Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services [Reprint 2010 ed.] 9783598440021, 9783598243691

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Information Services Management Series Series Editor: Guy St Clair

Guy St Clair: Customer Service in the Information Environment Guy St Clair: Power and Influence: Enhancing Information Services within the Organization Guy St Clair: Entrepreneurial Librarianship: The Key to Effective Information Services Management Kenneth A. Megill: The Corporate Memory: Information Management in the Electronic Age Guy St Clair: Total Quality Management in Information Services Kenneth A. Megill, Herb Schantz: Document Management: New Technologies for the Information Services Manager Sharon Penfold: Change Management for Information Services Karen Kreizman: Establishing an Information Center: A Practical Guide Marisa Urgo: Developing Information Leaders: Harnessing the Talents of Generation X Susan Henczel: The Information Audit A Practical Guide

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Guy St. Clair

Beyond Degrees Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

With the participation of Lauren Albert

K · G · Saur München 2003

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Die Deutsche Bibliothek – CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Saint Clair, Guy: Beyond degrees : professional learning for knowledge services / Guy St. Clair. With the participation of Lauren Albert. - München : Saur, 2003 (Information services management series) ISBN 3-598-24369-3 U Printed on acid-free paper © 2003 K . G. Saur Verlag GmbH, München All Rights Strictly Reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher Typesetting by Florence Production Ltd., Stoodleigh, Devon Printed and Bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd., Chippenham, Wiltshire ISBN 3-598-24369-3

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About the Author

Guy St. Clair is the president of SMR International, a New York-based management consulting company. The company specializes in the application of general management principles for the information/knowledge services community, particularly change management and change implementation as organizations move to a knowledge-centric workplace environment. Other areas of expertise include the establishing of knowledge development/knowledge sharing processes and applications, and management reviews and staff assignment analysis for corporate and organizational specialized libraries, information centres, and knowledge centres. The company’s clients include major corporations, defence organizations and other agencies of the United States government, and information organizations connected with health sciences, engineering, the arts, professional associations, and the academic field. The author of many books and articles, including four other books in this series, Guy St. Clair is also known as the author of Change Management in Action, a collection of interviews of 60 leaders in the information and knowledge services management community. A past president of the Special Libraries Association, he is an alumnus of the University of Virginia (BA), with his graduate work completed at the University of Illinois (MS). Guy St. Clair lives in New York City.

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Dedicated To Andrew Berner and Ann Lawes, both of whom have greatly influenced my thinking in matters pertaining to professional learning and development

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Introduction to the series

A Broader Management Perspective for Information Services Since the early 1990s, when the development of The Information Services Management Series was first thought about, particular effort has been given to bringing general management theory and practice to the work of those with information delivery responsibility. For several years – decades, it seemed – librarians and other information professionals (and particularly those with oversight responsibility for information workers) lamented the fact that there was not enough emphasis on management in their education and training. These practitioners did of course learn their subjects, and librarians especially connected very early on in their training to the concepts of service and the organization of information. But management skills were – and, sadly, in some cases still are – neglected or given minimal attention. Many of these practitioners (who we now generally refer to as ‘knowledge services professionals’) find themselves working in the corporate environment, in research and technology organizations, in government information units, in community/ public administration organizations, and in similar situations where management skills are required. They discover, to their sorrow, that they are simply not prepared to take on management responsibility. Of course many of these people get what they need from on-the-job training and experience, and other approaches, such as continuing education programs, are utilized by those who have the initiative to recognize that they must do something to educate themselves to be managers. Some of it works and some of it does not. The Information Services Management Series, for which I serve as Series Editor, seeks to address this need. The series was conceived as a specific and conscientious effort to bring a management focus to information services, and in making this effort, the publishers, editors, and authors took special pains to ensure that this message, this linking of

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

organizational management to service delivery, was broadcast far and wide. Special attention was given to presenting management concepts that would serve librarianship but, at that same time, would appeal beyond that specific information delivery environment. Looking back, this effort has been notably successful, for the books in the series have been consistently well received. And if – as we generally suppose – imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, success has certainly been achieved, for considerable attention is now given in the literature to the marriage of organizational management and information delivery, and readers seeking further knowledge in these areas now have much to choose from. Such success should not be surprising, though, since the authors of these books have carefully sought to address this need for bringing management and information delivery together. When the series began, the audience for the books, the information services community, was intentionally defined very broadly. The time had come to recognize that the various constituent units of our society concerned with information have many of the same goals and objectives, and, not surprisingly, many of the same concerns. The practice of management was, and is, one of these concerns, and for our purposes it does not matter if the reader is employed as an information manager, information provider, information specialist, or indeed, as an information counsellor (as these information workers have been described by one business leader). In fact, it does not matter whether the reader of these books is employed in information technology, telecommunications, traditional librarianship, specialized librarianship, records management, corporate or organization archives, the information brokerage field, publishing, consulting, or any of the myriad branches of information services (including service to the information community and the many vendors who make up that branch of the profession). These new titles on the management of information services have been chosen specifically for their value to all who are part of this community of information workers. In fact, at this point in time, and particularly with the publication of the current volume of the series, it is entirely appropriate to acknowledge that perceptions are changing, both in society at large and, specifically, within the general management field. Naturally the nomenclature of service delivery in what we formerly referred to as ‘information services’ is changing as well. We have now seen a shift from thinking about information – and the management of information – as a cultural entity in and of itself to something else, altogether different. Indeed, it is now being acknowledged that, for most of us, information is only of value when it is used to produce knowledge. While this relationship between information and knowledge has existed throughout history, as a society we’ve not previously put it together in exactly this way before. Now, as this acknowledgement is being made, and especially during the last decade or so, the whole notion of information management as a

Introduction to the series

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discipline and, indeed, of information services as an operational function, has been turned upside down. Now information customers openly and frankly identify their quest with what they are going to do with the information, with how they are going to turn the information into knowledge for some particular purpose and use. As a consequence of this change in customers’ requirements and expectations, those with information delivery responsibility must now provide information customized to how it will be used. Thus new disciplines have been added to those described above (with others being added every day!), and that community of information workers is now a community of knowledge services workers, a community that includes knowledge management professionals and training and learning professionals as well as information management professionals. Although much work is being done in the various professions, disciplines, and types of work that make up this community of knowledge services workers, not much of it concentrates on management, and that work which is done generally concentrates on one or another of the specific subgroups of knowledge services. This series seeks to unite management concepts throughout knowledge services, and whereas some of the titles will be directed to a specific group, most will be broad-based and will attempt to address issues of concern to all information services employees. For example, one book in the series deals with entrepreneurial librarianship, which would seem limited to the library profession but in fact offers information and guidance to anyone working in knowledge services who is willing to incorporate entrepreneurial thinking into his or her work. Another book in the series looks at the information audit as a management tool, and the audit concept presented in the book can be applied to any service delivery activity, whether it has to do with information management, knowledge management, or learning. Yet a third book looks at how information leaders are developed and how the talents of the younger generation of information employees can be directed toward professional leadership. While the book ostensibly describes techniques for the information management profession, in fact these techniques can be generously and successfully applied to any younger employee working in any of the professions, disciplines, or types of work that make up knowledge services. As we attempt to bring general management practices into the realm of knowledge services, it will be pointed out that the practice of management is addressed within the organizations, enterprises, and communities that employ knowledge workers. This is true, and certainly within the for-profit sector (and, arguably, in the nonprofit and not-for-profit communities as well) there are plenty of occasions for knowledge workers to participate in management training as provided in-house. There is nothing wrong with that approach and in many organizations it works very well, but the training does not proceed from a knowledge

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

services point of view. Thus the knowledge services professional is forced to adapt, as best he or she can, the management practices of the organization to the management practices needed for the best provision of information, knowledge, and learning delivery. The books of The Information Services Management Series will enable the knowledge services worker to relate knowledge services management to organizational management, thus putting the knowledge workers (especially those with executive responsibility for such functions) in a position of considerable strength in the enterprise, organization, or community where they are employed. By understanding management principles (admittedly, as frequently ‘borrowed’ from the general practice of management) and relating them to the way knowledge services as an organizational management function is practised in the parent organization, not only does the knowledge worker position himself or herself for better service delivery, but the entire knowledge services function is positioned as a respectable participant in organizational or community operations. This last point perhaps needs some elaboration, for it should be made clear that the books in the series are not intended exclusively for the corporate or specialized knowledge services field. It is our intention to provide useful management criteria for all kinds of knowledge services operations. Our basic thesis is that quality management leads to quality service delivery, regardless of the environment or organization with which a knowledge services function is affiliated. Writing for this series are and will be authors who, I am sure, will challenge some of the usual barriers to effective management practices in this or that type of information management, knowledge management, or learning operation. And certainly there will be librarians, records managers, archivists, content and knowledge professionals, and others who will be able to relate some of their management practices in such a way that CIOs, CKOs, and CLOs will benefit from the telling. In other words, our attempt here is to clear away the usual preconceptions about management within the various branches of information management, knowledge management, and training and learning, to do away with the concept of ‘well-thatmight-work-for-you-but-it-won’t-work-for-me’ kind of thinking. We can no longer afford to fight turf battles about whether or not management is ‘appropriate’ in one or another of the various sub-units of knowledge services. What we must do, and what The Information Services Management Series expects to do, is to bring together the best of all of us, and to share our management expertise so that we all benefit. Guy St. Clair Series Editor

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Contents

Introduction to the series Foreword Preface

Deanna Marcum, President, Council on Library and Information Resources, Washington, DC USA

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Knowledge Services in the Twenty-First Century: The Grand Design

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Part I A Knowledge Services Profession Chapter 1

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1

Introduction: The Learning Nexus: Society, Change, and Knowledge Services

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Point of Departure: From Studying for Librarianship to Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

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Chapter 3

Professional Learning

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Chapter 4

Professionalism, Accreditation, and Certification

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Chapter 5

Information, Knowledge Services, and the Organization

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Chapter 2

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

KD/KS: Knowledge Development/Knowledge Sharing: A New Paradigm for Professional Learning in Knowledge Services

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KD/KS: Qualification Management for the New Profession

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Part II Learning in the Organization

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Chapter 8

KD/KS: Conducting the Learning Audit

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Chapter 9

KD/KS: Determining Goals and Expectations

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

Chapter 10 KD/KS: Defining the Approach

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Chapter 11 KD/KS: Establishing the Program

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Chapter 12 KD/KS: Managing the Program

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Part III Epilogue, Final Thoughts and Bibliography

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Epilogue

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KD/KS: The Future of Knowledge Services

KD/KS: Further Thoughts on Knowledge Services: Four Essays by Guy St. Clair

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Bibliography and Works Consulted

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Index

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1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10111 1 2 3 4 5111 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 4 51111

Foreword

What does it mean to live in a knowledge environment? How does an organization become a learning organization in which knowledge built by each member of the whole is available to all? What do these changes signify for knowledge workers? These important questions are addressed in this book, and the answers portend a transformation in organizations and the way in which information services are delivered. Perhaps, the author’s most important recognition is that the knowledge society and new approaches to professional learning are inextricably linked. If librarians, to use a legacy term, are to make the transition from service provider to an integral part of the learning organization, the way they prepare for their professional assignments, the way they interact with others in the organization, and the way their performance is assessed all change. The author’s message is direct: the profession of librarianship is undergoing profound transformation, as are other disciplines with responsibility for the delivery of information. Technology, organizational structures, and changing societal expectations influence the nature of the work. Increasingly, the library or information centre as physical place is disappearing. The most basic role of providing the right information to someone in the organization at the right time is evolving, to a role of developing a system in which those who have information share it and those who need it have access to it. This new formulation has a profound impact. The librarian or information specialist becomes a facilitator of knowledge generation, no longer simply an organizer and keeper of knowledge. In this book, Guy St. Clair offers approaches that will greatly assist the librarian or other information provider, caught in the swirl of organizational change, to understand how to put knowledge management skills to work. Deanna Marcum President Council on Library and Information Resources Washington, DC USA

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Preface

Knowledge Services in the Twenty-First Century: The Grand Design

Is it bravery? Or is it foolishness? And how dare an author be so presumptuous! As knowledge professionals cross the threshold into what is now recognized as a new information age, one that in this new century will build on the good, solid foundations developed in the last, we can’t predict what the knowledge services environment is going to be. And we certainly can’t create, in advance, a ‘grand design’ for a profession that will be managing knowledge services. The very idea of laying out, in one book, a ‘grand design’ for any profession – much less one as fragmented and disparate as the management of knowledge services – is probably very foolish. It is also bravery of a very risky sort, a potentially egobruising sort, for if this author is wrong in his assumptions and his predictions, his ‘bravery’ will only lead to disdain and embarrassment all around. On the other hand, if the author proposing a grand design is willing to admit that what he is offering is merely his own scheme for a starting point – a first step, if you will – for moving closer to a new profession that will provide management expertise for knowledge services, he will perhaps be forgiven for being brave and foolish. I am, let me state quickly, willing to make such an admission. I am not a soothsayer, and I have no crystal ball. I can’t tell the reader of this book what the future of knowledge services is going to be. What I can do, though, is take some of the concepts and ideas that have been developed over many years of study and service in the information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning communities, and attempt to link those concepts and ideas to my own observations. I have for a long time been thinking about how people approach information use. In fact, I think a great deal about how we can give serious attention to what information customers want and expect, what information providers can do to give them what they want and meet their expectations, and how the information-delivery framework – both established and newly developed

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

– can be exploited for the benefit of those customers. My thoughts have led to a number of conclusions, and I am putting them forth here in a book which, I hope, will serve two purposes. First of all, the book is, indeed, an attempt to share with the reader the author’s observations and convictions about the information management profession or, as I have broadened the concept, about knowledge services. We are, in my opinion, living in what could almost be called a ‘golden age’ of information services, for every day we have more and more exciting concepts to deal with. In fact, I would assert that we have gone beyond information services and now live and work in a golden age of knowledge services, as I hope will be made evident shortly. For professionals working in information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning, it could not be a more rewarding time. But there are problems, for with all the excitement and all the innovation comes change, and many people working in these fields – which I’m combining into the new profession of knowledge services – have not been taught very well how to deal with change. So while the subtitle of this Preface suggests a grand design for a knowledge services profession, what we’re really dealing with here is a design for the professionals themselves, one that will enable professional workers in information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning to provide the high-level services that their customers expect. A grand design is needed because these three disciplines are converging. Nowadays, both in the workplace and in society at large, in almost every situation in which information is sought, the information seeker does not want only the specific information itself. That person also wants – and usually requires – guidance in how to transform that information into knowledge and how to use that knowledge, and usually – in this latter case – in a situation that involves relating to another person or other people. They need to find the information, develop knowledge from what they find, and then share that knowledge, the very activities that drive information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning respectively. In today’s (and the future’s) workplace – and, not to put too fine a point on it, in society at large – the convergence of these three disciplines is not at all surprising. It is an end result that might have been expected, almost natural in its evolution. Yet there is another reason why we need a grand design for a new profession, and it is possibly equally important. Over the years, the three disciplines of information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning have evolved separately and not always in harmony, either among themselves or within themselves. In fact, information management had its own divergent threads, the academic/education model associated with, particularly, librarianship and what became known, in some settings, as ‘information services’, and the scientific/engineering

Preface

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model associated with information technology, also sometimes called ‘information services.’ Over the years, information management has developed from historical applications that, in modern times, wound up being almost antithetical to one another. In the early days of computers, for example, many excellent, conscientious librarians gasped at the prospect of having to work with machines, and more than one information scientist balked at being linked with librarianship when the efficacies of information delivery and the successes of librarianship were discussed. Fortunately, those disparate threads eventually wove themselves into a very workable and cooperative fabric that now permits the very highest standards of information delivery, and the tensions of earlier times, between librarianship and information technology, no longer exist. In fact, nowadays librarianship – just like the rest of society – recognizes information technology as the enabler that it is, and for the most part, those who work in information technology now understand the value of librarianship’s contributions about the organization of information and its focus on the user. Sadly, though, that move toward a more harmonious connection between librarianship and information technology (in what I’m referring to as information management) has not yet produced the results – from the information customer’s point of view – that are needed. So in looking around and thinking about what other disciplines are in place, disciplines that effortlessly connect with excellence in information management and information delivery, we are led to the training and learning environment, to giving some attention to what people learn and how they learn. On that playing field, it was only in the last 30 years or so that managers and leaders began to realize that there was real benefit to be gained (for the employing organization – we’re not talking high altruism here!) when employees are given encouragement to pursue what used to be called ‘continuing education.’ While librarianship and information technology were vying with each other to win the allegiance of people who needed information, continuing education was evolving, and what had been called ‘night school’ or ‘courses’ was moving through a number of evolutionary stages to become what we now speak of as lifelong learning. Along the way, on-the-job training was picked up so that people could work more productively and, not so incidentally, so that they would like their work better. That progression has led us to professional learning, a broad-based construct that includes just about anything that professional workers want to learn, as long as they didn’t learn it while they were pursuing an academic degree (and in some cases, even those students venture into professional learning – while they are at the academy – just so they can learn as much as they can about their field). And those workers who have not yet attained professional status? Of course they aren’t left out. Every subject under the sun is available to them, through continuous learning and development programs designed specifically for them. When they’re smart (and when they have the support of their managers – and sometimes even

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

when they don’t!), these employees figure out how to get to these learning programs because they know, as members of today’s society, that it is what they learn that will help them achieve their ambitions. When it connects to the workplace, this professional learning becomes strategic learning, strategic not only for themselves, the employees, and their careers, but strategic for the organizations that employ them, providing them with professional learning that links directly to the achievement of workplace success. When this transition occurs, strategic learning, as such, becomes performance-centred, and the learning that these employees acquire applies directly to the work that they do. And it should be noted, in a not insignificant aside, that learning, too, has benefited from a convergence, of sorts, of its own. As that old-time ‘night-school’ evolved into today’s professional learning, the enabling role of technology and the success of e-learning as a professional learning tool has had an immeasurable impact. In fact, today’s professional learning would be considerably less effective, and perhaps might not even connect with strategic (performance-centred) learning if it were not for e-learning and its contribution to the process. Of course information management and strategic (performance-centred) learning come together through their connection with knowledge management, for that delicious concept is truly an empty shell if it ignores the role that information management and strategic learning play in an information-focused society (which then becomes, of course, a knowledge-focused or knowledge-centric society). Information management, the product of the convergence of the incredibly efficient delivery mechanisms that information technology provides and the understanding of the organization of information that librarianship provides, enables the information customer to get the information he needs, to find out what he wants to know. But then what does he do? He must somehow organize that information into something that he can use, and he must – in most cases – figure out how he can work with other people in using that information. He must develop knowledge and he must share knowledge. The only way to do this is to learn how to do it, and it is through strategic (performance-centred) learning that this wonderful transformation takes place. Understanding how it takes place and where and when it takes place is the role of knowledge management. And even knowledge management might be thought of as the product of a convergence, as the collaborative elements of organizational management connect with enabling technology to embody the management practice that defines knowledge management. Not all knowledge management attaches to information technology, of course, for there are plenty of examples of knowledge management being practised without information technology. Generally speaking, though, it is hard to imagine a future of knowledge management – particularly as technology advances – without a solid and irrefutable connection with information technology.

Preface

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So it can be safely predicted that we will get to that almost ideal state of information delivery we’re seeking. And it all comes together, this almost ideal state in which information can be truly exploited to its best advantage for the very people who need it, when these disciplines – information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning – work together. It is the convergence of these three disciplines into a single profession, into knowledge services, that provides all stakeholders in the information seeking/information delivery process with the results they are looking for. So a grand design is needed because it will be through the services and discoveries of a new profession that we’ll get to that stage of information delivery we all dream about. But there is a more practical, more realistic reason for our new profession. The grand design is needed because there is, throughout the information and knowledge industry at large (but especially in information management), a lingering malaise about the value of information, about the value of the work that information workers do, and about the value of the information-providing organizations themselves. There is – and has been for some decades now – a condition within the information industry that could almost be described as a ‘crisis of confidence’, as people who work with information find themselves at the fringes of power and influence in the organizational environments in which they work. Despite all the attention in the popular and management media about information being so critical for organizational success, the very people who manage and provide information continually find themselves portrayed in their organizations as fringe workers, not expected to be leaders. There are exceptions, of course, and to some readers such a broad generalization might seem unfair, but by and large, if you speak with most workers in information management, knowledge management, or strategic learning, regardless of where they work in the information services field (which, as will be detailed throughout this book, includes a wide variety of information providers and services, ranging from traditional librarianship to information brokerage), they are not acknowledged as leaders or as influential employees in their organizations. The reasons, of course, have to do with that age-old problem of perception, of how workers in any field or discipline are perceived by their co-workers, superiors, and their customers. But beyond that superficial explanation (after all, the best way to change a negative misperception is to do good work, and to be recognized for doing good work), there are larger, more substantive issues that must be confronted. One has to do with the information that is provided, for in the eyes of many information customers, and many information providers, information management and information delivery are not as good as they can (or should) be. We are constantly being bombarded with tales of how a particular search or other data-gathering exercise turned up ‘something’, but it wasn’t quite what the customer needed, or expected. Or worse yet,

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

the information provider went the wrong way, and provided wrong information. Not always, but often enough that many people – both within and outside the information management profession – are concerned. Which provides a second reason for thinking about this subject. We continue – as workers in information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning – to be confronted with what seems to be another ongoing problem: management is not satisfied with the quality of workers coming into the knowledge services field. Sadly, what we’ve discovered in recent years, as both management and customers raise the stakes in terms of expectations and performance, is that all knowledge services workers (even those identified as professionals) are not equally qualified to perform as professionals. In fact, what we discover, on an almost daily basis and in almost every knowledge services workplace, is that not all knowledge workers are even motivated to perform as professionals, and without that motivation, they are not going to provide the high-level service delivery that management and users seek.

A New Profession To my way of thinking, these are learning problems, coming from a failure (or failures) in what we teach people who become knowledge professionals, and what we teach those already in the field through the continuous education/professional development programs we offer to practitioners. Related to this, we are also constrained by failures resulting from our misunderstandings about how people learn. In this book, I am proposing that we begin the process of moving to a new profession, to a knowledge services profession in which shared learning and teaching – learning and teaching that enable knowledge development and knowledge sharing – are the fundamentals on which the new professional structure is built. By creating a new profession and a new worker, a new ‘knowledge services professional’, society can – in my opinion – achieve excellence in the provision of information, the development of knowledge, and the sharing of knowledge through strategic learning.1 1 Now there is no question that I am not the only person to be thinking about ‘re-inventing’ information services. Quite a few people are allowing their thoughts about information management – as a profession – to move in this direction, and I have written about some of these people in other contexts, as their thinking has also influenced mine. Three who come to mind immediately are Patricia S Foy, Robert E Frye, and Jerry King, all written about in Change Management in Action (Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association, 1999). King, particularly, provides the stimulus for action for information professionals: ‘ . . . we can do what we do well anywhere in the organization it’s needed. If we can look beyond ourselves, if we can concentrate on the information customer, we can get past the limitations and get on with getting the information that the customer needs to the customer when it’s needed.’

Preface

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In moving to this new profession, one of our first steps is to move from information services to something else, which is why I propose the concept of knowledge services. I define knowledge services as those management approaches and organizational entities which together support knowledge development and knowledge sharing in the organization. In the knowledge services workplace, knowledge development and knowledge sharing are basic to every transaction and interaction that occurs, and knowledge development and knowledge sharing build on three fundamental components which I have identified as information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performancecentred) learning. These components, taken together, constitute what I call knowledge services. Within the organization, knowledge services delivery is generally provided by professional workers who have particular expertise in one or more – and preferably in all three – of these elements. These knowledge workers have specialized education in the fields of information management (including information technology), knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning, and they very well may have come to their work via a number of related professions. These may include library and information studies (incorporating both traditional librarianship and specialized librarianship), records management, archives management, information brokerage, training and development, or any of the myriad fields related to those disciplines. In fact, it is the relationship with the third component, with strategic (performance-centred) learning, that ensures that all knowledge workers understand and accept their responsibility to develop, to learn, and to share tacit, explicit, and cultural knowledge within the organization. This book seeks to provide direction and operational guidelines for professional learning in knowledge services, particularly strategic learning as practised after formal academic education has been completed. Its purpose is to review current educational requirements in the professional fields that make up knowledge services, and to offer a practical framework for those organizations that seek to embark upon learning and training programs for employees engaged in knowledge work. The recommendations and guidelines offered in this book assume that knowledge work takes place in an organizational construct (department, unit, division, or other organizational subgroup) that is part of a larger organization. The work also assumes that it is in this organizational sub-group that the proposed professional learning framework is to be structured, and it is through the development of an organizational knowledge services entity that the standards, goals, expectations, and rewards of a new knowledge services profession will be developed. More than anything else, this book hopes to provide direction for getting to this new profession, to this new management approach, and some of those ‘first steps’ mentioned earlier will be described in more

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detail later in this book. At this point, I simply propose that the journey begins with learning, with the acknowledgement that professional and strategic learning forms the basis for success in the new information profession, in knowledge services. To wit, it is appropriate to state a first assertion: Professional and strategic learning, staff development, and professional growth combine into a single management concept, defined broadly as the successful achievement of professional skills, competencies, knowledge, behaviours, and/or other outcomes required for excellence in workplace performance.

