Re: [LIS-Forum] Modern Medical Librarian Vs Medical Knowledge Manager

I think that our library professionals are too obsessed with "knowledge" even without knowing the meaning/definition of knowledge. Everyone thinks that information and knowledge are same. Suddenly, all librarians began to call themselves 'knowledge managers'. But the fact is that knowledge is not information and librarians are not 'knowledge managers'. It is unfortunate that some of our fellow professionals doing just library work call themselves as knowledge managers. There is a lot of information available about KM on the Internet. I am giving one such link here for the benefit of our friends. http://www.media-access.com/whatis.html Koteswara Rao Central Library IIT Madras

My view point

A knowledge manager has to do more than handle published information (including grey literature) - which is what a librarian does. A KM also has to overall look at integrating the above, with tacit knowledge, other forms of information and knowledge, and also manage the overall technology elements. A medical librarian has to know a lot more than medical librarianship to become a Medical Knowledge Manager.

A medical librarian can definitely become a Medical Knowledge Manager so long as he / she continuously updates himself / herself to know at least enough of the related areas to handle Knowledge Management.

In any field however, today's scenario is that an IT person seems to be more recognized as a knowledge manager that is a librarian. My personal belief is that the person who can be assigned this "label" should have strong expertise in one area (IT, Domain, Information resources and management), and core expertise in the other two.

Vasumathi Sriganesh Director, QMed Services Pvt. Ltd. A-3, Shubham Centre, Cardinal Gracious Road Chakala, Andheri East, Mumbai 400099, India Ph: 91-22-28229223 Fax: 91-22-28224358 Mobile: 98211-14510 Email: vasu@qmedin.com, Web: www.qmedin.com

----- Original Message ----- From: "Sukhdev Singh" To: Sent: Monday, May 16, 2005 12:54 PM Subject: [nmlis] Modern Medical Librarian Vs Medical Knowledge Manager

Modern Medical Librarian Vs Medical Knowledge Manager

Dear Members,

I had posted a message [given towards the end] to a forum [IAMI] consisting of mainly of Medical Practisioners and Computer Specialists with one or two Medical Librarians.

With discussions, the concept of Medical Knowledge Manager came along with the refernce of Dr Sam Pitroda who is back as Chairman of the new National Knowledge Commission set up by the Indian Government. Now the discussion group is willing have to a session in their Association's conference on roles of Medical Librarians and Medical Knowledge Managers.

My question how do we compare Modern Medical Librarian with Medical Knowledge Manager. Are they same or can they be same. Can their roles be merged.

Can we exchange our views?

--Sukhdev Singh, NIC.

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