; 5Strongly Agree) developed by Maryam Sarrafzadeh.