Learning for knowledge workers – whether we call it ‘professional’ learning or ‘strategic’ learning – is the cornerstone on which the new profession is to be built, simply because the new knowledge services profession is one that accepts, acknowledges, and appreciates change, and learning enables change. To get to the new knowledge services profession, information services management as it is now practised will be required to change. We will be required to take new approaches to our work, and to how we are educated for the work that we do. In fact, one of the major changes that we will undertake will be to include the very act of learning (and of teaching) as a fundamental element of our work, alongside information management, which we now do so well, and knowledge management, which we are fast learning to do well. The new knowledge services profession will even require us to give up some of the controls that have previously been in place, controls that in the past have determined professional qualifications for some practitioners in the fields that make up knowledge services, but not for others. Finally, we are now required – if we want to be successful as we embrace this new profession – to acknowledge that managers and customers who are not information or knowledge specialists have a role to play in determining our qualifications, and we will incorporate their advice and their counsel as we establish ourselves in this new profession. Knowledge services will be, as I envision it, a profession in which all of the players will aspire to the highest levels of excellence in the performance of their duties. If a knowledge worker isn’t interested in performing at that level, he or she won’t necessarily be punished, or booted out of the field, but that worker also will not be permitted to be identified as a qualified knowledge services professional. That employee will of course continue to provide some level of service as a knowledge worker, but to achieve recognition as a qualified knowledge services professional, he or she will be required to demonstrate a superior understanding of the basic values of excellence in quality information management, knowledge management and strategic (performance-centred) learning. And, as stated above but repeated for emphasis, the new knowledge services profession

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will recognize and incorporate management and customer input in the quality of training and education embarked upon by knowledge workers who aspire to be recognized as qualified professionals. Basic training and education will, of course, continue as entry-level requirements, but to advance in the new knowledge services profession, the knowledge professional will be required to demonstrate a serious and unwavering commitment to continuous and ongoing learning. The route to this new knowledge service profession is established, as I have said, through learning. In this book, I am proposing a framework for professional learning that will lead to excellence in knowledge services delivery. This learning structure, as it might be called, is identified with an acronym: KD/KS. It stands for ‘Knowledge Development/ Knowledge Sharing’, defined thus: KD/KS (Knowledge Development/Knowledge Sharing) is a framework for professional learning, leading to excellence in knowledge services delivery, that embodies the highest objectives of knowledge management, organizational learning, and organizational teaching. KD/KS builds on the assumption that all learning stakeholders accept their leadership responsibility to develop, to learn, and to share tacit, explicit, and cultural knowledge within the enterprise. KD/KS exists for the benefit of the organizational enterprise with which the learning stakeholders are affiliated and which provides support for professional learning endeavours, and for the growth and development of these stakeholders as lifelong learners.

And that brings us to the other purpose for this book: Beyond Degrees is not only a manifesto declaring that a new knowledge services profession is required, what the new knowledge services profession is to be, and how knowledge services professionals should be educated and obtain their qualifications. It is also a guidebook, a ‘how-to’, if you will, for how knowledge leaders – the people who manage information departments, agencies, and other functional units linked to knowledge services delivery – can organize a formal and structured professional learning program for their knowledge services staff. Beginning with Chapter Eight, with the KD/KS: Knowledge Development/Knowledge Sharing concept and a new approach to qualification management having been established in the two previous chapters, the book becomes prescriptive, offering suggestions and ideas about how professional learning/strategic learning can be incorporated into the knowledge services workplace. So what I am trying to do here is quite straightforward, really. I see a knowledge services profession that has the foundation and the strength to be as good as it can be, both for the customers who need the information provided by knowledge services professionals, and for the managers of those organizations that employ knowledge professionals. But the professions and disciplines the new profession is growing out of is a mixture of professions and disciplines that – in its present form – is

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unstable and disorganized. These professions and disciplines are at risk of losing their best strengths if drastic action isn’t taken to change the way their practitioners are educated and qualified. For me, the only sensible solution is to look at the learning that is provided for practitioners in the different branches that make up what I’m calling knowledge services and to review – as unromantically and as unsentimentally as is required – what these practitioners learn. Then, if we are lucky, we will be able to figure out how to create a structured, formalized methodology for providing professional and strategic learning for knowledge workers. If the ideas, concepts, and guidelines in this book lead to action in that direction, it will have served its purpose. In conclusion, let me recognize that I am very aware of the ‘largeness’ of what I am attempting to do here. I can’t provide all the answers, and I’m not suggesting that this book will provide all the answers. I do suggest, though, that knowledge services, as a subject for study in and of itself, and as a societal construct, is a series of opportunities that are constantly being created. If we think about information seriously and recognize that these are opportunities, the whole concept of knowledge services becomes a far more manageable entity, and our models and our programs provide much that can be usefully shared. And that’s what I want this book to do: to open the dialogue (and, yes, perhaps provide direction) for identifying and seizing these opportunities. Our information customers, our employing organizations, and – not to put too fine a point on it – ourselves as knowledge services professionals deserve nothing less.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to many people who have offered advice, suggestions, or otherwise have expressed interest in what I am attempting to achieve here. Not all of my advisors have been overwhelmingly convinced that these ideas and concepts will be universally accepted within the disciplines and professions that contribute to knowledge services. Still, most of my colleagues have been supportive, and even those who looked askance at some of my suggestions were willing to hear me out and think about what I was proposing. I’m very lucky to have so many friends and colleagues who share my enthusiasm about a bright future for the new knowledge services profession, and I thank them for their support. Of course it is not possible to name everyone who has helped with this project, but I would be remiss if I did not pay specific tribute to several friends and colleagues within the professional community who have given of their time to speak with me about these subjects. These include Stephen Abram, Cynthia Barrancotto, David R Bender, Susan Berg,

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Daan Boom, Corvie Carrington, Jeffrey De Cagna, Miriam A Drake, Beth Fitzsimmons, Patricia S Foy, Robert E Frye, Carol A Ginsburg, Michael Gruenberg, Susan Henczel, Jerry King, Shaw David Kinsley, Clayton Kirking, Sandra Kitt, Karen Holloway, Nancy Krumholtz, John Latham, Ruth MacEachern, Kevin Manion, Deanna Marcum, Lany McDonald, James Mears, Pat Molholt, James Matarazzo, Evelin Morgenstern, Robert Nawrocki, Douglas Newcomb, Nigel Oxbrow, Mary Park, Meg Paul, Thomas Pellizzi, Eugenie Prime, Martina Reich, Thomas Rink, Martha P G Schweitzer, Lynn Smith, William D. Walker, Olga Wise, Ann Wolpert, and Betsy Woods. I thank them all, and I appreciate their taking the time to speak with me about information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning and how they are practised in different environments. In the publishing field, several people have provided special attention and support and, in the process, become good friends. Ann Berne and Val Skelton were instrumental in moving this series forward and we are very proud of the work we’ve done together. For this project, Linda Hajdukiewicz, and Geraldine Turpie have been remarkably enthusiastic, and I am grateful to them both and look forward to working with them again. A number of people close to me personally have provided support and enthusiasm for this project. The list includes Marilyn Malin, Jeffrey and Annette Miller, Peter and Arlene Schneiderman, and Colin and Sandra Ward, and I thank them for their attention and interest. Ann Hyer has listened to many hours of theoretical discussion about knowledge services, as have my sons Guy Gaillard St. Clair and Austin St. Clair. They have asked stimulating questions and helped me focus my thinking so that these ideas could be applied in the ‘real’ world, and I greatly appreciate their help. The two people to whom this book is dedicated are very special. Andrew Berner is not only my best friend, he is a professional colleague of the best sort who on a daily basis applies the concepts and practices of the new knowledge services profession. Ann Lawes, with whom I have discussed these subjects more times than we can count, is a friend and professional colleague for whom the ideas leading to excellence in information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning are so ingrained that they have long formed part of her thinking, although these concepts were not referred to as ‘knowledge services’. It pleases me greatly to recognize the influence of these two fine people. In the list of people to be thanked, I cannot speak highly enough about Lauren Albert. She came into the project as the research associate and finished the project very nearly as co-author. She is a diligent worker, and a thinker who has provided much stimulation and thought for us as we’ve pursued these ideas. Our biggest problem was – and continues to be – that there isn’t enough time to learn all we can about the new

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knowledge services profession, and we are both frustrated because there is so much that can be done, and we want to do it. I believe I can truly say that without Lauren Albert, I don’t think I could have done this project. Her work and her support have been incalculable, and I sincerely thank her for what she’s done for this book. Guy St. Clair New York, NY 1 April 2002

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Part I

A Knowledge Services Profession

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Chapter One

Introduction The Learning Nexus: Society, Change, and Knowledge Services

In thinking about organization management in general, and about the management of knowledge services in particular, how on earth does one characterize what’s going on? Certainly for people working in information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performancecentred) learning, this first decade of the new millennium is an exciting one. But what’s causing all the excitement? Is it because managers are – at long last – able to realize the benefits of the massive changes that their organizations were forced to undergo in the last decades of the twentieth century? Or is it simply that those changes were so major, so (as some would say) cosmic in scale, that society and the workplace are just not what they were a few decades ago? Perhaps a little of each comes into play. In the long run, though, it probably doesn’t matter what causes the excitement. What is important is the very fact of the excitement. Never before in the history of information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning, those disciplines which combine to make up knowledge services, has there been a time of so much change and so much accomplishment. Thanks to what is now commonly accepted as enabling technology, knowledge professionals are able to provide customers with services that are more sophisticated than could ever have been dreamed about in the middle of the last century – or even at the beginning of the 1990s. But technology, while it is perhaps the most obvious influence on our work, isn’t the only influence. The high level of sophistication, education, and service expectations of our customers has played a major role in moving the organization and management of knowledge services into the mainstream of desirable professions. And connected to the sophistication of our clients is a heightened sophistication on the part of senior management, a new management culture, one might suggest, which encourages those with managerial responsibility in our information units to ensure that their staffs provide the highest levels of quality and excellence in

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service delivery. It is a culture of senior management sophistication that positively requires that those same information services managers establish organizational frameworks emphasizing customer service (it’s not called ‘client-relationship management’ for nothing!). And it is a culture that demands that the information operation contribute to the successful achievement of the organizational mission. In today’s information delivery unit – a term which describes any of the many entities that exist for the organization, management, storage, retrieval, and dissemination of information – the information provided by the unit must be mission-specific – or it isn’t provided. And in today’s information-focused environment, that the information provided is transformed into knowledge, and that it is through strategic learning that the transformation takes place, is a given. This new state of affairs in the information industry (which some are now calling the ‘knowledge industry’) has come about for a very real reason. And it is a new state of affairs for those involved in this work, because until the last decade or so, the pursuit of information delivery as an organizational function to be managed was generally characterized and accepted as important to society, but no one expected information delivery to be particularly well managed. That whole way of thinking is gone now, and with its demise, information professionals are now able to understand – and to accept – that with sophisticated senior management, heightened customer expectations, and enabling technology, they are able to do more for their information customers than they were ever able to do before. And, at the same time, they are in a position to contribute – significantly (and often profitably) – to their organization’s successful achievement of its mission. The fact is, those of us who earn our livings as information professionals have now accepted (sometimes reluctantly) and have now agreed (also sometimes reluctantly) that it is to our and our information customers’ advantage to acknowledge and apply the basic tenets of management science in our work. We are now willing to put our skills and our competencies to work incorporating established and proven management principles into the organization and delivery of information. We now operate from an administrative perspective that has not in the past been a particularly characteristic attribute of our professional endeavour. We have accepted, finally, that the facilities and services we manage and the places where we carry out our duties as information workers are organizational entities just like any other organizational entity. These organizations – like all organizations – stand to benefit when fundamental management principles are incorporated into the processes and procedures that structure our work, and we are now willing to incorporate them into our work. Information managers have learned to use management science in the management of information, something we avoided doing for generations. In doing so, we have discovered the value of invoking the basic rule of management science, that the customer (or

Introduction

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‘end-user,’ ‘client,’ or however else he has been designated – even ‘reader’ or ‘patron’ if that is the organization’s designation for this person) is to be given what he needs. And he will be given that thing he needs, regardless (ideally) of format or location, indeed, regardless of whether it is an artefact that contains the information, or the information contained in the artefact. Additionally, as he is given the information, he is also given the tools to turn that information into knowledge, using, when required, whatever strategic learning tools are at (or can be put at) his disposal. When our organizational structure permits this level of service delivery, the information operations we manage are themselves positioned for success. To attain this level of service in an information operation (whether it be a specialized library, a records management unit, corporate archives, or any other organizational entity concerned with the collection, storing, and retrieval of information), the information unit moves from an information focus to a knowledge focus. The overall mission of this unit, department, division, or other sub-unit of the parent organization is transformed from information delivery to knowledge services, and the three elements of knowledge services are incorporated as the fundamental structural and operational elements that define the work of such units. It is the purpose of this book to provide guidance for such organizational units, to examine the requirements for establishing and delivering training and learning programs for professional workers who staff these departments and, when appropriate, for other knowledge workers in the organization as well. Ideally these training and learning activities will be provided through an operational unit specifically created for this purpose, and guidelines for creating such a unit – a knowledge services learning institute – are included in this book. In some organizations, of course, arrangements are already in place for having such training and learning provided through existing operational units. In these situations, these guidelines for professional learning can be adapted for particular circumstances, as required. Regardless of the organizational structure in place, the mission of these units is to provide information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning for the parent organization and, when appropriate, for its external customers. Thus the guidance provided through this present effort is designed for organizational knowledge services operations. Where applicable, these concepts and guidelines can (and perhaps should) be adapted for other relevant organizational operations within the organization, but it should be remembered that it is in the organizational knowledge units – those that provide information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning – that this effort will provide the best reward. One reason for moving in this direction has to do with the expectations of information customers and organizational management, as mentioned

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earlier. In today’s workplace environment, when information workers speak about the management of information, they are referring not only to the management of the place or the facility, or to the management of the artefact or conduit that contains or transmits the information. They are referring to the management of information content as well. With this new need on the part of the information customer – for access to and for developing an understanding of content rather than just a presentation of sources – the information worker’s role has changed. He or she is now providing advice, analysis, interpretation, and, often, even decisions about the quality of information and its potential value to the customer for the specific need the customer has in mind. These activities practically define what we would call knowledge work, and constitute an essential element of service delivery in this activity we’re referring to as knowledge services. Given this context, it is no surprise that these professionals have embraced management principles, for achieving success in the delivery of information in such an environment requires that the operation be managed, and that fundamental management practices be invoked. These management practices are applied in the management of the knowledge services organization in order to provide the highest levels of service delivery for information customers (regardless of whether they are internal or external customers). When they are brought together in knowledge services and applied in the successful achievement of information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning (whether in a single knowledge services operational unit or as a group of units, each with responsibility for one or more of these activities), the larger organization benefits and is functioning as a knowledge-centric enterprise. So it is entirely to be expected that these management efforts will lead to successful client-relationship management. Whether employed in traditional librarianship in a stewardship role, preserving the best of the past for today’s (and future) generations, or in the most futuristic avant garde information operations seeking to anticipate what people will be doing with information at some point in the future, today’s information professionals have no choice but to incorporate management principles into their work. Otherwise, chaos reigns, and while the attractions of chaos theory can stimulate us intellectually, when it comes to providing our information customers with what they are seeking, order is required. Good management – which must be learned – brings order. This new respect for and emphasis on learning is not surprising. What has happened, it seems to me, is that in all endeavours, in all organizations, management has finally caught up with what was acknowledged (sometimes not very forcefully) in the humanities environment for centuries: How people think is as important as what they do. And how they think is determined by what they learn, however that learning is accomplished. It can be through formal learning, through informal learning, by ‘doing’, through observation, or by employing any of the

Introduction

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myriad methodologies that educational scientists and pedagogical masters have studied, promulgated, and utilized over the centuries. But in every case, in every situation (regardless of how we learn), what we learn is what determines how successful we are at what we do. And it is that ‘what’ that establishes our value, our worth in the organizations that employ us. How good we are at what we do depends, ultimately, on how well we’ve learned what we need to know to do the job. For knowledge professionals, this means learning what they need to know as information managers, knowledge managers, and as providers of strategic learning. It seems simple, this idea that if you teach a man to fish he’ll eat for life. And in our various workplaces, we’ve often fallen into the trap that once we (or our staff members) need to know something, we just go out and learn it, and we’ll be set. We’ll have learned what we need to know and we’ll use it for as long as we need to use it. But professional learning – especially in knowledge services – doesn’t work that way, and those who choose to relegate professional learning to such presumed simplicity are doomed to find themselves, over and over again, confronting the same problems, making the same mistakes, and seeking the same solutions. To make professional learning work, to ensure that it ‘takes’, requires organization, requires a structure and a focus and, for however long it lasts, requires a perspective that relates what is being learned to work that is being done, and to the productivity that that work demands. And while we are presumably willing and prepared to accept the need for structure, organization, and focus in our learning programs, there are still other issues that must be dealt with. For without understanding, for example, why there is at this point in time such a strong emphasis on learning simply means that the learning is put in place because ‘it’s the thing to do’; it’s au courant; it’s fashionable. Surely there’s more to it than that, so we ask: why is there such an overwhelming need, at this point in history, for thinking about training, continuous education, professional learning, and staff development in information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning? What forces are driving the effort? There are four, it seems to me, and each informs our success in knowledge services. First of all, I think most of us agree that there is a societal force at play, that a critical stimulus for training, continuous education, and professional learning has to do with the kind of world in which we live and work. Things move fast, and the only assumption one can make about one’s work as a professional in knowledge services is that what is being done at one point in one’s career will be done very differently at another point in the same career. Change is happening so fast, in society at large, in

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the workplace, and – as important (perhaps more important) as anything else – in the expectations and the demands of information customers, that for practically any worker today (and especially for knowledge professionals), being able to deal with change and change implementation provides a necessary motivation for accepting continuous learning as a given in one’s career. Much has been written and said about change and the place of change in today’s society, and in the workplace. Indeed, if ever there were a subject about which perhaps too much attention has been given, change management and change implementation is it, and this author is as guilty as all the others. The attention – excessive or not – is of course required because, quite simply, society cannot function and workers cannot perform in the workplace without the healthy embrace of change. And when all is said and done, it is learning (especially – for knowledge services professionals – strategic learning) that enables successful change implementation to take place. Connected to this societal driving force in the development of professional learning, and perhaps equally critical, is the presumed short ‘shelf life’ of our academic degrees (hence the title of this book). Knowledge services professionals find early in their careers that they must be prepared to take on some serious supplementary education/training, and for many in the field, the additional ‘study’ (let’s call it) comes almost as soon as the academic work is completed. The entry-level specialist librarian, for example, having acquired a solid footing in the usual subjects required for the graduate degree, will almost certainly be required to have some supplementary learning soon after going to work, if for no other reason than to learn some of the fundamentals of the industry of which her employing library or information centre is a part. Continuing with that example, that ‘solid footing’ that she will have acquired, as she pursued the graduate degree in library and information studies, will have consisted of a number of formal classroom courses, selected from the main knowledge and skill-based competencies that Jamshid Beheshti has identified as being taught in these programs: ●

Technology;

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Management;

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Organization of information;

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Searching and database development;

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Collection development;

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Mathematical methods and research;

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Socio-cultural aspects;

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Non-print media;

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Rare materials and conservation;

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Sources of information;

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Reference materials;

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Archives;

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Children’s literature and services;

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Professional issues. (Beheshti, 1999, pp. 2–3)

That entry-level specialist librarian is certainly going to be well prepared to take on a career as a librarian, for in that graduate program, she will have acquired the established professional fundamentals, the commonly accepted ‘baseline’, as it were, for ensuring that she has the credentials to work as a library professional. She has, at the very least, a basic education and understanding of the fundamentals of her profession. Upon going to work in that entry-level position (for example, in a financial services firm), this new librarian will soon discover that there are many areas in which she needs additional learning; learning is not necessarily limited to just training in how to use particular tools or to perform certain tasks related to the management of information services in the financial community. She may well be required, for example, to work with co-workers in the organization’s information technology unit to design a product for providing information at the users’ desktops. Or she may be required to work with the functional unit that works with mergers and acquisitions, to plan a long-term campaign for identifying appropriate clients and companies for further development. Unless this librarian has taken specific courses in these areas in the graduate program, as part of her degree work (or has attended one of the many special ‘institutes’ that the graduate programs offer to students, focusing on subjects such as these), she will need to find a source for further learning in these areas. This example is not an unusual one, and it relates to the common and popularly held belief in the supposed shortened ‘shelf life’ of the academic degree. While such belief is certainly based on fact, it should not be taken to imply that what has been learned in the pursuit of the academic degree is lost. That education provides, as noted, the fundamentals, although some might question the validity of some of the offerings in the aforementioned list. Nevertheless, to move forward in the profession, the new graduate almost immediately requires further learning. While it would be gratifying to report that continuous education and professional development activities are altruistically entered into because of the employee’s self-motivation and interest in self-improvement, it must be noted that many of these activities are undertaken primarily because they are required. There are many organizations and trade or professional

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associations which demand some sort of certification or qualification for practitioners. Although discussed more specifically later, it should be recognized that concerns about certification or qualification management motivate many workers to seek supplementary learning, whether it is training in the use of a specific product or tool (e.g., the certified technician programs offered by some manufacturers) or certification to practise as a professional (as in law or in medicine). In addition to societal forces and the short practical lifespan of academic education and the pursuit of qualifications, another reason for moving further into continuous education and professional development, in all fields of work (but certainly in knowledge services), has to do with the different career paths of practitioners. Each will require a different concentration, and many information workers may discover, as they move forward in their careers, that there are learning ‘gaps’ that must be filled. For example, in the library and information services community, one of the complaints voiced regularly is that librarians are not educated to be managers, and many librarians are thus unprepared for management positions as they seek to advance their careers. Actually, as Beheshti’s list demonstrates, and as others have noted, management instruction is available in graduate schools, but often these courses are offered as electives or as part of another course. In any case, there will be those students who will attain the graduate degree without any particular exposure to management fundamentals, learning what they require as their careers move forward. It has been noted, sadly (and this is particularly true in public and academic libraries), that when there are financial constraints and governing authorities are forced to eliminate a middle management line, librarians are promoted to those positions. If these librarians – no matter how good they are as librarians – have not been exposed to or do not understand general management practices (or are not interested in working as managers), their efforts will be fraught with difficulty. Related to this, and certainly from a different operational perspective, many organizations and communities are structured so that the only way to advance one’s career is to move into a management position, whether or not one wants to be a manager (and hence leave behind the practice of librarianship), and whether or not one has been educated to be a manager. Again, some familiarity with management – as a discipline in and of itself – is required. Because of these circumstances, education and learning in advanced library management are often sought as a subject for professional learning. As is quickly becoming more and more apparent, the combination of fast change in the information management arena and the need for additional professional learning at higher levels has led to the proliferation of programs offered by both information-related organizations and organizations outside the industry (such as the American Management Association, and similar groups). Martin Dillon, writing about why one of

Introduction

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these, The OCLC Institute, came into existence, states that ‘library practices and management seem permanently in flux’, sometimes to such an extent that there is some doubt as to whether graduate library programs can even meet the required education needs for the professional development of these employees as librarians, much less as managers. Dillon quotes L Hunter Kevil, whom he characterizes as offering ‘a new approach for the education of library professionals that, in effect, substitutes a complex of continuing education models for the traditional academic one’. Dillon is quite fair in describing that the graduate programs are attempting to meet the demands of the management community in the information industry: ‘Schools of library and information science are changing their curricula, but the impact of new graduates in the workforce is insufficient for the current challenge: their numbers are too few, their skills are too unpractised, and their ability to influence organizational change is too limited. All of these limitations, of course, are usually remedied by time, but time is of the essence. Drastically shortened technological life cycles do not allow libraries the luxury of time for a natural, generational renewal of professional skills as might be provided by traditionally matriculating students. New, dramatic, and innovative approaches to ongoing professional training and education are needed.’ (Dillon, 1997)

Beyond these needs, however, there are yet other reasons for undertaking a professional learning or continuous education activity. These have little to do with one’s work: people change careers, either because they choose to, or because the fields in which they went to work have changed, and they are no longer comfortable in those careers. Or they simply choose to have several different careers as they move through life. Related to these, and of importance in our discussion here, is the almost universal lack of job security, in almost any field. Indeed, the old paternalistic idea of working for a company or organization for one’s entire life and then retiring on a comfortable pension is gone. Similarly, there are those employees who, either by choice or simply because they aren’t interested in long-term associations with employers, expect to change jobs frequently, or at least several times, during their careers. For these employees, too, job security is not a primary concern as they join the workforce. If you question that assertion, read what Thomas A Stewart writes when he describes ‘your career in the information age’. Stewart begins with a long (and telling) quotation from William H Whyte’s famous 1956 book: ‘The fundamental premise of the new model executive . . . is, simply, that the goals of the individual and the goals of the organization will work out to be one and the same. The young men have no cynicism about the ‘system’,

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

and very little skepticism – they don’t see it as something to be bucked, but as something to be cooperated with . . . They have an implicit faith that the organization will be as interested in making use of their best qualities as they are themselves, and thus, with equanimity, they can entrust the resolution of their destiny to the organization . . . The average young man cherishes the idea that his relationship with the organization is for keeps.’ (William H Whyte, The Organization Man, 1956, quoted in Stewart, 1997, p. 199)

But wait. Stewart has his own modern, up-to-date response: ‘Well, scratch that. If there’s unanimity about any aspect of the information age economy, it’s that you have a better chance of getting a gold watch from a street vendor than you do from a corporation. ‘Time was, and not long ago, employees mounted hierarchies as elegant and monumental as Aztec temples. The steps were clear, the path seemed obvious – forget that those who made it to the top were either priests or human sacrifices. Now the worker, the manager, the executive zigzag through organizations that resemble circuit boards more than pyramids, where lines of energy and control run every which way, where chutes are many, ladders are few and short; where the organizing principle is ceaseless reorganization; where it’s hard to know what a career is, let alone how to get one. Asked about the future of middle management, that famously endangered species, David Robinson, president of the CSC Index consulting firm, offers a lonesome-pine word: ‘Extinction’.’ (Stewart, 1997, pp. 199–200)

The message is clear and unequivocal: don’t expect any job to last for a lifetime, and provide your own security. The employee who refuses to hear the message, and who fails to undertake some form of continuous education, professional learning, or training is going to find himself a very unhappy employee or, worse yet, a very unhappy unemployed person. Beyond these, there are other forces driving the focus for continuous education and professional development, and one of the strongest is the almost universal acceptance of lifelong learning for all people. No longer is ‘adult education’ something that the occasional self-advancing individual takes on, in an attempt to learn something new and perhaps make some new friends. Nowadays, lifelong learning is part of the overall fabric of life in any community, any group of people (think about the number of people who sign up for additional ‘study groups’ or ‘discussion groups’ in churches, temples, mosques, and other religious institutions, or who pick up the course catalogues piled in boxes at intersections in almost every major city). Lifelong learning is now something that people ‘do’, and when what one learns can be related to one’s career, there is an added bonus. This book is an attempt to bring structure to the mechanics of professional and strategic learning. To be fair, it must be stated that this effort

Introduction

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is not meant to be all-embracing, or to provide all the answers for all situations. Certainly the limitations of this work are set out in the book’s title: Beyond Degrees is an attempt to think about professional learning in one type of work, in knowledge services. And while it would be comforting (and certainly gratifying) to hope that this book would provide answers for all knowledge workers, it must be stated that the author’s perspective is a very particular one. It comes from an early background in specialist librarianship, with occasional forays into other types of librarianship, into communications theory, into organization development, into records and archives management, into training and strategic learning, and even into several other disciplines not specifically connected to information management as such. Nevertheless, all experience influences one’s thoughts, and as the suggestions and recommendations in this book are put forth, they are offered not so much as an end in themselves, but as a means to an end. Professional learning in knowledge services must of necessity be a journey, and not a destination. This book will be, I hope, a road map to help us along the way. But do we really need a road map? Can’t we just go on as we’ve been doing, learning what we need to know when we need to know it? Not any more, and that is why the book has been written. We live and work in a world in which change is so pervasive and so dramatic that we have no choice but to learn to do things differently. That is not just a North American perspective but one that applies to all other developed countries and indeed, to much of the less-developed world as well, as emerging societies identify information management and information services delivery opportunities. And if we must do things differently, surely we want to do them better, and that is the motivation that drives us – in knowledge services – to concentrate so much of our effort and our energy on learning. There is too much that is new coming at us all the time (and at our employees also, if we are in management positions), and the only way to cope with the new is to learn how to do it, to be able to do it well. Despite this recognition, though, considerable confusion persists when we attempt to give attention to learning for knowledge professionals as they prepare for and continue into their careers, as can be demonstrated by a brief review of the variety of learning programs and activities that connect to these careers. And while brief, such a review must be inadequate as well, since these activities for many knowledge professionals are fluid and totally uncoordinated. Nevertheless, in order to establish a framework for the methodologies described and the recommendations put forward in this book, it is important to attempt to paint this larger picture.

