Managing And Sharing Knowledge In Academic Libraries

Abstract

This paper aims to understand the knowledge strategies followed by libraries of the central universities and Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) in India. For the purpose of identifying the most used KM strategies in academic libraries, 14 indicator variables were identified from the review of literature and retained for analysis. A total of 45 employees across 20 libraries (15 central university libraries and 5 libraries of IIM) were surveyed to understand the knowledge strategies followed. Using SPSS, descriptive statistics were applied. The type of strategies used in academic libraries is both codification and personalization with slight domination of codification over personalization. However, some elements of both codification and personalization strategies were not followed by the libraries surveyed. The study bears implications not only for the formulation and implementation of knowledge strategies in academic libraries, but also for the body of enquiry into managing and sharing knowledge in academic organizations. The research contributes to a relatively less researched area in knowledge management and suggests directions for future work in this area.