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

The Components of Knowledge Services We begin by looking at the component elements of knowledge services – information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning – and in a later chapter attempting to make some effort to describe how people are educated for these fields. Then, when we have some understanding of the history of professional learning for these fields, and also – hopefully – some understanding of current efforts, we can then identify needs and make recommendations for future development. First, though, we must understand what these fields are. As we define those three components, we can see how, when they converge, that convergence benefits the organizations in which knowledge professionals are employed, and for knowledge stakeholders affiliated with it. Information Management Information management is the organizational methodology that is concerned with the acquisition, arrangement, storage, retrieval, and use of information to produce knowledge. It is the methodology that – in most cases – is in place now. Information professionals work on it, improve it, and attempt to enhance it, but for all practical purposes, information management is a methodology that is now ‘up and running’, providing the methodology most organizations need for carrying out the information delivery process. It’s there to work for us as we operate within the new information-intense, knowledge-centric environment. In the current information management workplace – what I have referred to as the ‘splendid information services continuum’ in other books I have written for this series, information management can be thought of, in essence, as any work that has anything to do with the identification, capture, organization, storage, retrieval, analysis, interpretation, packaging, and dissemination of information. And – as mentioned previously – despite some confusion about the terminology (as, for example, the use of the phrase ‘information services’ in some companies to refer to those departments with responsibility for information technology), information management as a management methodology generally encompasses these activities. In today’s society, and for our purposes here, when we speak of information in terms of that splendid information services continuum, we are speaking about a great variety of activities and environments. As stated in the series introduction at the beginning of this book: ‘. . . it does not matter if the reader of these books is employed as an information manager, information provider, information specialist, or indeed, as an information counsellor (as these information workers have been described by one of the leaders of business and industry). In fact, it does not matter whether the reader is employed in traditional librarianship,

Introduction

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specialist librarianship (including medical librarianship and legal librarianship), records management, corporate or organizational archives, or the information brokerage field.’

Information management, then, is that branch of organizational management that has responsibility for the management and delivery of information within the organization. As for information itself, referred to frequently in this series in Elizabeth Orna’s classic definition, the concept covers the broadest of ranges of products, services, and programs. In 1990, Orna described what she called the ‘touchstone’ for identifying information. It is a simple (but not simplistic) concept: information is anything that people need ‘to know and apply in their work, to achieve their and the enterprise’s objectives’ (Orna, 1990, p. 49). In other words, long before knowledge management, as such, came on the scene and was recognized as the strategic asset it is now accepted as being, Orna was identifying information as an overarching and inclusive entity that – regardless of format or location – is used by people to assure their success. Knowledge Management But information management doesn’t work all by itself, as many of us in the field are learning. Indeed, information management can’t stand alone, not in a knowledge-centric environment, for it must now include the management of intellectual capital, or what we call ‘knowledge management,’ the second component of the knowledge services framework. How does one define knowledge management (or ‘KM,’ as it is popularly called)? It’s difficult, simply because ‘knowledge management’ means so many different things to so many different people. We can make an effort toward a definition, though, by establishing what KM is not, and asserting at the outset that knowledge management is not information technology. Of course IT is the mechanism we use for organizing the elements of the knowledge management endeavour (that’s why we call it ‘enabling technology’), and, yes, there are corporations and organizations in which assumptions seem to be made that KM can not exist without IT. But IT will not, in and of itself, lead to knowledge management. IT can (and usually does) enable KM, but KM is a management methodology, not a mechanism. But if KM is not information technology, what is it? To answer that question, we must delve into the difficult terrain of distinguishing between information and knowledge, if such a distinction can be made in today’s management environment. In The Social Life of Information, John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid offer three generally accepted distinctions between knowledge and information.’ ●

Knowledge usually entails a knower (information is independent, but knowledge is usually associated with someone);

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services ●

Knowledge appears harder to detach than information (information is ‘a self-contained substance’);

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Knowledge seems to require more by way of assimilation (‘Knowledge is something we digest rather than merely hold’). (Brown and Duguid, 2000, pp. 119–20)

If we consider these distinctions and then seek to define knowledge management, we find a number of ‘working’ definitions that can be applied. Thomas Stewart, quoted earlier, uses the term ‘intellectual capital’, which he defines as ‘intellectual material – knowledge, information, intellectual capital, experience – that can be put to use to create wealth’. Stewart’s definition puts ‘intellectual capital’ very close to what we call ‘knowledge’, but gives it a practical twist so that the term describes what is done in the corporate world (Stewart, 1997, p. x). Other useful definitions can be found: in the corporate world, Lois Remeikis has pointed out that knowledge management is the organization’s effort to ‘. . . define, create, capture, use, share, and communicate the company’s best thinking . . .’ (St. Clair, 1999, pp. 59–68). In the records and information management field, Bruce Dearstyne has defined knowledge management as ‘. . . cultivating and drawing on tacit knowledge; fostering information sharing; finding new and better ways to make information available; applying knowledge for the strategic advantage of the organization’ (Dearstyne, 1999, p. 11). Where high technology and business management combine, staff at Microsoft have come up with their own description of knowledge management. ‘Knowledge management’, they say, ‘incorporates systematic processes of finding, selecting, organizing, and presenting information in a way that improves an employee’s comprehension and use of business assets’ (Microsoft, quoted in Brown and Duguid, 2000, p. 117). This last description, of course, brings up again the question that stumps many in the management community: is knowledge management about IT? Does knowledge management, in fact, necessarily require technology? In today’s workplace, and in the thinking of today’s business and organizational leaders, it probably does, since it is the enabling attribute of technology that has permitted the working community (and society at large, of course) to come to the point where it is possible to work, unencumbered, with data and information in such quantities and with such sophistication. In fact, in the quotation from Microsoft, which Brown and Duguid use in their discussion of knowledge management, the description quoted is preceded by the Microsoft definition of knowledge management: ‘Knowledge management is the use of technology to make information accessible wherever that information may reside. To do this effectively requires the appropriate application of the appropriate technology for the appropriate situation.’ (Ibid)

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For many knowledge professionals, then, one of the basic questions has to do with distinguishing between information and knowledge, since these professional workers are primarily concerned with the latter. In the general scheme of things, as noted above, information management might be said to be concerned with the acquisition, documentation, arrangement, storage, retrieval, and use of information to produce knowledge. Knowledge management then becomes the process or technique of making relevant information available quickly and easily for people to use productively. It is a process, certainly, and it is a management methodology through which the parent company or organization is able to transform its intellectual capital into enduring value. It is a methodology, involving the connection of people with the knowledge they need, when they need it, and we employ information technology as the tool for managing information to produce knowledge. So a basic tenet of knowledge management, as we now understand it, is that it is about people. Laurence Prusak and Don Cohen have written about ‘social capital’ in organizations, and in discussing their book in The New York Times, Fred Andrews commented that Prusak and Cohen belong to the ‘humanist wing’ of KM. He then went on to describe (in yet another useful definition) how KM is now ‘taking hold’ in many companies. ‘These companies’, he writes, ‘have concluded that they possess an enormous but largely untapped asset in the wisdom accumulated by their workers over decades of experience’(Andrews, 2001, p.6). Knowledge management, as Andrews describes it, is the attempt to spread that wisdom throughout the company. Within the larger management community, it is now recognized that KM is not a product or a thing. It is a management practice that is used to help a company manage explicit, tacit, and cultural information in ways that enable the company to reuse the information and for creating new knowledge. More than anything else, knowledge management is an established atmosphere or environment, a culture if you will, in which the development and sharing of knowledge – at all levels within the company and including all levels of knowledge – is accepted as the essential element for the achievement of the corporate mission. Strategic (Performance-centred) Learning That definition provides a neat segue for describing the third component of knowledge services, strategic (performance-centred) learning. In the management community, we hear a great deal about this sort of thing as we think about organizational learning, and there’s no question that organizational learning is the key to organizational success. So we can define strategic (performance-centred) learning: it is the successful achievement of skills, competencies, knowledge, behaviours, and/or other outcomes required for excellence in workplace performance. It is application based, and relates directly to how it will be used.

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It is useful, at this point, to connect knowledge management and learning, for they are connected and are applied together to ensure organizational success, regardless of the organization’s mission. Certainly this connection between knowledge management and learning is the theme of a continuous stream of meetings, discussions, and conferences, and the Chief Learning Officer Conference held in 1999 in Boston was one such event. At that conference, almost every presentation and discussion made the point that knowledge and learning are linked. Hubert SaintOnge, describing the efforts employed by organizations in moving toward a successful knowledge strategy, emphasized the necessity of ‘leveraging the convergence of knowledge and learning’ and described knowledge as being ‘all about relationships, between people, different areas of a company, partners in the value chain (customers/suppliers, competitors), the multiple stakeholders’ (Saint-Onge, 1999). Or, as was expressed by Marc Pramuk and Jonathan Lehrich in their presentation: ‘Knowledge management and organizational learning are about people. Action learning (individuals) and culture-based learning (organizations) institutionalize systems, values, and behaviours. Knowledge management is not an IT or an operations issue. It is the goal of everyone to get the right information to the right people in the right time and the right way.’ (Pramuk and Lehrich, 1999)

The connection between knowledge management and learning, their convergence, makes a great deal of sense, especially to those working in the knowledge services for whom the successful implementation of information management has been achieved. Knowledge management and strategic (performance-centred) learning then become the focal points for development and implementation, and this seems to be generally what is happening in organizations generally. In May, 2001, the Conference Board sponsored a program for exploring this very issue (‘The 2001 Knowledge Management/Organizational Learning Conference: Convergence, Application, and Infrastructure’). Speaker Joseph Wheeler directed his remarks towards exploring why knowledge management and organizational learning are converging, and why the synergy between knowledge management and organizational learning is beneficial all the way around. Wheeler stated very clearly why knowledge management and organizational learning are converging. In fact, in his presentation, Wheeler identified four drivers: ●

Common technology and tools are blurring the disparity between learning and knowledge management;

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The current business environment will help drive convergence as firms become more focused on gaining economies of scale and scope (i.e., from organizational learning to supply chain learning);

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Emergence of standards for learning and knowledge objects will facilitate more flexible sharing and repurposing of information;

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In some ways, KM and organizational learning address several of the other’s weaknesses. The convergence will lead to unanticipated synergy between the two. (Wheeler, 2001)

That last driver is critical, for without that synergy, both knowledge management and strategic learning run the risk of being characterized as ‘nice-to-have’ instead of as ‘essential’. To his credit, Wheeler offered suggestions as to how synergy can be achieved, suggestions that fit well into the knowledge services arrangement. For example, Wheeler noted that KM strategies that emphasize codification of knowledge assets have met resistance, ‘since tacit knowledge is often more valuable, but harder to share’, certainly the classic ‘hard-sell’ situation in most organizations. By converging KM and OL, Wheeler said, instructional strategies provide proven methods for learning and applying knowledge within the appropriate context toward a specific outcome. In another example, Wheeler also noted that e-learning is not delivering on the value that it seemed to promise, so that the integration of e-learning into blended learning solutions that incorporate knowledge management represents what Wheeler calls ‘the real payoff’. Finally, though, and particularly important in any consideration of professional learning in the knowledge services environment, Wheeler pointed out that few organizations have really been able to institutionalize learning at an enterprise level. If we’re lucky, this is a situation that will be changed when organizations accept the recommendation put forward here and create an operational entity – an organizational knowledge services learning institute – whose purpose will be precisely that, to institutionalize learning at an enterprise level. With convergence, the enterprise-wide value proposition of KM provides a powerful way to accelerate the adoption of organizational learning. These descriptions and this linkage between information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning come very close to Orna’s definition of information, and the specific connection between knowledge and learning is obvious. It is in these learning relationships that knowledge is acquired, for knowledge and the transfer of the information elements that lead to knowledge is what learning is all about. This concept carries even further when we explore how the various ‘component parts’ of the knowledge services continuum arrive at their learning and professional development goals, in order to ensure success in their careers.

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References Andrews, Fred (2001) ‘Book Value: Learning to Celebrate Water-Cooler Gossip’, The New York Times, 25 February 2001. Beheshti, Jamshid (1999) ‘Library and information studies curriculum’, McGill Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, 7 September 1999, www.gslis.mcgill.ca/beheshti/alacais4.htm. Brown, John Seely, and Paul Duguid (2000) The Social Life of Information, Cambridge, MA: The Harvard Business School Press. Dearstyne, Bruce W (1999) ‘Records Management of the Future: Anticipate, Adapt, and Succeed’, The Information Management Journal, October 1999. Dillon, Martin (1997) ‘The OCLC Institute: genesis and prospectus’, Dublin, OH: OCLC, 29 November 1999, www.oclc.org/institute/ about_article.htm. Orna, Elizabeth (1990) Practical Information Policies: How to manage information flow in organizations, London and Brookfield VT: Gower. Pramuk, Marc, and Jonathan Lehrich (1999) ‘Report from the field: a summary of best practices and critical success factors’, Presentation at The Fourth Annual Chief Learning Officer Conference, October 1999, Lexington, MA: Linkage, Incorporated. Prusak, Laurence, and Don Cohen (2001) In Good Company: How social capital makes organizations Work, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, (discussed in Andrews). St. Clair, Guy (1999) Change Management in Action, Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association. Saint-Onge, Hubert (1999) ‘Building capability through a comprehensive knowledge strategy’, Presentation at The Fourth Annual Chief Learning Officer Conference, October 1999, Lexington, MA: Linkage, Incorporated. Stewart, Thomas A (1997) Intellectual Capital: The new wealth of organizations, New York: Doubleday. Wheeler, Joseph (2001) ‘The Convergence of Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning’, Presentation at The 2001 Knowledge Management/Organizational Learning Conference, 3–4 May 2001, New York: The Conference Board.

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Chapter Two

Point of Departure From Studying for Librarianship to Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

Each of the fields that contribute to the three constituent elements of the new knowledge services profession – professions and disciplines such as librarianship, archives management, records and information management, training and development, information technology, and related fields – has its own framework and structure for professional learning. These individual approaches to professional learning should be considered and, when appropriate, incorporated into the broader approach to professional learning for knowledge services as a whole that is recommended here. There isn’t much argument about the basics of education and training for careers in these fields, since most of them begin with a well-rounded undergraduate degree. Some, like careers in knowledge management, can also be pursued by college graduates who have some grounding in science, mathematics, engineering, computer studies, and similar technical subjects, since so much emphasis is being placed on the value of IT in knowledge management. Others, like careers in corporate or organizational archives, generally require employees who have some interest and, hopefully, some studies in such pursuits as historical records and similar work. In all of these careers, though, it’s when employees or potential employees want to move to a higher level of professionalism that the learning approach takes a different direction, and it’s here that specialized study and learning comes into play. This book is being written to suggest a structural framework which will enable this higher level of professionalism. In fact, it will be through the establishment of the new knowledge services profession – with its overarching qualification management authority – and the development of individual knowledge services learning institutes within the organizations that this higher level of professionalism will be achieved. Of the many different disciplines, professions, and types of work already engaged in providing information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning in the organizations where they are required, one of these – librarianship – provides the opportunity to

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consider some of the important issues that will need to be taken into account as the move to the new knowledge services profession is undertaken. With its connection to the education community and its development of a theoretical foundation about the organization of information, librarianship, like information science and related scientific fields, provides a fundamental underpinning for knowledge services. At the same time, the attention to the needs of the information seeker that librarianship provides – at least ideally – makes the field a useful one for testing the organizational management and customer focus that knowledge services, as a profession, builds upon. In terms of education for its practitioners, librarianship historically has played down undergraduate academic study for library work since the 1950s, when the terminal master’s degree was agreed upon as the basic qualification for a career as a professional librarian. Nevertheless, during the ensuing decades, many employees without a graduate degree in library science (now generally described as an ‘LIS’ degree, for academic education in library and information studies) continued to work as ‘librarians’, for a variety of reasons. Some of these employees – now mostly gone – were ‘grand-fathered’ into their work, as they had already been employed as librarians before the later educational requirements were established. The resulting pattern, for education for librarianship, was that by the end of the last century, anyone expecting to pursue a career in librarianship could be expected to have attained a graduate degree in the field. It is here, though, that the differing requirements of the workplace provoke a division in service skills and educational requirements. While most librarians going to work in the last decades of the twentieth century in the public sector (that is, in public libraries, publicly supported academic institutions, and, when possible, in schools) were expected to have a graduate LIS degree, this has not always been the case in what became known as ‘special’ or ‘specialized’ libraries. For these jobs, employees were often trained ‘on the job’ or were simply brought in because they had had experience working in library- or information services-type work. Even that loose affiliation eventually tightened up, however, as the library community at large began to establish its own professional standards which required, at a minimum, a graduate LIS degree for designation as a professional librarian. During this period, though, there continued to be a considerable amount of upheaval within the library field, simply because the fundamental characteristics of these two branches of librarianship are so different. For public, academic, and school librarians, the connection with the educational establishment and the role of the librarian as an educator who worked ‘with’ the client and showed him or her how to find the information he or she required positioned the librarian – regardless of the community or institution for which he or she provided library services – as an educator, as one who ‘taught’ the library user how to find information.

Point of Departure

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The specialized library field, however (which includes medical librarianship and legal librarianship and, in many cases, the information brokerage field as well), became a much different information-delivery entity. In the work that these practitioners do, the emphasis is much more on actually providing the information itself, although when the user wants to be taught how to find it for himself or herself, the special librarian reverts to the role of teacher. The fundamental role of the special library, however, became much more a function of the organization or enterprise which employed the librarian, and the work of the specialist librarian (now also known as an ‘information professional’ or ‘information specialist’) became directly connected to the achievement of the employing organization’s mission. In fact, the whole concept of ‘missioncritical’ becomes the imperative for the very existence of the specialized library, as can be seen in the various descriptions that have been put forth over the last two decades of the twentieth century. In many documents and papers, the differences between traditional libraries and specialized libraries have been spelled out, and by the beginning of the new century, the distinctions had become very clear. One of the most quoted of these was published in 1984: ‘A special library is characteristically a unit or department of an organization primarily devoted to other than library or educational purposes. A special librarian is first an employee, a staff member of the parent organization, and second a librarian. ‘Special’ really means library service specialized or geared to the interests of the organization and to the information needs of its personnel.’ (Ferguson and Mobley, 1984, p. 4)

Even earlier, though, Wilfred Ashworth – writing about specialist librarianship from a UK perspective – described a special library in 1979 as one which is ‘established to obtain and exploit specialized information for the private advantage of the organization which provides its financial support’ (Ashworth, 1979, p. 6). And shortly thereafter, Edward G Strable identified and reported several characteristics which distinguish special librarianship from other types of library work. Significantly, Strable made specific reference to the specialized library’s mission-critical role, particularly in those organizations in which the competitive role of the library’s parent organization is a fundamental attribute. After Strable’s list, the library – if it is a special library – could no longer be thought of as ‘inherently good’ simply because it exists as a library (as was often presumed to be the case with public or academic libraries, regardless of their real value to the communities or institutions that provided their support). For specialized libraries, the parent organization’s bottom-line judgement was also the library’s bottomline judgement. These conditions hold true today:

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Special libraries can be difficult to find – most are not visible to the general public;

●

Most special libraries deal with a single subject or related group of subjects. The special library is the library of the organization, most often the only library, and serves all information needs;

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The scope of the special library’s collection and service is determined by the objectives of the parent organization;

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Special libraries are usually found in organizations whose objectives are not primarily a library objective;

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Special libraries serve different kinds of clientele – almost never used by ‘everybody’ – populated by user groups who have a work relationship with the organization which maintains the library;

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Special librarians – like their users – are frequently specialists;

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Special libraries tend to be comparatively small, often one-person. They also frequently have small user groups;

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A good number of special libraries are supported by private and not public funds. They spring from and are much a part of a competitive capitalistic system;

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Special libraries are characterized by risk – risk of failure is always present in business and industry, in associations and societies, and in the professions. Special libraries can be dissolved because they cost too much and don’t bring in enough of a benefit to the sponsoring organization. (Strable, 1980, p. 216, italics added)

By the early part of the 1990s, it was evident that there was a need to clarify these distinctions in a more public forum. Taking its cue from the concerns of its membership, the Special Libraries Association, the international membership organization that represents special librarians and speaks for them, addressed these attributes and the role of the specialist librarian in the information workplace in a unique study. Between 1991 and 1993, SLA’s Presidential Study Commission on Professional Recruitment, Ethics and Professional Standards, known as The PREPS Commission, was appointed to study themes important to the membership of SLA. Specifically, ‘education for special librarianship, compensation, and the perceived value of the information professional’ were to be examined. Underlying the work of The PREPS Commission (which had been appointed when this author was president of the Special Libraries Association) was the premise that specialist librarianship is a ‘unique branch’ of the profession of librarianship and that ‘despite the great diversity within special librarianship itself, special libraries nonetheless have different missions, focuses, and purposes than libraries in other branches of the profession’ (Special Libraries Association, 1992. pp. 1–3).

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The commission also sought to codify some of the concerns associated with information services and the management and delivery of information by practitioners who had been educated as librarians. Of particular concern was the fact that graduate programs in library and information studies did not provide particular attention to the skills and competencies required for success in specialist librarianship, and it seemed clear that professional learning for specialist librarians would be provided through another avenue, presumably through training, continuous education, and professional learning. Such were the findings of the commission (see Chapter Two: Appendix A). In fact, a review of the recommendations of The PREPS Commission reveals a serious focus on professional learning, for despite strong recommendations for further cooperation between SLA and existing graduate LIS programs, the Commission apparently (and probably realistically) expected little in the way of such cooperation. Thus a renewed emphasis by SLA on continuous education and professional learning as offered by the Association was recommended. Among the Commission’s recommendations was one that called for the creation of a directory or database of professional learning opportunities as a resource for SLA’s members. Another important recommendation called for the Association to identify and partner with other organizations offering continuous education and professional learning activities (but with the caveat that recognized ‘that the Association itself has the primary responsibility in this area’ of providing professional learning for its members), and one recommendation encouraged the Association to investigate the subject of certification with respect to specialist librarianship. Running through the Commission’s recommendations and the accompanying report was a strong theme that the Association’s professional learning activities be used as a vehicle for raising awareness in the larger world about the unique role of specialist librarians in the information arena, and that it is a role that requires a higher level of commitment and excellence than other forms of librarianship. This premise and the work of The PREPS Commission would turn out to have a strong influence in later actions that were taken by SLA, and in the larger information community as well. As it happened, at the same time much thought was being given to these issues at the Medical Library Association as well, and MLA’s Platform for Change: The Educational Policy Statement of the Medical Library Association was an major step forward for that branch of the information industry. Health science librarians, too, were being ‘blindsided’ by ‘significant change in the roles of health information professionals and in the knowledge and skills expected of them.’ Quoting the Council on Library Resources (now CLIR, the Council on Library and Information Resources), MLA supported its organizational move toward a new educational policy by agreeing that ‘at the heart of many of the present problems facing

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librarians and library education is the failure to describe the profession and its present role in terms that are compelling, expansive, and accurate. The principles, the responsibilities, and the body of knowledge that shape the profession are real and of great importance . . . but they are either implicit or incompletely formed and are certainly not widely understood . . .’ The MLA document was designed specifically to respond to the need for ‘a clear and forward-looking statement of expectations for medical librarians and to provide an agenda for future action, and it also, as its creators said, sought to look to the future, to describe a plan for health sciences information learning that was ‘collaborative, integrated, [and] individual-centred’, that would empower information professionals in health-related environments to keep pace with change (Medical Library Association, 1991, p.1). At about this time, while specialist librarians and medical librarians were thinking about how their branches of the profession are different from other branches of librarianship, concern was, in fact, being expressed about the general state of affairs in the overall profession. In 1991, that concern began to focus on the quality of work provided by the so-called ‘professional’ librarians. While many, if not most, librarians, upon obtaining their graduate credential (the master’s degree in library and information studies), went forth determined to perform professionally, they were frequently prevented from doing so, for once into their careers they were often confronted with public perceptions that reduced their professional role to that of a glorified clerk. These librarians naturally soon burned out, becoming, in the performance of their duties, less than inspired and certainly less than inspirational. Equally serious, ill-informed managers and administrators – to say nothing of well-meaning but equally uninformed members of their boards of trustees – were unable to mentor librarians to work more professionally, and they often found themselves pressed to find meaningful work for their professional employees, simply because many duties required for the functioning of the typical public or school library (and often the academic library as well) were not professional tasks. These people, whose understanding of library and information services professionalism did not match those of the librarians they hired, were in positions of authority with respect to the libraries they were attached to, yet even they did not expect much in the way of professionalism from the librarians who were their employees. As a result, the issue of standards of professionalism came to dominate much of the discussion of groups of librarians and other information professionals when they came together, and in fact some of their informal discussion led to more formal, or at least structured, attention to the problem. For example, the work of an informal ‘steering committee’ of librarians and library managers attempted in the early 1990s to lay the groundwork for building a ‘new professional structure.’ Susan K Martin has described this ‘grassroots’ steering committee’s activity (the movement

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was known as ‘Strategic Visions’), and it is useful – in the context of professional learning – to think about that group’s work (Martin, 1993, pp. 209–27). The movement identified four elements ‘that are likely to be critically important for the success of librarianship in the coming century.’ Two of these were particular to the time that the work was being done, the state of the economy and ‘the continuing closing of graduate schools.’ Obviously, the state of the economy has changed (although it could be convincingly argued that the profession of librarianship – and particularly the education of librarians – has not particularly benefited from a better economy). Likewise, the ‘continuing’ closure of graduate programs in library and information studies has abated, but even though that threat has diminished, no one will argue that graduate studies programs in librarianship are secure in the institutions of which they are a part, as such problems as reduced faculty and the position and status of the programs in their institutional environments appear to portend dangerous trends. On the other hand, the other two critical elements that the steering committee identified continue to affect – in a major way – the work that librarians do: ‘the not-so-sudden recognition by librarians that, although we were among the first to use information technologies in the 1960s and ‘70s, we are no longer in the lead, and we are even viewed as stodgy, lacking the creativity and inventiveness to take promising technologies and put [them] to work for ourselves and our users.’ The relationship that librarians have with technology is not as serious in the new century as it was in the early 1990s, certainly, but that ‘lead’ that Martin noted is, without doubt, gone forever. Librarians will never again lead the way in technology matters, but it cannot be denied that librarianship now embraces technology with the same enthusiasm and expects the same benefits from technology as the rest of society. The fourth, and final, influence that the Strategic Visions Steering Committee identified was that old canard, the stereotype of the librarian and, importantly in this context, the stereotype that librarians have of themselves as a barrier to success for librarianship in the new century. There is no question that the Strategic Visions Steering Committee was a serious effort, and the result of the group’s work was, in fact, a call for nothing less than the complete restructuring of the profession: ‘Librarianship needs a new structure to encompass its strategic vision, its greater expectations, and the concomitant education and continuing education process – all components of a profession which has a common body of knowledge, a code of ethics, professional designation, and the provision of service to the public. This new structure should consist of the following: 1.

A two-track system which allows the selection of either a career, with the assumption of a continuing contribution to the profession, or a vocation, requiring appropriate training but with no expectation that time or effort will be given beyond the normal working day.

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2.

An accreditation process for schools of library and information studies that is administered as a federation of the various components of the library and information professions, rather than only by a committee of the American Library Association;

3.

Standards for the educational structure which describe the intellectual preparation necessary for both categories of librarian described in #1, and which raise the level of instruction and expectation of the student far beyond current standards;

4.

A certification structure which is applied to individuals who are members of the profession and which allows them to be qualified to serve at continually higher levels of achievement;

5.

A continuing education program that undergirds the certification program, permitting individuals to enter the profession, obtain further education, and increase their status; and

6.

An academy or college of information professionals, composed of the most highly qualified people who have contributed outstanding efforts and visions to the furtherance of the profession, just as does the American College of Physicians, serving as role models for younger librarians.’ (Martin, p. 214)

The call, alas, went unanswered, and despite the seriousness of the effort, the conclusions of the Strategic Visions Steering Committee’s discussions and the resulting important recommendations were not pursued at that time. Nevertheless, these were useful recommendations and some of them, of course, connect to the work that knowledge workers are doing – and will continue to do – in the new century. They can be part of an overview that provides a good point of departure for future planning, particularly with respect to continuous education and professional learning for information workers (Chapter Two: Appendix B). These were not futile efforts, for as the decade of the 1990s continued, the work of SLA’s PREPS Commission, MLA’s efforts, the deliberations and published recommendations of the ad hoc Strategic Visions Steering Committee, and similar efforts all began to be assimilated into the professional mindset. As programs of study were being examined and as leaders in the field began to think about how people should be recruited into the profession and then, once in the profession, how they should perform as information professionals, all of these efforts were much talked about. At the Special Libraries Association in particular, much work continued to be done, and in 1996, the organization’s important Competencies for Special Librarians for the Twenty-first Century was published, providing specific and codified direction for those who would be employing specialist librarians (Spiegelman, 1997). Published both as a monograph that provided much excellent background information about competencies and the value of competency-based management, and in executive summary format, the document was also available electronically on the

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SLA Website, and, as demand from non-English speaking information professionals around the world grew, it was translated into several languages (Chapter Two: Appendix C).* Shortly thereafter, as SLA was seeking to re-vamp its basic professional documents, particularly to incorporate these specifics and, hopefully, to clarify some of the confusion that persisted in the public mind about libraries and the different kinds of libraries that function in today’s society, a new strategic plan for the association was created and published (Special Libraries Association, A Visionary Framework . . . , 1997). Again, the distinctions between specialized libraries and other types of libraries were clearly spelled out, particularly in the plan’s depiction of the professionals who are employed as special librarians. With the special librarian now characterized as ‘a knowledge professional who provides focused information and service to a specialized clientele having an impact on their success, mission, and goals’, and the term ‘special librarian’ used in the SLA Strategic Plan interchangeably with ‘information professionals’, the distinctions were finally becoming clear. Not surprisingly, by 1998 interest in the SLA competencies document and concerns about the issues raised in the publication of these several studies led to a larger investigation, a worldwide survey of LIS programs, with the goals of providing ‘a benchmark of information studies curricula and to identify competency areas better served by continuing education programs offered through professional associations.’ (Special Libraries Association, Association for Library and Information Science Education, Medical Library Association, 1998). Those were strong words, and the goals are obviously challenging, but at this point in time, what the study provided was essentially a rallying cry to do more. At the conclusion of the report’s Executive Summary, it was noted that hopefully the survey results will ‘serve to stimulate discussion and collaboration between library and information studies programs and professional associations throughout the world’ (Chapter Two: Appendix D). Is that all? Such a response to such a serious, industry-wide problem (which could – in almost any context – be called a crisis, without fear of overstatement) seems pitifully weak. Part of the problem, of course, is the extreme fragmentation that has taken place in this one part of one branch of what could become the new knowledge services profession. For decades, as demonstrated in many studies, including that of SLA’s PREPS Commission, those in librarianship have found themselves part of several professions and disciplines, a situation which, of course, seriously weakened any strength the various subgroups and subdisciplines might have attained in establishing their value in society. Similar fragmentation exists in other * The SLA competencies document is intended by the organization’s leadership to be a “living document,” and revisions will be published as required. See: www.sla.org/.

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branches of knowledge services, certainly, but not to the extent and with the level of intolerance that is exemplified in librarianship. By portraying themselves as authorities in the management of information, but also as educators, academicians, social workers, and the many and varied other roles they took upon themselves, librarians managed, during the last half of the twentieth century to confuse society about their role. Of course the characterization that ‘stuck’, (that is, the widely disseminated role of the public librarian, in all its confusing descriptions) is the one that attached itself to librarianship at large, and other equally valuable attributes got lost in the general perception of what librarianship is and what librarians do. As a result, serious confusion continues to attach to the concept of librarianship, as exemplified in the recent efforts in some countries (Canada, South Africa, the United States, the United Kingdom) to characterize libraries as cultural institutions. These efforts link libraries under organizational and governmental authorities and commissions that attach to museums and similar cultural institutions, establishing henceforth that libraries and the attributes attached to libraries, including the professional and strategic learning required for excellence in performance by their employees, are, indeed, ‘cultural’ activities. Sadly, such a categorization, while probably of great value to the public library itself as a societal establishment, completely ignores the role of specialized and academic libraries which are, of course, not cultural institutions in that sense at all. Specialized and academic libraries exist to provide resources and services for a particular, identified purpose. By lumping them together with other cultural institutions, the authorities responsible (including, of course, leaders in librarianship who advise the decisionmakers in these areas) are pushing specialized and academic libraries away from librarianship and into the broader information management – and hence knowledge services – arena. As far as professional learning is concerned, this is not a bad thing, for it means that strategic learning for those working in specialized and, to some extent, academic libraries can be focused on providing services to meet the specific requirements of those libraries end users. It also means, of course, that generic library and information studies program will continue to be less useful to practitioners and potential knowledge employees who want to pursue professional learning. Hence the efforts of such groups as those mentioned earlier will not be successful, if they are simply expected to ‘stimulate discussion’ and perhaps eventually lead to some changes in the way professional education is provided. But there are others who are also sending forth rallying cries, and it is beginning to appear that it will be elsewhere (than in library and information studies) that the solutions to that profession’s learning problems will be found. Indeed, it is clear that the time has come for those who work in the wider knowledge services industry to take matters into their own hands, and not wait for professional associations and the faculties

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of graduate programs to find a solution. This would seem to be a radical scenario, but the fact of the matter is, those who are hiring information and knowledge workers are not necessarily going to be willing to wait until the academic and/or association-sponsored professional learning issues are resolved. Those with decision-making authority in organizations that require information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning are making it clear that they will find the employees they need. Whether these employees are degreed or professional employees, or whether they are simply well-educated, experienced, subject-oriented, and appropriately positioned workers who can be taught to be knowledge workers, they will be found. If they can be transformed into the kinds of knowledge practitioners who will provide the highest levels of knowledge services delivery to meet their organizations’ requirements, the employers will find the employees they need. There are commercial firms galore providing a wide variety of training and learning programs for information and knowledge workers, and many other companies and organizations are using their internal training departments and corporate universities to leap-frog over traditional methodologies for providing staff with the skills and competencies required for information and knowledge work. Whether the wider universe of knowledge services can wait for associations, professional organizations, and the academic community to provide the knowledge workers they require is a matter of speculation. Whatever the goals, it is obvious that much attention will continue to be directed at how the different branches of knowledge services can be exploited and linked, in order to provide the highest levels of excellence in professional learning for knowledge workers. In the last month of 1999, for example, the distinctions between specialist librarianship and other kinds of librarianship were uniquely captured in a provocative document by Professor Marion Paris of the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama, published in Information Outlook, the monthly magazine of the Special Libraries Association. While Paris’s article specifically addresses the people who practise as specialist librarians, it seems clear that much of what she offers connects to a wide variety of practices – and practitioners – within the knowledge services field at large. In responding to the excellent SLA competencies document, Paris made it clear that employers really want even more. So in writing about the necessity of going ‘beyond’ competencies, her article is a plea for a serious reconsideration of how librarianship – and particularly specialist librarianship – is taught. The article poses serious challenges to practitioners, challenges that can, in many cases, be found among many of the other disciplines and professions that make up knowledge services. In the article, Paris also provocatively provides the latest in a long list of distinctions of what special librarians are and what they are not, particularly when contrasted with other librarians.

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‘In searching for the technical, the obscure, the undocumented fugitive report, or the one final detail that will win a new client, special librarians have always been indifferent [to] walls and boundaries. Special librarians networked long before the noun underwent linguistic conversion into a verb . . . . Whether the context is a corporation or a museum or a military installation or a specialized academic collection or a research and development laboratory, the ethos of special librarianship veers sharply away [from that of other types of libraries] . . . ‘According to the [American Library Association’s] Library Bill of Rights special librarians are heretics. You practise censorship; you do not as a rule educate your customers; you do your clients’ work for them, you acknowledge and admit that all customers of your libraries are not created equal. Summoning the totality of who you are (in possession of intelligence, education, experience, discernment and no small amount of cultivated prescience), you anticipate needs and cater to your customers. Moreover, it is essential to your credibility and to the continuing prosperity of your libraries that you make judgements about information sources and means of locating them. Means, by the way, that may be unconventional, but invariably their ends justify them. You create new information on demand. Knowledge management is merely a fresh take on your expertise: You collect information, organize it, store it, find it, and you repackage it.’ (Paris, 1999)

All of which, of course, poses very specific and particular challenges for those who are seeking to provide knowledge professionals with training, continuous education, professional learning, and staff development. Just what is the purpose of the graduate degree for a knowledge worker? Is a graduate degree even necessary? And how much emphasis should be placed on ‘general’ library/information studies if that graduate school student has no intention of working in a traditional library? For that matter, is there any such thing as a ‘traditional’ library anymore, or are those libraries we generally think of as traditional libraries (e.g., public or academic libraries) going to adopt at least some of the precepts of special library management? In this day of customer service focus and heightened emphasis on quality service delivery in all other service industries and professions, can a traditional library survive if it does not adopt the specialized library’s mission-critical focus? Is there value in providing a professional learning structure that looks to the broader management issues and relates them to the achievement of the specific knowledge services unit’s success? On the other hand, the larger field of knowledge services – as has been stated and is understood and accepted by all of us by now – is composed of a wide range of professions and career activities. The new knowledge services profession will focus on how excellence in information delivery will be achieved through the successful convergence of information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning. For some in other fields and disciplines, the emphasis in this book on

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the current state of affairs in specialist librarianship and the recommendations of this author, derived (often) from models provided in specialist librarianship, might not be suitable for all knowledge workers. Nevertheless, it is useful to contemplate the successes that have been achieved, and to consider how some of these same successes might be achieved in different settings. What can records and information managers learn, for example, by giving attention to a ‘bottom-line’ focus as they think about the return on investment that their practitioners provide to the organizations that employ them? Is there a benefit to be achieved for those who manage archives units, to give attention to employee competencies that emphasize client relationship management (CRM)/customer service or quality management? Obviously, the concepts and ideas put forth in this book will not resolve each of these critical and sensitive issues. On the other hand, by presenting a professional learning perspective that looks at what is – or could be – done in the specialized library community, this book can – hopefully – provide a framework for discussion elsewhere in the knowledge services community. As the new profession seeks guidance in training, continuous education, professional and strategic learning, and staff development, special libraries may not provide a particular model for all information-delivery, knowledge-centric operations. But by considering what works, what doesn’t work, what might show potential, and what shouldn’t even be attempted in the special libraries community, leaders and managers in other branches of knowledge services can deliberate about how they might approach some of these same challenges. It is at least a start, and one that hopefully will move the dialogue about professional learning beyond, as Marion Paris put it, the platitudes. If this book succeeds in achieving its mission, the interested parties will have raised the discussion to a level of attention that will produce significant and meaningful benefits.

References Ashworth, Wilfred (1979) Special Librarianship. London: Clive Bingley. Council on Library Resources (1989) ‘Information Studies: a new CLR professional education program. Annual report of Council on Library Resources’, Washington, DC: Council on Library Resources. (Quoted in Medical Library Association. Platform for Change . . . ) Ferguson, Elizabeth, and Emily R Mobley (1984) Special Libraries at Work, Hamdem, CT: Library Professional Publications. Martin, Susan K (1993) ‘Achieving the vision: rethinking librarianship’ Journal of Library Administration, 19(3/4).

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Medical Library Association (1991) Platform for Change: The Educational Policy Statement of the Medical Library Association, Chicago: Medical Library Association. Paris, Marion (1999) ‘Beyond competencies: a trendspotter’s guide to library education’, Information Outlook, 2(12), pp. 34–9. Special Libraries Association (1997) A Visionary Framework for the Future: SLA’s strategic plan, Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association. Special Libraries Association (1996) Competencies for Special Librarians of the Twenty-first Century, Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association. Special Libraries Association, Presidential study commission on professional recruitment, ethics, and professional standards (‘The PREPS commission’) (1992) Report, Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association. Special Libraries Association, Association for Library and Information Science Education, Medical Library Association (1998) Competencies for Special Librarians of the Twenty-first Century: Library and information studies programs survey final report, Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association. Spiegelman, Barbara M, (ed.) (1997) Competencies for Special Librarians of the Twenty-first Century. Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association. Strable, Edward G (1980) ‘Special libraries: how are they different?’, Illinois Libraries 62, March 1980.

Appendix A Special Library Association Presidential Study Commission on Professional Recruitment, Ethics, and Professional Standards The PREPS Commission Summary Report As President of the Special Libraries Association 1991–1992, Guy St. Clair established as his presidential theme, ‘Special Librarians – Preparing for Tomorrow Today.’ President St. Clair’s purpose was to focus on how the association and its members could encourage the best, the brightest, and most qualified people to enter the field of special librarianship. Emphasis was to be given to the unique role that special librarians play

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in information management. The Study Commission was to concentrate on the issues of recruitment into special librarianship; ethics and the place of a code of ethics for special librarianship; and standards and basic competencies for special librarianship. This theme, Special Librarians – Preparing for Tomorrow Today, embodied key elements of the association’s Strategic Plan and allowed for the exploration of related themes important to the membership, such as education for special librarianship, compensation, and the perceived value of the information professional. Underlying the work of The PREPS Commission is the premise that special librarianship is a unique branch of the profession of librarianship; that despite the great diversity within special librarianship itself, special libraries nonetheless have different missions, focuses, and purposes than libraries in other branches of the profession. The PREPS Study Commission makes the following recommendations, which will be presented to the Special Libraries Association Board of Directors on Friday, June 12 [1992]. Ethics Recommendation One That the Board of Directors of the Special Libraries Association pursue adoption of an association statement of professional conduct. The Commission envisions a statement which incorporates the issues outlined in the following draft statement: Special Libraries Association Statement of Professional Conduct Members of the Special Libraries Association are employed in libraries and information centres which are integral parts of other organizations. As such, they are bound by their parent organizations’ codes of ethics or other such statements with regard to appropriate professional conduct. Nevertheless, there are areas of conduct specific to the management of a special library or information centre and the provision of information for that library/professional centre’s defined user group which are appropriate for members as part of their affiliation with the Special Libraries Association. These areas require compliance with laws currently in force and include such professional components as competence, continuing education, confidentiality, self-protection, comprehensiveness, honesty, and reliability. Therefore, members of the Special Libraries Association agree to be bound by the following obligations of professional conduct: ●

To provide constituent users, as defined by the employer/organization, with the most current, accurate, and reliable information, regardless of personal beliefs or the possible uses to which the information might be put;

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To protect the confidentiality and privacy of individuals requesting information;

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To select and organize information resources responsibly to support the highest quality information services for the organization, consistent with the mission of the organization;

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To avoid misrepresentation of the purpose for gathering information or the use to which it will be put, in order to gain information which might otherwise be withheld;

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To uphold and actively advise others to uphold all laws governing the creation, reproduction, and dissemination of information;

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To maintain high standards of personal professional competence in information services;

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To abide by the legalities governing the employing corporate structure.

Recommendation Two That the Board of Directors constitute and authorize a standing committee of the Board, The Committee on Professional Conduct, to work with staff, members, and all association units in matters relating to issues of professional conduct. The committee might be modelled on the Consultation Committee or the Copyright Law Implementation Committee. Recommendation Three That the Board of Directors authorize staff support (with appropriate resources for additional staff, if required) to establish an advisory program on matters of professional conduct, to work with the Committee on Professional Conduct, the Chapters, Divisions, and all other sub-units of the association (committees, caucuses, representatives, etc.) to ensure that special libraries and information services professionals understand the value of standards of professional conduct in their work. Professional Standards Recommendation One That the Board of Directors of the Special Libraries Association revise the charge to the Standards Committee to reflect an emphasis on standards and competencies of special librarians. Recommendation Two That the Board of Directors of the Special Libraries Association charge the appropriate committee (or appoint an ad hoc committee) to investigate the issue of certification for special librarians. Recommendation Three That the Board of Directors of the Special Libraries Association charge the staff to present a discussion paper on the merits of developing a directory/database (or other appropriate

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mechanism) of continuing education opportunities for potential interested association members. We envision that this database will not be limited to library and information science courses, and could include appropriate subject areas as well. Recommendation Four Upon the creation and adoption by the Board of Directors, ‘Standards for Special Libraries and Librarians’ will be included in each edition of Who’s Who in Special Libraries. Educational Concerns Recommendation One That the Special Libraries Association continue to keep its position statement on graduate library education revised and distribute it as appropriate. Recommendation Two That the Special Libraries Association continue to work in cooperation with the American Library Association on issues involving accreditation and graduate library education to make special library concerns known. Recommendation Three That the Special Libraries Association continue to work with those library schools already offering special library courses and/or sponsoring SLA student chapters. This cooperation can come in the form of advice/input to keep the special library curriculum current; distribution of complimentary publications and other information that will be useful in the teaching of special library courses; and other activities identified as useful. Recommendation Four That the Special Libraries Association work with those library schools not offering special library courses or sponsoring SLA student chapters to promote the adoption of both. This cooperation can come in the form of providing model syllabi for development of a special libraries course; helping to identify local SLA members who could provide guest lectures for courses or serve as adjunct faculty to teach special library courses; provide SLA officers a guest speakers; and other activities identified as useful. Recommendation Five That the Special Libraries Association publicly recognize the efforts of those library schools that are providing educational preparation for the special library environment. This recognition should come on an ongoing basis and could take the form of letters to the library school’s university administration and to ALA’s Committee on Accreditation, as well as other methods found to be appropriate. Recommendation Six That the Special Libraries Association investigate methods for better retention of student members after graduation.

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

Recommendation Seven That the Special Libraries Association work cooperatively with other appropriate groups in the identification and delivery of continuing education opportunities for its members, while at the same time recognizing that the association itself has the primary responsibility in this area. Recommendation Eight That the association provide chapters with current lists of contacts at colleges and universities providing library courses. These contacts should be approached by the association to insure that they are willing and able to act as liaisons with local SLA chapters. Recommendation Nine That the association create and update on an ongoing basis a list of questions which potential students should ask potential schools to determine for themselves how strongly the school supports training for special librarianship. Recruitment Recommendation One That the Board approve the creation of an ad hoc committee for the purpose of working with career and guidance counsellors (through their professional associations) to insure an understanding among these professionals of the nature of special librarianship, and the type of person who should be guided toward such a career. In addition, the committee would oversee all efforts to insure the inclusion of special librarianship as a distinct branch of the profession in published sources of occupational education, such as The Dictionary of Occupational Titles, as well as overseeing the publication by SLA of specific materials explaining special librarianship to students at all levels. At the discretion of the Board, this may be a standing committee. Recommendation Two That Chapters and Divisions be encouraged to appoint a Speakers Bureau Chair. For the Divisions this Chair would maintain a list of members willing to be trained in public speaking. After successfully completing this training these members would be available to address school and civic groups on the unique aspects of special librarianship in general as well as in their specific subject areas. Chapter Chairs would arrange for specific speaking opportunities within their geographic area. Training for speakers would be provided by the association, perhaps as a supplement to regular DACOLT training. Recommendation Three That the Board appoint a committee to develop recommendations for an association recruitment program aimed at recruitment into the field of special librarianship. The recommendations would include specific proposals for various age groups from primary to graduate school. It is expected that among younger students the effort

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would be one of introducing or increasing awareness of special libraries. At the college and graduate levels, however, efforts would be more directly aimed at recruitment. The committee should be encouraged to work with the Medical Library Association, the American Association of Law Libraries, and other specialized library associations to create a program to promote an awareness of special librarianship/information management as a career possibility distinct from other branches of librarianship. It should be noted that assuming the committee’s recommendations were accepted by the Board, it is likely that it would be necessary to create a staff position to manage a professional recruitment program, to work with the committee and other association to carry out the plans, and which would complement the association’s existing membership program. Recommendation Four That as soon as funds are available the Board reauthorize the implementation of the Media Plan which among other things will create an awareness of the unique nature and value of special libraries. Recommendation Five That members of the Special Libraries Association be encouraged to make their libraries available for occasional visits by school groups. By doing so we can insure that students will be aware of the existence of libraries other than the school and public libraries with which they regularly have contact. Recommendation Six That the Special Libraries Association take further steps to try to improve the salaries of practitioners. Such efforts should include, but not be limited to: encouraging larger chapters to undertake salary surveys; encouraging greater participation in SLA’s salary survey, particularly among higher paid library managers; publishing salary minimums in SLA job advertising; encouraging comparable worth studies; encouraging additional research and publication concerning the value of the information professional. Recommendation Seven That the Special Libraries Association encourage research into the effects, if any, on special librarianship of the influx of mid- or late-career changers into the profession. In addition, research should be encouraged into the particular job satisfactions of special librarianship to provide concrete data for recruitment efforts. The Presidential Study Commission on Professional Recruitment, Ethics, and Professional Standards Mary E Dickerson, Chair Andrew J Berner

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

William H Fisher Jennifer R Jones Lou B Parris Muriel B Regan 8 June 1992

Appendix B Strategic Vision for Professional Librarians Strategic Visions Steering Committee Washington, DC December 1991 Establish the basis for librarianship in the twenty-first century in: Service ●

By selecting and delivering information that users need at the point and moments of need;

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By creating and maintaining systems which provide accurate and reliable information;

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By promoting the design of information systems that require little or no learning time for effective use;

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By correctly analysing users’ questions and providing them with the information they need (which may not be reflected accurately in their questions);

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By educating users to manage information;

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By initiating contact with potential information seekers to ensure a wide-spread understanding of professional services available to them, including assistance for those who do not wish to use the library independently;

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By furthering the development of the ‘virtual library’, a concept of information houses electronically and deliverable without regard to its location or time.

Leadership ●

By taking responsibility for information policy development, information technology application, environmental awareness, information research, and risk-taking in making strategic choices in the information arena;

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By accepting accountability for the information services we provide;

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By identifying and collaborating with strategic partners and allies in information delivery.

Innovation ●

By experimenting with new forms of organizational structure and staffing within libraries to enable delivery of new types of services to users, especially remote users, or users of the growing ‘virtual library’;

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By recognizing and supporting the library without walls, and the capacity of library services to be provided in various environments.

Recruitment/Development ●

By publicizing the unique advantage at which the ‘information age’ places librarians as information professionals;

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By strengthening the degree-granting programs, developing effective relationships with other information-related disciplines, and establishing alternative models for attaining professional credentials;

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By attracting and retaining creative and innovative people;

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By incorporating different competencies/professionals into the emerging information delivery environment;

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By addressing the importance of continuing professional education.

Strategic Visions Steering Committee Values and Qualities of Librarianship Discussion Draft At the December 1991 meeting of the Strategic Visions Steering Committee, the group was asked to address the question of those personal professional values that should be stressed and that should accompany a profession-wide strategic vision statement. While it was generally agreed that a values statement was desirable, it became evident that it was the most difficult task that the group set for itself. Several issues were prominent in their lack of resolution and their apparent need for further discussion: Issue 1: the distinction between the values of libraries as institutions and the values of librarians as professionals was not easy to make. As a result, for example, some argues that values such as ‘freedom of access to information’ should be stated, while others argues that this was more of an institutional value, and suggested values such as ‘commitment to the profession’, or ‘tolerance of diversity of opinions’.

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

Issue 2: in addressing the qualities that were thought to be desirable for librarians of the future, some suggested that these are qualities that are either obvious, or that are so general that they are qualities desirable for all professions and are not unique to librarianship. Further discussion has suggested that even if the qualities are obvious, and even if they are not unique to librarianship, perhaps we should state them and underscore them so that people entering the profession, evaluating the profession, or recruiting to library schools, will understand that the profession wants the best and brightest, and has high expectations of its members. Issue 3: an issue that was not discussed in depth but that might be closely linked to a values statement is the degree to which library schools and libraries attempt to recruit to the profession people who have the qualities and share the values that we indicate are appropriate for the twenty-first century librarian. This discussion document is in three parts: (I) the draft statement of values that emanated from the plenary discussion of the Strategic Vision Steering Committee; II) value statements that were identified in small group discussion prior to that plenary session; and (III) a list of qualities that we as librarians already seem to emphasize, based on advertisements for professional positions. It is hoped that groups discussing the vision statement will also be able to look carefully at the value/qualities issue, and make suggestions and comments on both documents. I. Draft Statement of Values In a democratic society, information is power and leads to knowledge. The librarian facilitates access to information by ensuring: ●

Preservation of recorded information;

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Organization of information to enable retrieval;

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Equal opportunity for access to information;

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A climate that fosters/promotes/invites use.

In facilitating access, we value: ●

Privacy;

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Confidentiality;

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Intellectual freedom;

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Users’ ability to find information independently;

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Initiating awareness in the community of the librarian’s role and services provided;

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Literacy;

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Continuing professional development.

II. Values identified by small group discussions We value: ●

Tolerance of diversity of opinions;

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Professional leadership through innovation, quality service, and partnerships;

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Cooperation/sharing/networking;

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Innovation and risk-taking;

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Collaborative services involving clients; other organizations; other professional; other members of the information professions;

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Client-driven orientation;

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Commitment to the profession;

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Flexibility to consider new ideas and change in the workplace;

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Curiosity;

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Analytical reasoning.

III. Individual qualities that may be appropriate for inclusion in a values statement We may have, as a profession, some qualities or traits that we consider ‘valuable’ in librarians. If this is true, then we should be recruiting people who appear to possess these same traits into the profession (i.e., into our master’s programs). Is there any way that we might want to incorporate these traits, or a subset thereof, into our values statement? The qualities listed below are related to the individual, and not to the experience that the individual may gain during his or her life. These are some of them, quoted directly from our own job ads: ●

Interpersonal and communication skills;

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Ability to adapt; flexibility;

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Vision;

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Leadership skills or potential;

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Commitment to professional staff development;

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Commitment to a service orientation; to providing quality service;

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services ●

Commitment to a highly productive work environment;

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Ability to function as a member of a team; to work collaboratively;

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Understanding of the internal and external environment;

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Potential for scholarly and professional achievement;

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Innovation, energy, enthusiasm, creativity, professionalism, initiative;

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Articulate spokesperson for the library; public relations talents;

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Ability to organize and relate to a diverse staff;

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Ability to work effectively, both independently and cooperatively;

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Ability to produce results in a persuasive and timely manner;

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Good judgement, candour, sense of proportion, and the practical;

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Commitment to excellence.

Appendix C Special Libraries Association Competencies for Special Librarians of the Twenty-first Century Competencies are defined as the interplay of knowledge, understanding, skills, and attitudes required to do a job effectively from the point of view of the performer and the observer. These include both professional and personal competencies. This set of knowledge and skills unique to special librarians allows us to function in a variety of environments to produce a continuum of value-added, customized information services that cannot be easily duplicated by others. Professional Competencies The Special Librarian: 1.1 Has expert knowledge of the content of information resources, including the ability to critically evaluate and filter them; 1.2 Has specialized subject knowledge appropriate to the business of the organization or client; 1.3 Develops and manages convenient, accessible, and cost-effective information services that are aligned with the strategic directions of the organization; 1.4 Provides excellent instruction and support for library and information service users;

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1.5 Assesses information needs and designs and markets value-added information services and products to meet identified needs; 1.6 Uses appropriate information technology to acquire, organize, and disseminate information; 1.7 Uses appropriate business and management approaches to communicate the importance of information services to senior management; 1.8 Develops specialized information products for use inside or outside the organization or by individual clients; 1.9 Evaluates the outcomes of information use and conducts research related to the solution of information management problems; 1.10 Continually improves information services in response to changing needs; 1.11 Is an effective member of the senior management team and a consultant to the organization on information issues. Personal Competencies The Special Librarian: 2.1 Is committed to service excellence; 2.2 Seeks out challenges and sees new opportunities both inside and outside the library; 2.3 Sees the big picture; 2.4 Looks for partnerships and alliances; 2.5 Creates an environment of mutual respect and trust; 2.6 Has effective communication skills; 2.7 Works well with others in a team; 2.8 Provides leadership; 2.9 Plans, prioritizes, and focuses on what is critical; 2.10 Is committed to lifelong learning and personal career planning; 2.11 Has personal business skills and creates new opportunities; 2.12 Recognizes the value of professional networking and solidarity; 2.13 Is flexible and positive in a time of continuing change.

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

Appendix D Special Libraries Association Special Librarians Competency Survey Executive Summary Background The Special Libraries Association (SLA) has long been concerned with the knowledge requirements of new entrants to the field. The Association’s members have explored and shared their vision of the competencies and skills required for special librarianship over the years. Following the publication of the 1996 document Competencies for Special Librarians of the Twenty-first Century, the SLA Board of Directors directed Association staff to conduct a survey of Library and Information Science programs throughout the world. The goals of the survey were to provide a benchmark of information studies curricula and to identify competency areas better served by continuing education programs offered through professional associations. Since the status of special librarianship is of interest to related information associations, two other organizations contributed to the project, the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) and the Medical Library Association (MLA). Methods The survey instrument was organized into two sections. Components of the 11 professional competency areas were categorized into six ‘Essential Areas of Knowledge for Special Librarians’: Information Resources, Information Management, Information Access, Information Systems and Technology, Research, and Information Policy. Respondents were asked to write the course titles from their information and library science program under all the Essential Competency Areas to which they were relevant and to indicate whether the courses were ‘Core’ or ‘Elective’. There were also three open-ended questions: how library and information studies programs fostered the development of personal competencies; whether they planned to make changes in their curriculum based on SLA’s Competencies document and MLA’s Platform for Change; and how professional associations and library and information studies programs can work together. The survey was sent to 372 schools internationally. Fifty-six were North American schools accredited by the American Library Association (ALA) in 1997; the other 316 were ‘international’ schools listed in the 1995 World Guide to Library Archive and Information Science Education. A package was sent to each school containing a letter of introduction, a survey, and the executive summary of the Competencies document. The response rates for ALA-accredited schools and the international schools were 75 per cent and 22 per cent respectively.

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Analysis The ALA and international school data were analysed separately due to differences in the programs, survey response rates and the technological development of certain countries. A. Professional Competencies The goal of the first part of the survey was to assess whether the schools’ curricula are preparing students for the demands of the twenty-first century special library. Because of the low rate of response and strong variance among international schools, only the ALA schools’ responses to the first section of the survey were fully analysed. A total of 1909 courses were listed by the ALA programs in the professional competencies section of the survey; the average was 45. When grouped by Essential Competency Areas, Information Resources (23 per cent) had the highest percentage of the total number of courses, closely followed by Information Management (20 per cent), Information Access (19 per cent), and Information Systems and Technology (18 per cent). The areas of Research and Information Policy had the lowest representation in the total number of courses (10 per cent each). Examination of whether the courses offered are core or elective courses is also important in determining the extent to which programs are preparing their students. Core courses provide essential building blocks and a foundation for further study for students. Elective courses may, however, indicate opportunities for specific development. ●

A total of 17 per cent of courses in the Essential Competency Areas were core courses – with courses in specific Essential Competency Areas ranging from 21 per cent for Information Access to 12 per cent for Information Resources;

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While the majority of schools offered core courses in all the Essential Competency Areas, more than one-quarter of them did not require courses in the three areas of Information Systems and Technology, Research and Information Policy.

Open-ended Questions When the responses to the open-ended section of the survey for the international schools were compared to the responses of the ALA programs, there was overlap in the responses in several areas and differences in others. 1. Examples of approaches programs have taken to develop personal competencies: ●

Special workshops or continuing education courses offered by professional organizations (both);

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services ●

Integration of personal competencies into existing coursework (both);

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Courses focusing specifically on personal competencies (international).

2. Impact of SLA or MLA documents on school’s plans for changing curriculum: ●

While the majority stated they have used or plan to use the documents in the future, others stated that the documents reinforced existing curricula (ALA);

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Few have used the documents for curricula development, but many plan to in the future (international).

3. Suggestions on how professional associations can collaborate with library schools: ●

Guest lectures, videos and conferences (ALA);

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Active collaboration, e.g. research & development, joint curriculum committees (both);

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Sponsoring, mentoring and internship programs (both);

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Professional associations provide seminars and conferences for students, teachers and librarians (both);

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Professional associations expand partnerships with schools worldwide – take advantage of global alliances and intellectual wealth (international).

Summary The SLA and MLA documents are having an impact. Programs worldwide now have a greater awareness of these documents and the principles contained in them. The goals of this survey were to provide a benchmark of information studies curricula and to identify competency areas better served by continuing education programs offered through professional associations. While this project has come far in meeting these goals, it is our hope the survey results will also serve to stimulate discussion and collaboration between library and information studies programs and professional associations throughout the world.

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Chapter Three

Professional Learning

Learning is the foundation on which society rests, and information and knowledge are the critical elements in that foundation. Indeed, we are even living in a period of history that is described as the ‘information age’, or, variously, as the ‘knowledge age’. There can be no question – regardless of how one earns one’s living – that information and knowledge are and will continue to be the connecting elements that permit the societal structure to flourish. In this information age, (or, my preference), the knowledge age, there are very specific reasons why these connecting elements are so essential. In fact, a long list of such reasons could be developed. I am satisfied with these: ●

The ubiquitousness of information;

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The desire, even the necessity, for transforming information into knowledge, as described earlier;

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Enabling technology.

And a fourth reason that I have identified, although not quite so critical, is the now-accepted fact that everyone is an information/knowledge expert (or at least has an inclination to be such). For knowledge workers, there is double benefit in participating in the knowledge society: we who work in knowledge services are, of course, first of all simply citizens, people who live and work and interact within society just like everyone else. As knowledge workers, however, we also have the opportunity to participate in and to influence the management of knowledge and the development of the information management, knowledge management, strategic learning infrastructure (the knowledge services infrastructure) on which society depends. This is an awesome prospect and, at the same time, it is a truly thrilling prospect. Few workers in society, professional or otherwise, have such an opportunity, or such responsibility. Surely this fortuitous circumstance

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

is one of the great attractions of work in the professional knowledge services arena. On the other hand, unfortunately, one of our great weaknesses as a working group – and particularly for some individuals within the group – is a failure to take that responsibility as seriously as we could, or to respond to the opportunity as enthusiastically as we might. Because the products of information delivery range from the mundane to the sublime, and because the processes for information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning range from the most basic to the most complex, there is often a tendency (in ourselves as well as in those who observe us in our work) to oversimplify. Indeed, there are those who think that the work that is done in knowledge services is carried out as a petty, almost routine activity, and knowledge workers are often awkwardly (and inaccurately) described, simply because those who are good at providing the products of knowledge services are also good at – unwittingly – making it look easy. When this happens, our role in society is diminished from what it should be and the position of the knowledge worker in the societal structure is minimized and, alas, often taken for granted. This does not have to be the case, if we and our fellow knowledge workers are educated to our work. As professional learning informs our work, so does our work define our success, but to get to that delicious stage in our professional development requires that we recognize – along with those who are doing so in other fields of work – that it is to our and our profession’s advantage to establish and organize a structured and systematized professional learning process. What has happened so far is that while we have made noble and serious attempts at codifying the qualifications for initial success in the sub-fields that make up knowledge services, we have not succeeded in going beyond that. What we have is a hodgepodge of learning activities and situations that do not particularly lend themselves to a unified and structured framework. As knowledge professionals seek to move into positions of influence in the organizations for which they provide information and knowledge services delivery, they are required to move beyond these limitations. But how do we do this? How do we ‘move beyond’? We begin by asking what it is we want, what it is we are attempting to achieve with professional learning. But we do not ask ourselves. Instead, we turn to the two groups of people who have the most influence and the most authority in helping us determine the levels and kinds of knowledge services delivery we should be offering. Obviously, information and knowledge services customers are the first people we go to, and as required (often from the first stages of thinking about training and learning in the organization, and about the types and levels of information

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management, knowledge management, and strategic learning that will be required), we conduct needs assessments, information/knowledge audits, and we use any other methodologies that we can identify, in order to assure that the knowledge services delivery our units or departments are offering match the requirements of the people who use them.1 Equally essential, we turn to management, to those with responsibility for ensuring that all the services and products offered for the support of the organization are the highest quality services and products that can be obtained. It is the managers who support our information centres, specialized libraries, knowledge centres, and learning organizations, who have the authority to determine whether we are successful in providing knowledge services, who determine whether or not the work we do is mission specific. To make that determination, management seeks: ●

Efficiency in information delivery;

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Quality information management;

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The highest standards of client relationship management;

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Enterprise-wide participation;

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Contribution to/acceptance of common, mission-specific benefits.

Obviously, in order to achieve these goals knowledge workers and their managers must provide the highest levels of service delivery, and it is through professional learning that they are prepared to do so. But the current state of affairs in professional learning for knowledge services is a very confused one, and would appear to be characterized by: ●

A lack of standardization

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Fragmented subsets of information, knowledge, and strategic learning practitioners;

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Confusion about how to manage information, knowledge, and strategic (performance-centred) learning;

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Confusion about how to deliver knowledge services;

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Confusion about the value of information, knowledge, and learning.

1 In addition to a wide assortment of literature on these subjects (particularly the former, also referred to in the popular management and knowledge services literature as CRM, or client relationship management), two books in this series discuss them as well: Customer Service in the Information Services Environment, by this author, and The Information Audit: A Practical Guide by Sue Henczel.

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

There are far too many options – mostly unrelated to one another – for the ambitious knowledge professional to make intelligent choices at the present time. In attempting to advance one’s self, today’s knowledge worker is simply not able to organize a coordinated approach to professional learning unless he is willing to ‘cut through the layers’, as it were, and mix and match educational opportunities on his own. What is needed is a coordinated approach, to aid knowledge professionals when they reach this point in their careers. One of the problems, of course, has to do with the definition of knowledge services that we must work with in this new knowledge-centric environment. If, as described earlier, information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning combine to make up the accepted framework for our new profession (and they must, if we are to deliver services, products, and consultations that meet our knowledge customers’ needs, as they define those needs), then our new profession has moved into a much wider service sphere than any of us ever expected to inhabit. It must be so, though, for in this day and age, with the proliferation of information delivery methodologies and mechanisms that now exist (to say nothing of what is coming in the future), no knowledge worker can be exclusively one ‘type’ of information provider or knowledge worker. We are going to be required to use every methodology that we can, if we are going to deliver information and knowledge products and services, especially if those that we deliver are the products, services, and consultations alluded to in Orna’s classic definition. Therefore, we knowledge professionals are no longer going to be ‘just’ librarians, or ‘just’ records and information managers, or archivists, or electronic information specialists, or information brokers. We are going to be all of these, in combinations of greater or lesser concentration, and we are going to be required – in order to achieve an acceptable level of customer satisfaction with the clients who come to us for knowledge services delivery – to accept that what has traditionally been the purview of records management, say, might become a subspecialty of librarianship, or that what has traditionally been an attribute of specialist librarianship might be expected in the archives management arena. The boundaries of professionalism have long since blurred in the profession, disciplines, and types of work that make up what we now refer to as knowledge services. Consequently, we must re-think our professional learning so that knowledge workers can perform at their highest levels of performance within this newly structured profession. But those boundaries have not blurred so much that we stop ‘being’ what our knowledge has made us. Peter Drucker has pointed out that knowledge workers of all kinds tend to identify themselves with their knowledge. ‘They introduce themselves’, he notes, ‘by saying ‘I am an anthropologist’ or ‘I am a physiotherapist’. They may be proud of the organization they work for, be it a company, a university or a government

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agency, but they ‘work at the organization’; they do not ‘belong to it’. Most of them probably feel that they have more in common with someone who practises the same specialism in another institution than with their colleagues at their own institution who work in a different knowledge area’ (Drucker, 2001, p. 10). So the parameters have changed since Ferguson and Mobley wrote about the dual allegiances of specialist librarians in 1984, described earlier, but they haven’t changed that much. The knowledge manager who works within the knowledge services environment, working alongside a specialist librarian, archivist, or records manager, and planning training programs for customers who are employees of the same organization that employs all of them of course maintains that dual allegiance. But in the new knowledge services environment, it becomes almost a triple allegiance, first to the individual speciality (information management, knowledge management, or strategic learning, or one of the subsets of those specialities) in which he or she is employed, to the larger knowledge services environment, and, if the individual is employed in an organization in which loyalty to the corporation is rewarded, to the organization as well. As professional learning for knowledge services is approached, one of the first acknowledgements we must make is that of all the fields that connect in knowledge services, librarianship would appear to be the one that requires the highest level of study for its practitioners. Yet even this requirement is not universal, as a comparison of library education in several parts of the world indicates. In the United States and Canada, the graduate degree – that is, post-bachelor’s degree – accredited by the American Library Association is expected to be the essential qualification for practise as a librarian. In other parts of the world, librarians are not necessarily required to participate in graduate study in order to qualify to practice as librarians, although in some of these – like the United Kingdom – the graduate degree is an expected qualification. Even in the United States, though, there is confusion and not a little dissension, and the ALA accreditation process and ALA’s self-appointed status as the educational arbiter for an entire profession is being challenged. In fact, the graduate programs at American universities are seeking new ways to deliver information management education to would-be information workers, and Barbara Moran has made a prediction of what the future of academic education in this field will be like: ‘Most LIS [library and information services] education will be in larger units in which the library program will be one of several, and students preparing to work in libraries will share classes and facilities with students going into other information careers. If the individual programs within the larger unit are designed to provide the appropriate specialized preparation needed for each, information professionals of all kinds can benefit from sharing elements of their educational experience.’ (Moran, 1999, p. 409)

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Yet even with this happy prospect on the horizon, there continue to be serious variations within the entire range of so-called ‘librarianship’, variations that have serious implications for those thinking about professional learning for their employees (or for themselves). Still today, in some parts of the United States, some governing authorities hire ‘librarians’ to work in their communities’ public libraries or, as described below, in their organizations’ specialized libraries. They do not require an accredited graduate degree for employment, and until a serious level of consistency is somehow brought to bear on the education and training of librarians, such variations will continue. This variety is clearly established in specialist librarianship, for these librarians, too, are often moved into their positions from other fields of work, particularly if they have demonstrated skill as information specialists within their parent organizations. Certainly the vast majority of specialist librarians who belong to the Special Libraries Association – the professional organization for specialist librarians – are graduates of accredited graduate library and information science programs; some 88 per cent of SLA’s membership in 1996 have been so educated (Special Libraries Association, 1996). But it must be recognized that SLA’s membership does not begin to count all who practise as specialist librarians. There are many information practitioners working in companies, museums, research laboratories, government agencies, and similar organizations who do not belong to SLA, yet they do the same kind of work and provide the same kinds of information services as ‘qualified’ specialist librarians. The most common example, for many years, has been marketing research staff in the many different and various industries where they work. These are the people upon whom business depends, for identifying market trends and determining market needs, so that products can be developed and profitably manufactured and delivered. In almost every industry, there are companies with marketing ‘libraries’ and a marketing research staff, made up of people who are industry and market specialists, but who are not librarians, in the sense that they are not professional librarians with graduate degrees in information studies. Like those nonqualified (that is, not holding the post-graduate LIS degree) specialist librarians mentioned above, these people are not and probably never will be interested in obtaining a graduate degree in library and information studies. Yet management in their organizations often describes these employees as ‘librarians’ and expects them to provide information services and information delivery with the same proficiency and expertise as does management in organizations with degreed or qualified specialist librarians on staff. These differences with regard to qualifications and professionalism are just one of the variations that must be dealt with as the subject of professional learning is considered. Another set of variations, equally important, is related to the qualifications issue, but it is related to societal

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and political matters as well. This is the delicate subject of professionalism and levels of professionalism in different parts of the world. Not only are librarians educated and trained differently in different regions and countries, their cultures, their value systems, their workplace behaviour, the missions of their governing authorities (or parent organizations), and their career expectations are vastly divergent from those of librarians living and working in not-too-distant areas of the globe (to say nothing of the divergence between these information workers and those in places further away). And delicacy is required, for while it is not politically correct to refer to the fact that all practitioners in librarianship are not yet ready for the same levels of continuous education, training, and professional development, it is a fact. Many of those who practise as ‘librarians’ or ‘information specialists’ in one environment are not qualified to perform as knowledge services professionals. It is simply untenable – and would waste resources in incredible amounts – for those who are working to create professional learning programs for international audiences to offer the same programs to library and information workers from developed countries, underdeveloped countries, and emerging countries at the same levels. Different educational and professional learning structures must be organized and offered to each of these markets, or the effort fails. One reason why, in this regard, we fall into the trap of trying to be all things to all people is that, as we plan continuous education and professional learning programs for librarians living and working in different parts of the world, we tend to forget that there really isn’t any such thing – yet – as ‘international’ librarianship. The point has been made that, while we in knowledge services attempt to ‘globalize’ and ‘internationalize’ our professional activities, what we’re really doing is simply looking at how information management and the organization of information is practised in this or that particular country or region. While attempts (and some of these are quite serious attempts) are being made by several international publishers and vendors, there are still complaints that this book or that journal or this management product is ‘too American’ or ‘too European’ or otherwise local and not appropriate – from the complainer’s point of view (when that complainer is seeking a specific point of view). Some professional organizations are grappling with this issue as well, and among these, some such as the Special Libraries Association are beginning to make progress in carving out an international niche in the knowledge services community. By forming far-flung chapters and other organizational sub-units that share ideas and resources and meet together at an annual conference SLA is moving toward the establishment of an international librarianship in that particular branch of knowledge services, but this work is far from complete and it is, so far, not being replicated. In most cases, as noted above, the vast majority of work done in international knowledge services management

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is basically a presentation of how this or that practice or concept is implemented in one place as compared to another. Certainly this is not a bad thing (for such information is useful), but it is not, as such, a ‘movement’ toward a global or international profession. Librarianship, sadly, is one of the few disciplines in which the work that is done is identified by its place or region of activity, and signs seem to indicate that much of librarianship will continue in this direction. We don’t hear physicists speaking about ‘American physics’ or biochemists speaking about ‘Chinese biochemistry’ or pharmaceutical researchers speaking about ‘Australian pharmacology’. But we do hear librarianship so categorized, and this categorization is a consideration that must be taken into account as professional learning for knowledge workers – particularly from a global perspective – is planned. We must also recognize that the desire for globalization is real, and influences much of what we do, both in knowledge services and in the pursuit of excellence in professional learning. There are those who are willing to offer advice about delivering training and development programs in an international marketplace, as can be seen in some of the published materials emanating from the American Society for Training and Development, for example. That organization, wisely, has apparently decided that it is not simply an ‘American’ organization after all, and much of its advice and direction for ASTD members can be useful to an international learning community. In fact, as recently as August, 1999, ASTD offered its members a broadside sheet that included references to the association’s global training efforts, noting that ‘the physical and psychological separation caused by geographic distances provides unique challenges for global consultants and trainers [and] to be effective globally and across cultures requires a commitment to face these challenges, as well as a willingness to develop a variety of professional and cultural skills’. A related article in the same broadside offered 10 ‘key competencies’ for people who wish to be effective in international assignments. Obviously written for an American readership, these key concepts can also provide a useful point of departure for others seeking to bring an international ‘slant’ to professional learning: 1.

Cultural Self-Awareness – Know thyself is the most important intercultural competency of global professions . . . . Unless we become conscious of these values and carefully examine them, we will not be able to understand why we act the way we do and react toward other cultures the way we do.

2.

Knowledge and Appreciation of Other Cultures – Global HRD [Human Resource and Development] effectiveness requires that one understand key elements of the culture including the following information about the country and its people: religious beliefs and practices, family and social structure, educational system, politics and government,

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key historical and cultural achievements, economics and industry, geographic and demographic information, and sports, entertainment, and symbols. 3.

Global Perspective and Mindset – People with global mindsets have the ability to continually expand their knowledge, have a highly developed conceptual capacity to deal with the complexity of global organizations, are extremely flexible, strive to be sensitive to cultural diversity, are able to intuit decisions with inadequate information, and have a strong capacity for reflections.

4.

Respect for the Values and Practices of Other Cultures – Most Americans grow up learning what they believe are the best ways of thinking and behaving; to think or act otherwise would be foolish or ‘uncultured’ . . . . Americans, in particular, have been taught that their way is the best, that other ways are inferior and need to be changed.

5.

Cultural Flexibility, Adjustment, and Resiliency – Typically, Americans begin a global assignment with euphoria and excitement . . . followed by confusion, frustration, and psychological disorientation caused by the new culture and environment. Coping is difficult, yet patience and tolerance of the ambiguities of new cultural situations are critical.

6.

Acculturate Learning Programs and Events – Acculturation is the change necessary to convey the learning program (including content, methodology, objectives, and so forth) and events across cultural boundaries (to use a computer term, to ensure that the training is ‘user-friendly’). An acculturated training program will include as few roadblocks to the learner as possible.

7.

Communication Skills – Listening and speaking are much more complex in cross-cultural settings, yet much more important. Understanding nonverbal as well as verbal messages requires a high level of communication skills, including the ability to ask open-ended questions, to be silent, to paraphrase, and to reflect feelings.

8.

Culturally Empathetic – Global HRD consultants and trainers need to be culturally attuned to other cultures . . . to understand what is happening and what is expected through the context and the nonverbal behaviours rather than through questions that are too personal, embarrassing, or probing.

9.

Patience and Sense of Humour – That we can control time and the future are fundamental American beliefs, but they may be totally opposite to the beliefs of other cultures. Waiting for consensus is difficult, yet essential in working throughout the world.

10. Commitment to Continuous Learning – Globalization has made change ever faster and chaotic. Technology and the worldwide explosion of information and resources have increased the expectation of the global HRD professional to learn ever more quickly and with greater focus. (American Society for Training and Development, 1999, p. 2)

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Such understanding and empathy is necessary, but it must be combined with a clear and respectful understanding that for some cultures, things can’t move very fast, and the rush to globalization, whether in professional learning or in economic growth, must be tempered with a recognition that human beings look at things differently, based on what their own cultures and experiences have been. The point was effectively made by economist and internationalist Thomas L. Friedman, after a visit to Egypt in the early months of the new century: ‘Many Americans can easily identify with modernization, technology, and the Internet because one of the most important things these do is increase individual choices. At their best, they empower and emancipate the individual. But for traditional societies, such as Egypt’s, the collective, the group, is much more important than the individual, and empowering the individual is equated with dividing the society. So ‘globalizing’ for them not only means being forced to eat more Big Macs, it means changing the relationship of the individual to his state and community in a way that they feel is socially disintegrating . . . ‘After enough conversations, I realized that most Egyptians – understandably – were approaching globalization out of a combination of despair and necessity, not out of any sense of opportunity. Globalization meant adapting to a threat coming from the outside, not increasing their own freedoms. I also realized that their previous ideologies – Arab nationalism, Socialism, Fascism, or Communism – while they may have made no economic sense, had a certain inspirational power. But globalization totally lacks this. When you tell a traditional society it has to streamline, downsize, and get with the Internet, it is a challenge that is devoid of any redemptive or inspirational force. ‘And that is why, for all of globalization’s obvious power to elevate living standards, it is going to be a tough, tough sell to all those millions . . .’ (Friedman, 2000, p. A23).

We are speaking about vast and expansive subjects here, for the entire discipline – if it can be referred to as such – of information services management and the place of professional learning as that discipline evolves into a new knowledge services profession is a subject of universal and, yes, global, import. It is not at all unusual for those with planning responsibility for professional learning to look to other cultures and their professional colleagues in other places for learning models. Such activities can even take on the form of a sort of informal or friend-to-friend mentoring, as is evidenced by the many colleagues who share professional learning subjects, titles, and formats with one another (sometimes willingly, sometimes unwillingly, in a relaxed and free exchange in which the learning facilitator who created the product is not aware that it is being used in another venue). Certainly the many international attendees at the conferences of various trade and professional associations are there to share ideas and concepts, and when these take the form of professional learning opportunities that can be observed in one country and reshaped, re-organized, and re-acculturated for another country’s

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professional learners, the foundations of an international professional learning structure are being put in place. With respect to professional learning for knowledge workers, certainly, the opportunities and possibilities are amazingly open. And once the description of professional practices in that splendid information (now knowledge) services continuum moves beyond librarianship, there are even more opportunities, and they (and the need) for professional learning are there for the taking. As noted earlier, professional education in records and information management, archives management, and similar fields is available, often with a certification component, but for success in many jobs in these fields, such education and/or certification is not required. In other areas, such as publishing (whether in the traditional publishing community or in electronic publishing), information brokerage, consulting, and the like, not only is a terminal professional degree not required, the need has been – and continues to be – such that many practitioners successfully move into these fields from a wide variety of backgrounds, usually building their success as knowledge workers on previous experience in the very field in which their expertise qualifies them. For the fact is, professional learning for the component disciplines of the new knowledge services profession (information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning) is influenced by cultural, geographic, and what might be called ‘target market’ drivers. In many organizations, knowledge management, per se, has not been readily accepted into the management mainstream, so it can only be expected that professional learning particularly linked to knowledge management might also be received with some reticence. There are probably many reasons for this, and probably just as many ways to approach professional learning for knowledge management, but one seems fairly straightforward. For many business leaders, according to Daan Boom at KPMG, Amsterdam, the concept of knowledge management has been difficult to understand, mainly because knowledge management as a cultural philosophy has been around for as long as human beings have been communicating with one another. The only new ‘piece’ is technology. As a result knowledge services, as a concept, makes sense for managers like Boom. It is less ambitious and more focused, and it is more in line with the capabilities of librarians and other information professionals whose roles have expanded and now include the very attributes of information work that are required for success in knowledge services delivery (Boom, 2001). There are, of course, a variety of approaches to professional learning for knowledge services, and the responses of colleagues to a short series of questions about different approaches indicate that in most places, the understanding of and interest in what we’re referring to as knowledge services is very similar. In fact, three of these colleagues provided responses that were fairly typical, but unique enough in their particular

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environments to be worth repeating here. Stephen Abram, at Micromedia ProQuest in Toronto, ON, Canada, Ruth MacEachern, Ministry of Research, Science and Technology, in Wellington, New Zealand, and Beth Fitzsimmons at Information Strategists, LLC in Ann Arbor, MI, USA, all provided useful comments for managers in the knowledge services arena who are seeking to establish a structured learning program for knowledge professionals (Abram, 2002, MacEachern, 2002, and Fitzsimmons, 2002). In speaking about the kinds of formal education or degree required for working as a knowledge professional, Abram stated that, in his opinion, the degree must combine the application of ideas and theory, so ‘some sort of professional degree is needed (MBA, MLIS, MLS, etc.). The degrees should have some level of application to social and cultural environments, which is why IT, accounting and engineering degrees are weak in preparing for this role’. Abram also seeks a strong understanding of the business in which the knowledge services professional is employed. In fact, in Abram’s opinion, this is an essential element, simply because ‘a wide knowledge of the industry/sector environment, including competitors, is a must’. Of course a good understanding of technology and what it can do is required, but Abram makes clear that when he refers to this ‘understanding of technology’, he is not speaking of IT skills but of an understanding of applied technology solutions within the enterprise. Commenting about how knowledge services professionals might be educated, Ruth MacEachern noted that for librarians, the most common qualifications for moving into information management are the postgraduate Master of Library and Information Science, or an undergraduate Bachelor of Arts in Information and Library Studies. ‘Knowledge management professionals can have either the MLIS or an IT background’, MacEachern states, and recognizes that the different emphasis in professionals’ training is usually reflected in their work. ‘IT managers’, she says, ‘build repositories that are impressive but hard to use, while MLIS managers structure information resources to support the work of the organization’. Just as in many other places, there is no specific qualification to support strategic learning in New Zealand. ‘It appears that people gravitate towards this area because of personal interest’, MacEachem comments, noting that the closest qualification would be in human resources or in organizational development. Fitzsimmons provides commentary that would seem to be supportive of the ideas Abram and MacEachern put forward: ‘In an increasingly knowledge-intensive society’, Fitzsimmons says, ‘the knowledge content is exploding, especially in high-demand, technology-intensive fields such as science, engineering and medicine. The science knowledge services professional will be required to have a scientific or technical degree’. Fitzsimmons continues with this thought. ‘A great deal of scientific and technological innovation takes place at the boundaries between disciplines and by individuals who have crossed from one field to another. Under-

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standing these connections and examining how researchers in one field reach out for information in another field will be an expanding role for the information professional’. When discussing the average ‘shelf-life’ of this degree, and how long it might stand alone as the educational basis for success as a knowledge services professional, Abram returns to his theme of understanding the business. ‘It’s essential’, he says, ‘that the person have insight into an enterprise’s needs and issues, which comes from immersion in the sector, business and culture of the enterprise and then in applying, in teams, the knowledge the person has about process and behaviour’. From her perspective, MacEachern finds the MLIS to be relevant for only two to three years, with new MLIS graduates learning new concepts and skills on the job and obviously, if they want to stay up to date, ‘they also need to seek external training and stimulation’. Nevertheless, according to MacEachern, neither the MLIS nor an IT degree, by themselves, is sufficient qualification for knowledge management. MacEachern agrees with Abram that people desiring to have successful careers in knowledge services need ‘considerable professional experience, excellent communication skills, and a demonstrated understanding of how information and knowledge support business needs, understanding which expands continually and never goes out of date’. Fitzsimmons responds to the query about the continued relevance of academic education with insightful quotations from others, starting with Louis Ross: ‘In your career, knowledge is like milk’, says Ross, chief technology officer for Ford Motor Co. ‘It has a shelf life stamped right on the carton. The shelf life of a degree in engineering is about three years. If you’re not replacing everything you know by then, your career is going to turn sour fast’. Moving on to Jim Botkin and Stan Davis in their book The Monster Under the Bed, Fitzsimmons notes that in the knowledge economy you don’t earn a living, you ‘learn a living’. Providing examples, Fitzsimmons notes, ‘If indeed one provides knowledge management services to engineers at an engineering firm, then it is incumbent for the information professional to know how the knowledge and information in this field is changing. In this case, getting a subject and information update every three years would seem appropriate’. Finally, though, Fitzsimmons focuses in on one of the major drivers for excellence in knowledge services delivery, the expectations of the customers, and she provides specialist librarians with good, solid models as to why special libraries must move – philosophically – to a knowledge-centric perspective. ‘People’s experiences with technology in everyday life outside the library have changed their expectations for libraries’, Fitzsimmons says. ‘The modern user knows it is possible to change airline and hotel reservations from a car phone, to download and e-mail an article to a friend in Australia, and to get instant cash from an ATM. Is it any wonder why they get frustrated when they cannot get what they want when they want it?’

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When it comes to enhancing the terminal degree, to moving toward a more formalized professional learning framework for work in knowledge services, Abram advocates a certification program, within three to five years of completing the MLIS. Abram himself was involved in developing one such program, ‘Managing Information-Based Enterprises’ offered by the University of Toronto. The program, with typical learning activities with such titles as ‘Leading Strategically: Developing Strategic and Business Plans’, ‘Designing Products and Services’, ‘The Information Audit’, ‘Measuring Service Quality’, ‘Project Management for Information Managers’, and ‘Implementing Strategy – Leading the Information Enterprise’, enables practitioners to augment their earlier formal education with learning that neatly, it is hoped, dovetails with the work they are doing in knowledge services (University of Toronto, 2001). Looking at the three component elements of knowledge services individually, Ruth MacEachern places the emphasis on the individual’s personal motivation: ‘For strategic learning and knowledge management, managers need to read about and discuss how people use information for business purposes; how people assimilate information; how information and knowledge can be shared; the difference between explicit and tacit information, the need to adapt information resources for different user styles; how information is a critical resource in dealing with changes in the work environment. The best source of this kind of stimulation is through networking and professional conferences. For information management, study in IT areas such as database management and Web technology is always useful’, MacEachern says, and recognizes that this can be formal or informal learning. Fitzsimmons takes her cue from the backgrounds and lifestyles of the learners themselves, noting that ‘Today the printed text represents only a small fraction of all stored data and information. Information is coming in many ways and the information provider must understand and be able to use and manipulate these emerging technologies. Information specialists should be devising and applying descriptive standards and indexing languages, for example, for still images, film, audio, multimedia, the Internet, and digital libraries’. Having recognized that the variety of the information medium can affect how knowledge is developed and shared in the enterprise, Fitzsimmons encourages those with responsibility for establishing professional learning for knowledge services to seek an understanding of how their present (and future) customers learn: ‘Today’s students (and tomorrow’s researchers) learn in a highly nonlinear fashion, by skipping from beginning to end and then back again, and by building peer groups of learners, and by developing sophisticated learning networks. Students build their own learning environments that enable interactive and collaborative learning.’ It is not inconceivable that individual learning environments will have a major influence in how professional learning is designed for knowledge

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workers, according to Fitzsimmons. ‘New economic models may be emerging’, she says, ‘in which the audience is selected first and the educational offerings are designed to meet that audience need. Partnerships in which two or more organizations join together in a supplier/consumer relationship may emerge and they may have a training component built into that collaboration. For example, several individuals from a corporation, (researchers, marketing specialists, information specialists) may attend a joint meeting with their suppliers to have an annual update on ‘The State of the Technology’. Having meetings/seminars with other members of the corporation, rather than other information professionals, would be valuable. ‘Just for you’ educational programs, highly customized for each student, should be designed for continuing education. This might be accomplished through the Internet with collaboration occurring between information professionals located in different geographic areas.’ As for motivating knowledge services professionals, Abram isn’t very interested in ‘personal fulfilment’ and similar rewards (although he doesn’t discount them, of course). Speaking of professional learning for knowledge workers, Abram says simply, ‘It’s required to do the job. Knowledge services is a complex discipline and learning on the job is too high risk, since mistakes can be enterprise-wide and there’s not enough time in a career to get it right before you retire. The benefit really accrues to the employer and smart employers will create the rewards rather than expecting intrinsic rewards at the individual level.’ Fitzsimmons, too, declines to place too much value on motivating the knowledge services professional. ‘It is not necessary’, she says, ‘to have some tangible reward. In learning a new skill or technology, the reward will be a better prepared professional. If management cannot recognize or appreciate this, then the new skills may be appreciated elsewhere.’ MacEachern, on the other hand, does note that personal/professional recognition for one’s success as a learner has advantages. ‘In New Zealand’, MacEachern notes, referring to the Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa, ‘the LIANZA Associateship offers professional recognition for people who combined a library qualification with continuing education and can demonstrate a level of skill and accomplishment. However, for some the main incentive for continuing education is to obtain higher pay or advancement opportunities.’ The obvious conclusion here is that with or without a terminal professional degree (such as a graduate degree in library/information studies), the learning cannot stop, for today’s workplace demands that continuous professional learning take place. What leaders in the new knowledge services profession must now do is decide what that learning should be, and how it should be accomplished. To this end, the following declaration is proposed: Knowledge services, as a professional discipline, is comprised of organizational entities in which information management, knowledge management,

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and strategic (performance-centred) learning are practised, with the success of that effort established by the identified customer or user group for whom knowledge services is provided. In knowledge services, continuous education, professional and strategic learning, staff development, and professional growth combine into a single management concept, defined broadly as the successful achievement of skills, competencies, knowledge, behaviours, and/or other learning required for organizational success, personal performance, and career development.

This is the learning goal which all knowledge workers – professional, non-professional, or those of whatever other employment classification is used in the employing organization – must achieve if they are to provide the highest levels of information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning for their established customer/user base. It is best characterized as a success in the minds of the knowledge workers themselves, when they answer the question, ‘Why do I like working here?’ If the knowledge services effort is successful, the knowledge workers respond with a variation on one of two (or perhaps both) comments: ●

‘It’s a place where people share what they know’;

●

‘I’m always learning things here’.

References Abram, Stephen (2002) Communication with the author, 16 January 2002. American Society for Training and Development (1999) ‘The successful global trainer’, [ASTD] Member Mailbag, August 1999. Boom, Dann (2001) Communication with the author, 26 August 2001. Drucker, Peter F (2001) ‘The next society: a survey of the near future’, The Economist, 3 November 2001. Fitzsimmons, Beth (2002) Communication with the author, 10 January 2002. Friedman, Thomas L (2000) ‘One country, two worlds’, The New York Times, 28 January 2000. MacEachern, Ruth (2002) Communication with the author, 9 January 2002. Moran, Barbara B (1999) ‘Changing education for a changing profession’, College and Research Libraries. September 1999. Special Libraries Association (1996) 1996 Membership Needs Assessment Survey (‘The Super Survey’), Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association. University of Toronto (2002) 1 February 20 ce.fis.utoronto.ca/mie/courses. asp.

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Chapter Four

Professionalism, Accreditation, and Certification

For several years, there has been discussion about certification or some other form of qualification management for librarians, knowledge managers, and other information workers. The discussion will no doubt continue. Much of this conversation has to do with professionalism and the generally accepted qualifications for practising in the employing organization as a ‘professional’, as a qualified professional in information management, knowledge management, or strategic learning/training (or indeed, in some combination of the three, which is fast becoming the industry standard in the knowledge services field). Because so many different kinds of practices are at play in knowledge services, it is hard to predict what the outcome of the controversy will be, or which of the several branches of knowledge services will be drawn into a qualification management process for the new knowledge services profession. As the new profession evolves, much attention will be given to these matters. Despite our inability to predict an outcome, we can with some certainty describe the threat that the new knowledge services profession faces. Simply stated, the threat is a two-fold one: ●

All knowledge workers are not equally qualified to perform as professionals;

●

All knowledge services professionals are not qualified to perform as professionals.

Today’s knowledge workers find themselves more and more frequently asked to commit to very high levels of professionalism, and even workers who would at one time have been considered support staff or technical staff are now required to possess verifiable qualifications. Varying levels and types of credentialing and certification, for which we can use the more generic term ‘qualification management’, are applied (with employers often requiring certification prior to employment or before

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promotions are made), and many of today’s employees have come to expect some sort of qualification requirement and enhancement as they pursue their careers. Indeed, many industries and disciplines require some form of qualification management to ensure that practitioners perform as professionals. When the subject turns back to the traditional so-called ‘professions’ (traditionally law, medicine, and the church), the definition of the professional is obvious. In those fields of work, professionalism usually means that the discipline is made up of individuals who have a discipline-wide commitment to excellence in the services that they provide to those who avail themselves of their services, the people who in the new knowledge services professions would be the customers for whom knowledge services delivery is provided. The commitment generally includes adherence to a code of ethics and to a mutually agreed-upon set of service standards, participation in a certification process that validates the individual for serving as a practitioner and establishes for those who receive his or her services an expectation of professionalism and excellence, and the acceptance of an enforcement mechanism for ensuring that standards are met and that the code of ethics is observed. Professionalism also requires, usually, that there be an established body of literature and scholarly research in the field, and – for practitioners – that there is an ongoing commitment to study and improvement in order to continue the provision of excellence in the delivery of services. As we move toward the new profession, it is appropriate to think about what professionalism is, and how professionalism is thought about in society. Over the years, as the concept of professionalism has evolved, distinct characteristics of professionalism have been established, and many of these have changed during the last three centuries. To begin with, for many scholars in the field, just how to define ‘professionalism’ is a challenge, as was noted in an essay describing how the concept had changed in one profession, the law. In an essay published in 1999 in Law and Society Review, Herbert M Kritzer commented that one problem with thinking about professions is that the term ‘profession’ can be defined and conceptualized in many different ways. Kritzer chooses three, which he describes as the common parlance definition, the ‘historical’ definition, and the sociological definition. Kritzer’s categories give much attention to the idea that professions, as such, are closely linked to how practitioners can be part of any particular profession, and in his arrangement, the three categories are developed as rankings, with the first as the most inclusive and the last as the least. ‘Profession, according to the ‘lay definition’, is almost synonymous with ‘occupation’ and is distinguished primarily by means of its antonym, ‘amateur’. As commonly used in lay parlance, a ‘professional’ can refer to a firefighter, a plumber, an auto mechanic, a secretary, a teacher, a salesperson, a social worker, a lawyer, a doctor, or a member of the military as well as many other occupations. Members of all these occupations often choose to

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pride themselves on their ‘professionalism’, and by referring to themselves as a ‘professional’ (e.g., a ‘professional secretary’ or a ‘professional firefighter’), they mean that they perform a particular line of work as a means of livelihood and are committed to what they view as a set of standards of performance. As this discussion makes clear, there is an important distinction to be made between the occupational category of ‘professional’ and what might be described as an ideological commitment to ‘professionalism’, referring to expectations of work performance. The term professionalism can also be used to refer to possessing the occupational status of a ‘profession’ (in any of the senses of profession discussed here) without regard to what might be labelled as the ideology of professionalism . . .’ (Kritzer, 1999)

In stating what he calls the ‘historical’ definition of professionalism, Kritzer includes a broad class of occupations, and he uses Harold Perkin’s descriptions. These occupations are characterized by ‘trained expertise and selection by merit, a selection made not by the open market but by the judgement of similarly educated experts’, they are built on human capital, and they typically involve some recognition of qualifications and some sort of career hierarchy (Perkins, quoted in Kritzer, 1999). Kritzer himself then points out that some occupations are able to restrict entry by ‘enforceable licensing rules based on recognized expertise’, citing restrictions that extend from physicians and lawyers to insurance agents and stockbrokers. Others, according to Kritzer and in a reference that has relevance as we seek to establish knowledge services as a profession, ‘achieve a recognition of a strong credentialing process outside a state-based enforcement structure (e.g., librarians, engineers, college professors). Still other occupations have no licensing process and at best a weak credentialing process, but nonetheless are associated with an expertise that has led to the appellation ‘professional’ (e.g., managers, computer programmers)’ (Kritzer, op.cit.). In Kritzer’s ‘historical’ definition of professionalism, the key elements to professionalism in this broad sense are ‘the creation of and recognition of trained expertise and the structuring of occupations around this expertise’, leading to what Kritzer calls ‘general professions’ (Ibid.). In Kritzer’s rankings, the sociological definition uses ‘professional’ in a still more restrictive sense. ‘As with the historical definition, professional occupations are a feature of a particular stage of economic development’, Kritzer continues, citing a definition from Andrew Abbott, ‘professions are specific occupational groups that are at a minimum defined as “exclusive occupational groups applying somewhat abstract knowledge to particular cases”’ (Abbott, quoted in Kritzer, op.cit.). Kritzer continues: ‘Two key elements to this definition go beyond the historical definition: exclusive occupational groups and the application of abstract knowledge. As

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noted above, many occupational groups enjoy exclusivity (through licensing or union structures), and abstract knowledge is today applied by many technical occupations (e.g., computer programmers, electronic repair technicians). It is the combination of recognized exclusivity with the application of abstract knowledge that defines what sociologists label as professions. ‘Professions in the sociological sense have further distinguished themselves by adding notions of altruism, regulatory autonomy through peer review processes, and autonomy vis-a-vis the service recipient (i.e., the professional tends to control the relationship with and the service provided to the client/ patient/customer). By combining these characteristics with their abstract knowledge-based expertise, these professions have regularly asserted claims of independence that other occupational groups have never successfully advanced [as noted by Larson in 1977]. . . . For purposes of clarity, I . . . refer to these as ‘formal professions’. As should be obvious, formal professions are a subset of general professions. Also, formal professions tend to conflate the two different meanings of ‘professionalism’; that is, achieving the status of profession is equated with maintaining the ideology of professionalism as reflected in the definitional elements of formal professions.’ (Kritzer, op.cit.)

Having established his criteria and ranks for the three types of professions, Kritzer goes on to describe the ‘post-professional’ state, qualifying his arguments by noting that while he is seeking to find some broad generalizations, he fully recognizes ‘the limitations of context, both geographical and chronological’. Kritzer also points out that ‘the argument I advance must be considered within the reality of these limitations’ (Ibid.). For our purposes here, as we consider the development and presumed evolution of a new knowledge services profession, the characteristics Kritzer describes in his discussions of post-professionalism are to be found in almost all of the disciplines, professions, and types of work that contribute to knowledge services. He particularly identifies the combination of three elements, the formal professions’ loss of exclusivity, the increased segmentation in the application of abstract knowledge through increased specialization, and the growth of technology to access information resources. All of these can be seen as especially prevalent in the recent histories of information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning, the three disciplines that make up knowledge services. In fact, could it not be asserted that it is specifically because of the combination of these three elements in those these disciplines that knowledge services is evolving as a new profession? Certainly Kritzer’s conclusions, when applied to knowledge services, make a great deal of sense: ‘Part of what is happening is that the formal professions are losing their uniqueness and are being eclipsed by professions in the much more general sense (hence, ‘the professions are dead, long live the professions’ [Kritzer’s title for his article])’ (Ibid.). Isn’t this what is bothering practitioners in the many disciplines, professions, and types of work that make up information management, knowledge

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management, and strategic learning? Isn’t what they are experiencing a loss of uniqueness and a natural evolution into a larger, broader whole? These same issues are being thought about in other professions as well, of course, and Richard Cruess, Sylvia R Cruess, and Sharon E Johnston, in a provocative essay entitled ‘Professionalism: An ideal to be sustained’ took up the challenge for the health sciences profession. ‘Society has used the concept of the profession to organize and deliver many of the complex services it requires, with the rationale that the expertise necessary to the practise of certain vocations is not easily comprehensible to the average citizen. . . . Traditional professionalism came to apply to knowledgebased activities requiring long periods of education and training and entailing service for the common good.’ (Cruess, Cruess, and Johnston, 2000)

Declaring that the ‘core elements of a profession’ are ‘possession of a specialized body of knowledge and commitment to service’, these authors quote The Oxford English Dictionary definition of a ‘profession’: ‘The occupation which one professes to be skilled in and to follow. a) a vocation in which professed knowledge of some department of learning or science is used in its application to the affairs of others or in the practice of an art founded upon it, b) in a wider sense any calling or occupation by which a person habitually earns his living’ (Oxford English Dictionary, quoted in Cruess, Cruess, and Johnston). Cruess, Cruess, and Johnston continue their analysis: ‘The word ‘professes’ represents a public commitment to a set of values – i.e., the Hippocratic Oath or its modern equivalent. The importance of the acquisition of knowledge and skills that are used to serve others is emphasized, and tacit knowledge is recognized as science and art are included. Because knowledge is used in serving others, professions are identified as being altruistic and value laden.’ (Cruess, Cruess, and Johnston, op.cit.)

Using this background, Cruess, Cruess, and Johnson report that the characteristics of a modern profession have been established: 1.

‘As professions hold specialized knowledge not easily understood by the average citizen, they are given a monopoly over its use and are responsible for its teaching;

2.

‘This knowledge is used in the service of individual patients and society in an altruistic fashion;

3.

‘The inaccessible nature of the knowledge and the commitment to altruism are the justification for the profession’s autonomy to establish and maintain standards of practice and self-regulation to assure quality;

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4.

‘Professionals are responsible for the integrity of their knowledge base, its expansion through research, and for ensuring the highest standards for its use.’ (Ibid.)

In the modern profession, according to these authors, ‘Licensing bodies and professional associations have responsibility for many professional activities, and use collegiality to establish common goals and encourage commitment to them. They have the obligation to discipline unprofessional and incompetent behaviour. These institutions serve an essential function, and professionalism can only survive if they function properly, which requires the support and participation of individual physicians.’ (Ibid.)

As the new knowledge services profession develops, these ‘modern’ characteristics to the historical role of professionalism in society must, of course, be considered. In his famous ‘survey’ of knowledge work in the new century, cited earlier, Peter Drucker had this to say about professionalism today: ‘Knowledge workers are professionals, applying the same knowledge, doing the same work, governed by the same standards and judged by the same results. . . . The most important thing about these knowledge workers is that they do not identify themselves as ‘workers’ but as ‘professionals’. . . . what identifies them in their own and in the public’s minds is that part of their job involves putting their formal knowledge to work. That makes them fullfledged knowledge workers . . . ‘Such workers have two main needs: formal education that enables them to enter knowledge work in the first place, and continuing education throughout their working lives to keep their knowledge up to date . . . What is different this time is the need for the continuing education of already welltrained and highly knowledgeable adults. Schooling traditionally stopped when work began. In the knowledge society it never stops . . . ‘Continuing education of already highly educated adults will therefore become a big growth area in the next society. But most of it will be delivered in non-traditional ways . . . ‘Knowledge is non-hierarchical. Either it is relevant in a given situation, or it is not. . . . knowledge workers of all kinds see themselves not as subordinates but as professionals, and expect to be treated as such.’ (Drucker, 2001, pp. 9–10)

The evolution of this particular ‘brand’ of professionalism seems to have followed a natural course from the mid-nineteenth century, according to several of the people who have studied professionalism in its various manifestations in North America (and by extension, of course, to the other countries of Western civilization which connect with North America and with one another in such areas as career development, professional

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learning, and the like). In his important book on the culture of professionalism, Burton Bledstein in 1978 raised a number of important issues that impact the development of any new profession, but particularly the development of knowledge services as a new and separate profession of its own, as information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning converge. For one thing, attempts were made, some successful, at broadening the entire realm of professionalism since, as Bledstein noted, ‘Educational standards for proficiency and certification rose throughout the later nineteenth century; and such fields of female employment as librarianship and nursing attempted to acquire the schooling, the status, and the independence (without the income) of a profession’ (Bledstein, 1978, p. 35). These attempts were certainly connected with aspirations toward the ‘higher moral ground’ that has been noted, since, as Bledstein describes this movement, ‘. . . the professions as we know them today were the original achievement of mid-Victorians who sought the highest form in which the middle class could pursue its primary goals of earning a good living, elevating both the moral and intellectual tone of society, and emulating the status of those above one on the social ladder’ (Ibid., p. 80). Bledstein’s analysis continues: ‘What was the meaning of this professional interest? As commonly understood, a profession was a full-time occupation in which a person earned the principal source of an income. During a fairly difficult and time-consuming process, a person mastered an esoteric but useful body of systematic knowledge, completed theoretical training before entering a practice or apprenticeship, and received a degree or license from a recognized institution. A professional person in the role of a practitioner insisted upon technical competence, superior skill, and a high quality of performance. Moreover, a professional embraced an ethic of service which taught that dedication to a client’s interest took precedence over personal profit, when the two happened to come into conflict . . . ‘As professionals, they attempted to define a total coherent system of necessary knowledge within a precise territory, to control the intrinsic relationships of their subject by making it a scholarly as well as an applied science, to root social existence in the inner needs and possibilities of documentable worldly processes. ‘But most importantly, the professional person absolutely protected his precious autonomy against all assailants, not in the name of an irrational egotism but in the name of a special grasp of the universe and a special place in it. In the service of mankind – the highest ideal – the professional resisted all corporate encroachments and regulations upon his independence, whether from government bureaucrats, university trustees, business administrators, public laymen, or even his own professional associations.’ (Ibid., pp. 86–92)

What we’re seeing here, of course, are the influences that drove earlier forms of librarianship and information services delivery, as practised

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(primarily in America, but in other countries as well) from the last quarter of the nineteenth century on. With changes in society, though, and with the incredible (and certainly unpredictable) changes in librarianship and information delivery, and with the eventual convergence of information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning, the role of the professional was obviously going to change as well. Pulling these several threads together led Lauren Albert to devise, for this book, the following description of professionalism as it looked in the past, and as it seems to be developing as we move into a more knowledge-centric society: Up to late Nineteenth Century

Nineteenth to Twentieth Century

Twentieth to Twenty-first Century

Job ‘Free Agent’ i.e. ‘on your own’ ‘Worker’ ‘Job’

Career Mutual loyalty

‘Me Inc.’ ‘Free Agent’

‘Professional’ ‘Professional Career’

‘New Professional’ ‘Individual Career – i.e. My project history Certification Experience Life-long learning Only as good as your last project Networking Loyalty to ‘profession’ and ‘speciality’ and profession

Experience Apprenticeship On-the-job training Trade School Loyalty to community & family

Degree License College Graduate School Professional Association Loyalty to company

Albert asserts that as a society, we have gone full circle in the professional realm, from an emphasis on ‘the job’ to an emphasis on the ‘project’. The main difference is in the level of required education and in the speed of change. An eighteenth-century lawyer would learn through self-study and an apprenticeship with a practising lawyer. In the nineteenth century law became more ‘professionalized’, with degree programs. Throughout the twentieth century (and on into the twenty-first), law became more and more fragmented. This is true of most other professions as well. A person practising law was no longer a lawyer but instead specialized as, for example, a tax-lawyer or an entertainment industry lawyer. Or perhaps as a copyright lawyer or an M&A lawyer. This specialization, of course, is one of the reasons for the current dilemma in professional associations and organizations, as they try to be everything to everybody. A physicist, for example,

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is probably less likely to attend a ‘physics’ conference than a ‘particle physics’ conference, if that is his area of speciality. The speed of change in the many disciplines, professions, and types of work means that a degree is no longer sufficient to maintain quality standards in a profession. As the knowledge services industry explores the possibilities – and the increased need for – professional learning, concerns about qualification management become even more relevant. As noted earlier, among information and knowledge workers only librarians usually have a formal, ‘degreed’ credential, in the form of an American Library Association or otherwise (in countries outside North America) accredited degree in library and information studies. As this degree is a terminal degree, there is no ongoing and continuing qualification management program in place, only the ad hoc, catch-as-catch-can professional learning that takes place as required, or when available or convenient. Credentialing has been defined. In a description that pertains specifically to professional learning, training, and staff development, it becomes clear that, while educated professional workers can be expected to judge for themselves where they stand in their professional growth and development, some external influence or motivation is practical as well. In this definition, credentialing is recognized as: ‘A process that includes (1) definition of attitudes, competencies, knowledge, or skills to be certified; (2) assessment of each individual to determine whether he or she meets the requisites; (3) issuance of a document to attest the individual’s possession of the requisites, . . . [and] (4) periodic re-certification that the holder continues to possess the requisites for the credential or meets new ones made necessary by advances in the field.’ (Miller and Mills, 1978, p.9)

A slightly different but equally useful definition of credentialing is offered in a study conducted by the American Society of Association Executives. In this context the definition is especially relevant, as much of the effort for credentialing in the knowledge services environment is likely to be initiated within the professional associations that support the work of the various practitioners who are employed in information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning. According to ASAE, credentialing is: ‘The generic term used to refer to the accreditation, licensure, or standardization programs offered by associations. . . . The most cited reason for establishing a credentialing program is to ‘assure professional competence and to establish standards’, followed by a desire to ‘enhance the prestige of the profession or industry’. For associations with standardization programs, the second most-cited reason for developing a program was to ‘protect members from external regulations.’ (American Society of Association Executives, 1996, p. 6)

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It is useful to note that the ASAE study documents the practices of nearly 1600 associations, ‘in virtually every major area of association management’(ibid., p. xiv). Some 90 per cent of the participating organizations offer credentialing and education programs ‘independently’, and 57 per cent ‘routinely have their credentialing programs reviewed by legal counsel’. The ASAE report continues: ‘Of the associations planning to offer a credentialing program in the next three to five years, a certification program is the most likely type of credentialing that they will pursue. Slightly more than one-fifth of the associations outsource this function, devoting an average equivalent of four full-time staff to these activities.’ (Ibid.)

Within the library profession, there continues to be much controversy about certification and other forms of qualification management, possibly because of concern that such certification or credentialing might weaken the terminal degree requirement already in place (and which degree, intentionally, serves as the qualifying statement for the practitioner). As it turns out, however, the idea of a credentialing or certification program only serves to strengthen the terminal degree, since the certification will, in most cases, require specific and measurable success in continuous education and professional learning. This has been the case with the Academy of Health Information Professionals, the professional development and career recognition program of the Medical Library Association (MLA), through which, as stated in MLA’s material about the academy: ‘Members of the Academy are credentialed as health information professionals by demonstrating their academic preparation, professional experience and professional accomplishments . . . . Academy membership is a designation recognizing the time and effort a health information professional commits to professional development activities.’ (MLANET, 2000)

Also of interest, in this context, it is the Medical Library Association’s Academy of Health Information Professionals that offers, for those in knowledge services, the most useful distinctions between the terms (which are often used interchangeably, with the subtle differences between them ignored), and also among credentialing and certification and the more specific licensure. According to the Academy: ‘Credentialing differs from certification in that certification focuses on the attainment of minimum standards and measurable competencies whereas credentialing recognizes the time and effort that is required for professional development. It also differs from licensure because licensure is a legal requirement for professionals in certain professions, such as medicine.’ (Ibid.)

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In this connection, it is appropriate to note that a variation of the certification/credentialing process might provide a ‘middle way’ for the resolution of the controversy, and at the same time offer employers the qualification management resource that they are seeking. This could be in the form of a ‘certificate program’, and a model framework might be the Human Performance Improvement Certification Program offered by the American Society of Training and Development (there are many others, of course, including those offered by private commercial learning firms). In ASTD’s promotional material for the program, it is obvious that the appeal is to those individuals who wish to attain some form of tangible recognition for, as the MLA AHIP program puts it, ‘the time and effort that is required for professional development’. ‘As we enter the new millennium, we can no longer assume that training is the magic cure-all for performance ills. Nor can we define training as only classroom experiences offered at work. As today’s workplace environment becomes more highly focused on employee performance, the opportunities in this field are tremendous. Making a career transition requires a thorough understanding of the various performance improvement strategies and how practitioners perform their jobs and interact with human resource professionals, customers, line managers, and senior managers . . . .The HPI Certificate Program is recognized throughout the industry as a comprehensive study of performance theory and practice. Those who complete the program are prepared to set and achieve their goals in the performance improvement field.’ (American Society for Training and Development, 1999, p.2)

What is not offered, or even implicit in the offering, is any sort of licensing or enforceable certification focus, and that is this activity’s weak point, if it is to be considered as a possible methodology for improving qualification management as currently implemented within the knowledge services field. Yet if we read that quotation again, substituting appropriate references to knowledge services management for the phraseology that refers specifically to the ASTD interests, it becomes clear that such a program – even without an enforceable legal framework such as that provided through a certification or licensure process – has possibilities for practitioners in the new knowledge services profession. Indeed, if we look beyond the larger framework to one of the knowledge services subsets (such as information management, knowledge management, or strategic learning, or even within those, selecting among additional subsets such as specialized library management, archives management, or specific organizational learning efforts), we can see that the MLS HIP model has wider applicability. Notably, as will be described later, such a program can provide a very workable framework for continuous education and learning for those who do not seek to establish themselves as professionals but who enter the knowledge services field as a vocation.

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Clearly such programs as these offered by organizations like ASTD are serious efforts, providing the organization’s members who complete such programs with a professional learning reference that can be used, when appropriate, for demonstrating that they take seriously their professional learning participation. Such a program is not – and should not be construed as – continuous education ‘lite’, and such efforts should be taken seriously by the professional associations, commercial learning firms, and/or academic institutions which might offer them to adult learners. An additional and very important consideration is that such programs, similar in concept to many such programs in the learning community, can offer registration for participation through the continuing education unit registration program of the International Association for Continuing Education and Training. Thus an attendee’s participation in the program is captured and available for verification, and for those sponsoring organizations, associations, firms, or institutions which wish to do so, the framework exists for even further recognition. If the sponsoring organization applies for and is given status as an IACET Authorized Provider Certificate Program sponsor, there is the added benefit that an independent qualifying agency has recognized the professional learning offerings of the sponsoring organization as viable and valuable for its participants. Here again, the role of the external agency simply serves to validate the professional learning experience for those who participate. As described in the guidelines for the IACET Authorized Provider Certificate Program, its purposes clearly benefit the learner: ●

Promote quality and consistency in continuing education and training;

●

Review educational processes used by organizations, not the content of activities, courses, or programs;

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Monitor providers against established criteria;

●

Recognize providers that adhere to the effective practices found in the criteria. (IACET, 1998, p. Ch. 3 p. 2)

Certainly that is the case when we examine some of the statistics on certification and education as collected by the American Society of Association Executives. The ‘profile’ of association activity in this regard has been described in the study referred to earlier, and much of this information is relevant as qualification management efforts for the new knowledge services profession (or any of its subsets) go forward. With regard to accreditation, for example, that ASAE study notes that accreditation programs have been available in the ‘profiled’ association for 19 years, with an average of 31 per cent of the membership so designated. Fortyfive per cent of these programs have international recognition, and the

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chief requirement for granting (48 per cent) or maintaining (42 per cent) the designation is education. Requalification is required most frequently every three years (by 32 per cent of the associations). With respect to certification, the program has been available in the profiled associations for 15 years, and a quarter of the membership holds the designation. The chief criteria for the designation is education (57 per cent) or written examination (57 per cent) and, for maintaining the designation, continuous education (63 per cent). As with accreditation, requalification is required most often every three years, by 37 per cent, and the proportion of associations offering a certification program has increased from 17 per cent in 1991 to 22 per cent in 1995. On the other hand, licensing appears to be of limited concern among associations, with only 4 per cent of the associations offering a licensure program, and only 7 per cent of the associations offer a standardization program (ibid., p. 6). This limited interest can be expected to be the case in the information industry as well. Much attention has been given, and continues to be given, to the issue of qualification management in connection with the earned graduate degree in library and information studies, and with certification in particular. Perhaps the most reasonable approach was that begun in 1991, when – as noted in a previous chapter – a group of concerned librarians set out to develop a set of principles and goals that could be used ‘to better define the needs of the library profession in the future, and to identify values that will emphasize the characteristics required by future information professionals’ (Martin, 1993, pp. 210–11). The certification of librarians was one of several ‘building blocks’ for a newly structured library and information services profession, and in her article describing the group’s recommendations, Susan K Martin addressed the subject succinctly and well, and her description is worth quoting in full: ‘Consistent with other true professions, librarians must adopt a certification process that validates each individual to serve as an information professional, and that conveys to the recipient of the information service the professionalism and excellence that is to be expected. ‘Many models exist for certification. Certification, as opposed to licensing, is administered by a professional organization that has sufficient respect and clout to be able to enforce standards (licensing is typically administered by state governments to achieve desired levels of competence and quality in those being licensed). In Great Britain, librarians may be ‘chartered’ in a non-mandatory program. Despite the voluntary nature of the chartering, increasing numbers of libraries seek chartered librarians when they are filling positions. ‘Medical librarians have experimented with certification, and currently are supporting an academy of health science information professionals. School librarians . . . must conform to the licensing processes in place in each state, in order to be employed in a school library.

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‘Law, medicine, education, and nursing are just a few of the professions that required certification for practitioners. Of five professions compared in an earlier article [Martin, 1986, pp. 115–17], only business and librarianship had no certification process. For the other three, degrees supplemented by exams and continuing education requirements are typical. ‘The accounting profession provides an interesting model. It is possible to be an accountant without being certified. It is obviously better (read: more prestigious, more professional, more lucrative) to be a certified accountant. Ethical responsibilities, education reform, lifelong learning, and excellence of performance are all part of the discussion being carried on in order to resolve the questions associated with certification and credentialing [Previts, 1991]. CPAs, who are already accredited, feel that there may be merit in obtaining additional certification to become a personal financial planner, and discuss the costs and benefits thereof. While there is a cost in reduced earnings if the basic educational program removes one from the job market for a time, and in direct outlays to pay for the privilege of being certified, the benefits are reaped within a society that has come to recognize that the credentialing process communicates quality. ‘Within the information professions, there could be librarians and certified librarians, just as there are in the United Kingdom. With the certification must come a level of knowledge and excellence that is overseen and warranted by an appropriate organization. Administrations could then decide whether to hire a certified librarian (presumably at a higher salary) or not . . . . ‘For individuals, the model might suggest an exam upon completing the MLS, and then continued learning throughout one’s career. The latter could be replaced by other achievements such as publishing or teaching, although with rapidly changing technologies and social environments, even the best of us could use a workshop to be brought up to date in networking, international information exchange, or diversity training, to name just a few.’ (Martin, 1993, pp. 218–19)

By 1998, a particular segment of librarianship, the information professionals who work as public library administrators, had begun to explore the possibilities of qualification management for their particular branch of the information industry. At the 1998 American Library Association meeting in Washington, DC, certification for continuing education was explored at an open hearing sponsored by the association’s Committee on Education. Entitled ‘Certification for Continuing Education at the PostMaster’s Level’, the program attempted to summarize and provide an opportunity for discussion of the different viewpoints that relate to certification. In the meeting announcement, organizers noted that discussion on the issues of continuing education and certification have been revived at ALA by a joint proposal from the Public Library Association, the Library Administration and Management Association, and the Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies, all affiliates of ALA. If successful within the administrative ALA structure and approved by the appropriate ALA units, the proposal would establish a certification

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program for public library administrators, leading to a designation of Certified Public Library Administrator. Related to this proposal, incidentally, several individuals also proposed the creation of a Library and Information Science Professional Certification Board, as a centralized body to coordinate all certification activities for continuing education at postmaster’s level among library and information science groups. As noted above, it is very natural, of course, for librarians and those involved in education for librarianship at the graduate level (members of ALISE, the Association for Library and Information Science Education, an affiliate organization of ALA) to be interested in the subject. And certainly those involved in continuous education and professional learning – whether professional development volunteers within professional associations or the many vendors who provide training and staff development for these workers – see the development of some sort of formalized structure as critical for their planning and service needs. For almost as long as anyone can remember, employers of librarians and other information services staff (particularly those employing special librarians to provide information delivery in their specialized libraries and information centres, as described earlier) have expressed their concern that professional development and continuous education opportunities for staff are too loose, and not coordinated in any meaningful way. As a result, most knowledge services workers attend whatever training and continuing education programs that might come their way at a convenient time, but there is no coordination or general motivation for participation. Certification, as proposed by ALA’s Committee on Education in this particular proposal, would alleviate that problem for this particular group of professional librarians (that is, public library administrators).

American Library Association Certification At the 1998 ALA meeting, Committee on Education Chair Carolyn Anthony, of the Skokie Public Library, presided at the open forum, and Elizabeth Dreazen, of the Library Administration and Management Association, described how a certification program might be organized for maximum benefit for ALA members. Making her point with a comment that raised the issue of certification from the specifics of library and information management to a broader perspective, Dreazen referred to the value of a ‘well-developed certification program’ as described by the American Society of Association Executives. That organization considers certification as one of the most important services that an association can provide because it establishes the organization as an important standardsetting body that has defined competence in its particular discipline and because, at the same time, certification provides members with an opportunity for recognition and professional development.

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Dreazen, in her remarks, noted that ALA could not offer certification in its present status under the United States tax code, because it is registered as an education association and not as a certifying board. However, the establishment of a Library and Information Science Certification Board, organized specifically to work with ALA as a certification entity, under a different registration within the United States Tax Code, could be achieved, if all parties agreed to the effort. In the discussion which followed, Chair Anthony and Committee member Darlene Weingand described the proposed certification program, noting – in order to calm the fears of some in attendance – that ‘certification’ as relating to public library administration did not necessarily equate with ‘licensing’. Indeed, in this case working librarians would not need to fear the development of any licensing arrangement for qualifying librarians for their fitness to work, for that was not the intention of this proposal. Its purpose, clearly stated by several participants at the hearing, is simply to bring a ‘structure’ and a centralized framework to the currently unfocused continuing education environment with respect to public library administrative positions. To this end, other characteristics of the certification proposal were described. The effort being put forward at the ALA meeting, it was noted, was voluntary, and related exclusively to post-MLS participation. It is not intended to replace or ‘weaken’ in any way the work that students achieve as they carry out their graduate studies in information science. Furthermore, the certification proposal discussed at this forum was highly focused and specific, limited – in this case – to the certification of public library administrators. Following the meetings, the plan was discussed by the leadership at the American Library Association, and despite serious objection from some members of the association, the proposal was ultimately sent to ALA management and leadership, with the following information on the status of the certification proposal posted on the ALA Website: ‘ALA Management is completing work on a technical/business plan for a possible Section 501(c)(6) organization, allied to ALA. Without such an ‘enabling’ mechanism, ALA cannot be involved in certification and cannot, therefore, support the program being requested by PLA, LAMA and ASCLA. The business plan will be presented through the normal (FY2002) budget process. ‘The Committee on Education is continuing its consideration of the ‘policy framework’ for such a possible entity. [January, 2001: COE gave a preliminary report to Council in 2000 and will move for Council approval at the 2001 Midwinter Meeting.] ‘PLA, LAMA and ASCLA are responding to issues raised by ALA Management during the course of this continuing development and to questions raised by the Committee on Education in recent weeks. [January, 2001: Responses from PLA, LAMA and ASCLA are incorporated in the recommendations being moved forward by COE.] (American Library Association, 2001)

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The various modules or ‘core’ subjects chosen for this certification for public library administrators demonstrate that much thought and effort have gone into preparing this program. Certainly any employer seeking to hire a public library administrator certified under this program can be assured that the qualifications of that administrator meet identified and codified performance standards. The same cannot always be said about librarians and other information workers hired under the current, non-certified arrangement in the other branches of the information industry. The beauty of the proposal described above is that it can be used as a model for other branches of the information industry, particularly as plans for the development of qualification management standards for the new knowledge services profession move forward. Obviously, all elements of any one proposal will not work for all industry groups within the several disciplines, professions, and types of work that contribute to knowledge services. In any case, efforts would be required to adapt the ALA proposal to other groups, both those having to do with libraries and those having to do with other branches of information work. Nevertheless, this proposal for certifying public library administrators has much to recommend it as a model for other professional knowledge workers. When combined with work that has already been done in this area, in the several knowledge services fields, it becomes clear that there is definitely a movement toward certification. As noted, health science librarians are now required to update their skills and to demonstrate that they have done so through qualification provided through AHIP. Archivists and record management staff, too, are offered certification programs through their professional associations and organizations, and other information and informationrelated organizations offering some form of certification programs could be identified.

The Congress on Professional Education As consideration is given to the development of the new knowledge services profession, accreditation for educational and professional learning programs (as opposed to certification, per se) – at the other end of the qualifications management spectrum – must also be given some thought. For several years, representatives of various library organizations have pondered the issue of accreditation, and in 1999 and again in 2000, a Congress on Professional Education was convened under the auspices of a large number of professional associations affiliated with library and information services. Participating organizations included the American Library Association, the American Society for Information Science and Technology, the Association for Library and Information Science Education, the Association of Research Libraries, the Canadian Library

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Association, the Medical Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association. Delegates came together to address the educational concerns of all librarians, and, by extension, all who are employed in any kind of information management and delivery organization that requires or prefers the completion of an ALA-accredited graduate degree in library and information studies (American Library Association Congress . . . , 1999). The Congress arose from changes in name of some programs of graduate education (many graduate schools of library and information studies had been – over the past few years – dropping the word ‘library’ from their titles), from a seeming lack of attention to core competencies, and from a perceived national shortage of professionals to work with young people and diverse and underserved populations. The basic plan of the Congress’s organizers did not include attention to the many branches of information and knowledge services work that do not require an ALA-accredited graduate degree. The first Congress, and the second one convened a year later, were limited specifically and intentionally to professional education, that is academic education, and it was not the purpose of these Congresses to address issues relating to professional learning and continuous education, despite the fact that many people work in libraries and other information-delivery operations in a ‘professional’ capacity and are not required by their managements to have earned the ALA-accredited graduate degree. Even within librarianship, as noted earlier, there are serious questions being raised about the necessity of an accredited program of study in which, as one library manager has observed, the programs of study are accredited according to standards generated by one committee of the association and applied by another committee in the assessment process (Martin, 1993, p.211). In fact, at the first Congress, Martin was able to attempt to update her concern, for she was reported in the professional press as having ‘come out with the clearest and strongest criticism of ALA accreditation, saying she was ‘uncomfortable’ with a personal-membership organization’s committee ‘like any other committee’ handling the accreditation process. She decries the lack of any attempt to produce ‘outcomes’ that measure the quality of graduates’ (Keifer, 1999, p. 15). Despite the exclusion of other professional learning activities from the emphasis of these Congresses, they brought together many people who have influence in the library profession and gave them the opportunity to attempt to discern trends and issues that require attention. The meetings generated a considerable amount of attention in the library field, and an ad hoc task force gave these subjects further study. The charge to the task force was stated to be to: ‘Look at the desirability and feasibility of creating an entity external to ALA which would be responsible for the policy and structure of accreditation of programs of professional education in library and information studies. The

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task force has also been asked to provide recommendations regarding the current and eventual scope of the accreditation structure and process . . . ’ (American Library Association Ad Hoc Task Force . . . , 2001, p. 2)

The result of this charge was a proposal for ‘federating accreditation’, as it was described in an editorial in one professional journal (Berry, May 1, 2001, p. 6). Accreditation would be taken from the American Library Association (which has historically had the exclusive right to decide accreditation standards for librarianship in North America) and transferred to a group of organizations. According to the description by Berry in the Library Journal: ‘A separate 501 (c) 3 organization, a federation of organizations, would share in governance and funding [for the proposed accreditation body], proportionate to their size. The federation would include, but not be limited to, ALA, the Special Libraries Association, Medical Library Association, American Association of Law Libraries, Association of Research Libraries, Canadian Library Association, Association of Library and Information Science Education, American Records Management Association (sic., [e.g., ARMA International]), Society of American Archivists, and American Society for Information Science and Technology.’ (Ibid.)

The task force was chaired by the same Susan K Martin who worked on the effort in the early 1990s began its work, and discussion at the annual meetings of the American Library Association continues, seeking to provide guidance toward whatever changes will be made in the academic education for librarians in those countries for which ALA has in the past provided accreditation. It is interesting to note, as did Peggy Sullivan in her very positive wrapup article about the first Congress, that much of this interest had, in fact, been demonstrated before. Sullivan reported that in 1948, a ‘Conference on Library Education’ had been conducted in Princeton, New Jersey, and prior to the conference, Joseph L Wheeler had prepared an important report, under the sponsorship of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. In the report, Sullivan noted, Wheeler commented that: ‘The [library] profession itself needs a complete review of services, lacks, and dangers. . . . It needs a much clearer concept than it now has as to what librarianship is. . . . Librarianship . . . lacks any certainty as to its scope and purpose.’ (Wheeler, 1946)

Sullivan also documents that Wheeler was concerned that there: ●

Was too much detail and method in the curriculum;

●

Was a delay in incorporating new developments in services into library education;

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Was a lack of a philosophy of librarianship;

●

Needed to be a curriculum to prepare people for special librarianship. (Ibid.)

That these same issues are being discussed 53 and 54 years later probably says more about librarianship than most practitioners wish to be said, but the value of the Congress was in the fact that it was called, and that people took time from their very busy, nearly twenty-first-century professional lives to read the documentation, to travel, and to commit themselves to discussing these critical issues. Sullivan summed up the success of the Congress when she concluded her report: ‘The shadows of the 15 library education programs that were closed in the 15 years between 1978 and 1993 still hang over us. And one can wonder why some that seemed strong did not survive, while others wavered and steadied and hung on. The future for most of them today seems bright. And whatever brightness there is in LIS education is enhanced when attention is paid to it. For that, thank the Congress, its participants, and planners.’ (Sullivan, 1999, p. 15)

Perhaps. This author is not so sure, and in fact the very purpose of this book is to suggest that knowledge services management, including librarianship and the many branches of information management that relate to librarianship, can best be achieved by creating a totally new profession, by totally rethinking how professional learning is structured, and by identifying what learning will best meet the needs of customers for whom knowledge professionals provide services, products, and consultations. In my opinion, that will be accomplished (and the emphasis here is on excellence, the ‘best’ of that previous sentence) by a recognized and carefully planned, structured, and implemented professional learning program that reflects the highest standards of knowledge services delivery. It may or may not include academic education in library and information studies, and it most probably will require a structure for career-long measurement and evaluation that is not currently incorporated into those programs. So while the Congress was an important convocation of leaders in librarianship, it must be recognized that it was called to address a strictly defined segment of the information industry. The question of the Congress’s relevance to the other branches of information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning – the component elements of knowledge services – can properly be raised. That certification and accreditation issues continue to be of interest to librarianship, and that the two Congresses on professional education for librarianship were called, is not surprising, particularly when we remember that the same issues being grappled with in 1946 were still concerns in the profession in 1998. Such activities as these Congresses

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are not an uncommon occurrence, for the various branches of knowledge services are disparate enough that each sees itself as having specific needs and, certainly, requiring specific educational and continuous learning and, not surprisingly, specially applied qualification management efforts. In the specialized library community, for example, the Special Libraries Association gave attention to certification as a methodology for qualification management with efforts of SLA’s ‘PREPS’ Commission 1991–1993, as noted previously. While that commission’s recommendation that SLA assume responsibility for certifying special librarians did not go forward, with SLA’s publication in 1996 of the critically important and internationally recognized Competencies for Special Librarians of the 21st Century, a direct link to this work has been made. As noted in the discussion of the work in the medical libraries community, efforts have also been made in that field, and other work is being done as well. Indeed, within the larger information industry community, efforts are being made, even by some of the graduate library programs themselves, to provide professional learning that is not necessarily connected to a graduate degree in library and information studies. Such institutes and seminars, usually held for a period of time ranging from five days in a single-week’s program to two, three, or even four weeks in length, provide programs for mid-career managers who seek additional professional learning. Within the library profession, the numbers of institutes and seminars are too many to list, but in the past few years, much attention has been given to those programs put together by such institutions as Long Island University C W Post Graduate Program in Library and Information Science, the University of California at Berkeley School of Information Management Science, Simmons College, and many others. Of course professional associations provide similar institutions and programs, often in cooperation with academic institutions, such as the Special Libraries Association/Simmons College MLS Renewal Program. And glancing through the continuing education offerings for conferences and trade shows, such as those of the Special Libraries Association, the Medical Library Association, the American Society for Training and Development, ARMA International, and similar organizations, the wealth of learning opportunities is almost overwhelming. Surely those seeking further qualification in the constituent fields that contribute to knowledge services will find more than enough professional learning activities to meet their requirements. In both these situations, some ‘certification’ is made (that is, attendees receive a document certifying that they have attended the learning activity), but any actual certification – in terms of qualification management – is not generally associated with these programs. If we look beyond librarianship, however (excepting the Medical Library Association’s Academy), there are situations where certification, in the sense of certification for qualification management, can be pursued. ARMA International, for example, offers a Certified Records Management

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program for people who work in records and information management, and the Society of American Archivists offers certification programs as well. In professional learning, particularly in terms of strategic (performancecentred) learning, there are of course programs emanating from professional associations (such as ASTD’s various train-the-trainer programs and, if appropriate, its more-inclusive Human Performance Improvement Certificate Program, for those sections of the program that relate to knowledge services). Many private commercial organizations also offer certification for having achieved certain levels of training and strategic learning qualifications, and many of these programs have been bought into by large corporations, the Federal government, and similar organizations and are offered routinely to their employees. For those pursuing certification in knowledge management, there is a wide variety of organizations, primarily universities and commercial firms, offering programs that lead to certification in knowledge management. Such programs as George Washington University’s Graduate Certification in Knowledge Management are typical of academic programs in this area. From commercial organizations, the Association of Knowledgework’s Knowledge Recognition Program, while not typical (since each program has its own unique features), is an example of the kinds of certification that can be obtained for professional knowledge workers. But whether having to do with specialist librarians through their affiliation with SLA, records managers through their relationship with ARMA International, or other practitioners with their respective professional association or academy-sponsored certification programs, these issues connected with ‘professionalism’, accreditation, and qualification management will continue to resonate. Indeed, as the knowledge services profession evolves, these issues can be expected to influence strongly the professional learning activities of knowledge workers, regardless of the discipline within knowledge services in which they practice. Whether thought of as ‘certification’ issues or simply as seeking ‘best qualification’, these are important issues, and those with responsibility for planning for professional learning must lead the way in discussing these subjects. Employers want assurance that identified competencies are being achieved (or maintained, if they are already in place). Because the employers themselves – in many cases – are not adequately equipped for passing judgement on the abilities, skills, and professionalism of the people who must provide knowledge services delivery for them, they seek some level of qualification management that they can trust. At the same time, though, the employers know well enough what their organization’s knowledge services requirements are, so they cannot be ignored and left out of the qualifications management process (as is, of course, the current situation in most of the professions, disciplines, and types of work that contribute to knowledge services).

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In fact, it is not too far-fetched to suggest that in the near future, the education and training of knowledge services professionals might well be undertaken through the establishment of relationships that seek out management in the organizations where knowledge professionals work and invite their participation in the qualifications management process. Similarly, there could also be the establishment of partnerships or alliance relationships between professional organizations and/or commercial or academic education providers. Although this is not the path that is being recommended in this book, certainly a consideration of how such relationships could contribute to the development of an over-arching qualifications management authority will be useful. In her studies of corporate universities, Jeanne Meister has discovered that many companies in many different industries realize that they need to take ‘radical steps’ in preparing their workforce, and sometimes the radical step can be the creation of a new degree program: ‘Customized degree programs are growing in interest as organizations reach a startling conclusion: many universities are not preparing employees with the skills, competencies, and knowledge to work successfully in a growing number of career paths. Companies have found that the ability to offer training that is eligible for college credits offers benefits for both the employee and the company. For many employees, such training is often their first encounter with college-level work. Furthermore, the companies which offer training eligible for college credit are often viewed by prospective employees as more desirable places to work, and hence these companies become premier employers within an industry. The real motivation . . . is to produce the best employees possible.’ (Meister, 1998, p. 191)

Certainly in the organization development field the move toward partnered relationships has been a successful one, as exemplified by the alliance between The NTL Institute, a division of a commercial professional learning company (National Training Laboratory), and American University. In this formal, degree-granting professional learning activity, students complete a two-year course of study which combines conventional class work with an extensive experiential learning process, at the end of which graduates are awarded a Master of Science degree in Organization Development. In the library and information services field, the master’s degree is, of course, already offered for those who wish to have a graduate degree in the general area of librarianship and information studies, but other information workers (that is, archivists, records managers, and those working in similar non-library related careers) do not study at the graduate level. A program of specialized study, similar to the NTL/American University MSOD program, could be offered as a joint effort between, say, a professional association and a university (and not necessarily a university offering a graduate program

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in library and information studies), leading to a recognized and certifiable specialization. Finally, though, there are those who would suggest that a form of credentialing might be undertaken by employers, or at least that the interests and experience of the employers be incorporated into the learning programs. Susan K Martin, in her early report on how librarianship might be restructured, made this point. ‘The quality of library and information science education has for years been a topic of disagreement. Practitioners believe that educators do not understand what characteristics and knowledge are needed by entry-level librarians; they also believe that educators are too far removed from the library to be able to convey relevant information to future librarians. Librarians complain constantly about the accreditation standards written by the [ALA] Committee on Accreditation, but very few participate in the open hearings designed by that committee to gather input for revising the standards.1 ‘Some of this conflict arises from trying to have a one-year program educate those who will be full-scale professionals, and those who will be vocational librarians (the two-track system). Another reason for the dissatisfaction with the education process comes from the fact that we have not yet decided whether library school is supposed to train people so that when they reach a library, they can immediately begin to work without further training, or whether it should provide an intellectually content-rich curriculum, assuming that on-the-job training will be required when a graduate begins employment. ‘I suggest that graduates from library schools will need to be trained by their employers, no matter how much a master’s program tries to prepare them for the vocation of librarianship. That being the case, it seems appropriate to suggest that the curriculum for the library and information science professional should contain as much intellectually challenging and substantive material as possible. Instead of courses, for example, on adult literature or computer programming, students should learn about information in the global economy, about intellectual property rights, or about information seeking behaviours. They need to learn research methods – a course that is shamefully absent from many library school programs. Intellectual rigor should be supported by extending the partnerships called for in the Strategic Visions statement [see Chapter Two] to partnerships that allow experts from appropriate fields such as law or business to strengthen the library school curriculum. Only when a curriculum of intellectual substance is in place in most of our library schools will those schools be regarded as institutions that can contribute in significant ways to the universities of which they are a part. Simultaneously, the academic program will appeal 1 These standards were revised in 1992, but even so, the new standards continue to be a source of controversy in librarianship as practised in North America, with one commentator referring these accrediting standards as ‘nonproscriptive and somewhat vague’.

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more readily to the brightest among college students, attracting energy and creativity to the redefined profession.’ (Martin, 1993, p. 217)

If the employers and the executives of the employing organizations take on this role, or are invited to play a leading role in the qualifications management process (as will be suggested in a later chapter), the results will be far-reaching, and they will be positive. The results of such an endeavour can be seen as benefiting not only the organization that puts itself in the position of offering a structured professional learning program, but benefiting the employee as well, so that career-long professional learning becomes strategic learning, giving the employee the educational background he needs to produce his best work, regardless of where he is employed. The question then becomes, are the organizations that employ knowledge workers willing – and able – to tolerate the organizational restructuring and the commitment of resources that are required for success? If the benefits are made clear at the outset, they will. If the waters are muddy, and management sees a move toward a role as a provider of professional learning, organizational managers will balk. It is up to those who are interested in making the change – the knowledge managers, the strategic learning providers, the specialist librarians, the records and information managers, the archivists, the editors, the ‘Help-Desk’ staff, and all the others who stand to benefit – to provide the incentive. That incentive, it seems clear, is better work, better performance, and (as must be explicitly stated) better profits, however those profits are made. In other words, the change must be strategic, and the learning that is offered will be strategic as well.

References American Library Association (2002) ‘Certification’, 10 January 2002 www.ala.org/hrdr/certif_alaqa.html. American Library Association, Ad Hoc Task Force on External Accreditation, Susan K. Martin, Chair (2001) A Proposal for External Accreditation of Programs in Library and Information Studies, April 21, 2001, 15 March 2002, www.ala.org/Congress/accredtf/proposal.html. American Library Association, Congress on Professional Education Steering Committee (1999) Report of the Steering Committee on the Congress for Professional Education, Chicago: American Library Association, 25 March 2002, www.ala.org/Congress/cope_report.html. American Society for Training and Development (1999) ‘ASTD Human Performance Improvement Certificate Program Courses’, Alexandria, VA: American Society for Training and Development.

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American Society of Association Executives (1996) Policies and Procedures in Association Management, Washington, DC: American Society of Association Executives. Berry, John N III (2001) ‘Federating Accreditation’, Library Journal, 1 May 2001. Bledstein, Burton (1978) The Culture of Professionalism: The middle class and the development of higher education in America, New York and London: Norton. Cruess, Richard L; Cruess, Sylvia R; Johnston, Sharon E (2000) ‘Professionalism: An ideal to be sustained’, The Lancet 356 (9224). Drucker, Peter F (2001) ‘The next society: a survey of the near future’, The Economist, 3 November 2001. International Association for Continuing Education and Training (1998) Criteria and Guidelines for Quality Continuing Education and Training Programs: The CEU and other measurement units, Dubuque, IO: Kendall/Hunt. Keifer, Leonard (1999) ‘Practitioners, educators seek library’s place in professional education’, American Libraries, June/July 1999. Kritzer, Herbert M (1999) ‘The professions are dead, long live the profession: legal practice in a post-professional world’, Law and Society Review 33(3). Martin, Susan K (1993) ‘Achieving the vision: rethinking librarianship’ Journal of Library Administration 19(3/4). Meister, Jeanne C (1998) Corporate Universities: Lessons in building a world-class work force, New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Miller, J W and Mills, O (eds) (1978) Credentialing Educational Accomplishments, Washington DC: American Council on Education. MLANET: The Medical Library Association’s Network of Health Information Professionals (2000) www.mlahq.org/academy/acadfaz. html#1. Visited 8 January 2000. Sullivan, Peggy (1999) ‘The Congress on professional education: lessons learned from library school, past and future’, American Libraries, August 1999.

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Chapter Five

Information, Knowledge Services, and the Organization

In our discourse about organizational development, we do not generally include attention to the knowledge services function as a subject for study in and of itself. The reason is fairly obvious: most of us, unless we are somehow involved in the information and knowledge services industry, take information and knowledge management for granted. We don’t give much time and/or consideration to how we acquire the information we need, and we seldom pay much attention to the process through which information is transformed into knowledge. Equally unsettling, we generally do not reflect on the role of strategic learning in the knowledge-development/knowledge-sharing scenario. In fact, for most people, acquiring the information they need, developing information into knowledge, and establishing how that knowledge will be used (that is, making it ‘performance-centred’) is just something they ‘do’. They don’t think about it (unless it is very specific information they require, or something they have no experience in locating for themselves). Generally speaking, they know where the information is (or, more likely, who has it) and they go there and get it. Getting the information they need does not seem to be, to those who need it, a complex operation. In fact, these same people are frequently quite amused when those of us who earn our livings in information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning put so much emphasis on how information is organized and how it is made available to those who require it. They don’t understand why we take it so seriously. Information, qua information, has been part of human experience since the earliest manifestations of human interaction. As something to use, however, as a commodity or as a product that can have purpose and a value of its own, information (and the management of information) is a relatively recent phenomenon. And recognizing information as the ‘raw material’ for the development and sharing of knowledge probably did not come into the general consciousness until fairly recently in civilized history.

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It is in this context that we must give attention to the role of the organization, as we attempt to structure professional learning for knowledge services. Information and knowledge professionals – as good as they are – can only excel in providing knowledge services and the products and consultations associated with knowledge services when the work they do is examined in terms of the organization or the environment in which their efforts take place. For knowledge professionals who desire to excel, an understanding of how the information they provide will be used and its effect on the organizational environment in which they operate is fundamental. Thus any knowledge worker seeking to embark on a professional learning activity in order to improve his or her skills, competencies, or expertise is required to look at the organization of which he or she is a part. How the organization is structured, how decisions about information and knowledge and learning are made within the organization, what information customers expect from knowledge professionals for their expert services, and indeed the many and varied expectations of all information stakeholders in the organization (and even those of people who do not have any overt relationship with the knowledge or information function) all influence the success or lack of success of the knowledge services effort.

Information Management The significance of that organizational context can best be illustrated when we think about the relationship between information management and knowledge services. Being one of the constituent elements of knowledge services, information management necessarily determines whether or not the organizational knowledge services function is successful. We all know what information management is, of course, because we’ve all participated in it and watched it evolve over the decades. Especially for those of us who began our careers in library work, the concepts associated with information management are not hard to describe: when a person needs information about some subject, he or she usually requires some sort of guidance or direction in order to find that information. Since the Middle Ages, but of course in a formally structured way only since the later nineteenth century, the profession of librarianship has provided that guidance and direction (it was only in 1876 that the first training facility in ‘library economy’ was established, at Columbia University in New York, NY). And those whose information needs were serious enough to impel them to seek guidance and direction soon learned that librarians were the people to go to. Obviously, as the profession of librarianship advanced, so did other processes and methodologies for acquiring, organizing, storing, and disseminating information although, to

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be fair, most of this activity had to do with the organization, storage, and dissemination of the artefacts that contained the information, rather than the information itself. It wasn’t long before other disciplines (or lines of work or operational functions) that also have to do with the management of information, such as record-keeping, accounting, and the like, began to be looked upon as valuable to the organizations or communities that provided them as services. By the mid- to late-twentieth century, the information itself, as contained in those artefacts, began to recognized as the essential ‘piece’ of the process, and it wasn’t long before many of these functions began to overlap in the overall and more general category of ‘information management’. But the information itself wasn’t enough for many of those who sought it, as had been established early on in librarianship when the practice of librarianship became almost inextricably linked with education and the education function. Many ‘users’ (as they came to be called, as ‘information management’ became more popular as a descriptor and began to replace ‘librarianship’ and its ‘readers’ in the general perception) not only wanted to find information, they wanted to know how to find it for themselves. They wanted to participate in the earliest manifestations of ‘strategic learning’, to be trained so that the process they used to find a particular kind of information could be used to find other information when required. So librarians and other information providers became educators as well, which was natural, since so much of the training and education for librarianship grew out of the very methodologies that were used for the training and education of teachers. And in some cases, for many librarians the educational role became more important than the provision of information. But that wasn’t enough, and as librarianship evolved, other less-educationally directed influences came into play. For one thing, the seeking of information for other than educational or recreational purposes became recognized as an important and indeed viable framework for providing information ‘services’. With the growth of medical, law, and, later, the more inclusive ‘specialized’ librarianship of the early twentieth century, the educational role took a back seat to the provision of information. As business people, scientists, and others with an information purpose began to learn that information could be (and often was) organized for their specific needs, so a parallel version of librarianship evolved, and librarianship as an educational or social good for the community began to be understood as only one form or type of information delivery. This other, more ‘purposeful’, type of librarianship (and the other related forms of information delivery, such as records management, archives management, and the like) was distinctly

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different, as has been noted. For these information seekers, often motivated (especially in the business community) by ‘real-world’ needs, the educational version of librarianship was irrelevant. If directed to an artefact or medium that might contain the information and encouraged to find the information for himself or herself, this user would walk away. This person did not want to be told how to find the information; this person wanted the information. Obviously, as the decades passed and specialist librarianship, records management, archives management, and the many other (and varied) forms for information delivery advanced and new methodologies and technologies were developed, information management, as a broader and more-inclusive management process, grew as well. Information management did not necessarily grow ‘out’ of librarianship, but as a parallel discipline, one which included (and, in many respects, still includes) the basic tenets and purposes of librarianship as new and sometimes not-sorelated concepts were developed and included as well. Still, the ‘educational’ need was there, for while many – perhaps most – users seeking information knew what they wanted, and knew exactly what they would do with it and how they would apply it once they had obtained it, others were not so comfortable. For these people, not only was the information-seeking activity a potential barrier (or, at the very least, a slightly off-putting one, as they embarked on a new activity in an unfamiliar environment), once they had the information, they needed guidance in how that information could be organized to relate to the purpose they were seeking it for, and they needed help in determining how the information could contribute to the specific knowledge they were seeking to gain after they had the information. And although they probably didn’t know it at the time (for this is where late twentieth century management theory contributed to the overall information management picture), their development of the knowledge – in a well-run, customerfocused and mission-focused organization – was soon to be tied to how well that knowledge would be shared with others in the organization, for the benefit of all stakeholders. So information management itself wasn’t enough. As other industries and disciplines began to understand and appreciate not only the value of modern, mission-focused organizational management (and particularly in a cultural and historical context that included the development of continually more sophisticated information management technology), information management evolved into what we’re now recognizing as one of the three constituent elements of knowledge services. It became important – at first only marginally important, but not for long – for information management to be linked to other, more specific disciplines. Soon the connection between information management and management science (and the information management technology that contributes to management science) came into play, enabling a more inclusive, more

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holistic role for information managers. They recognized that information management, when combined with the basic concepts of knowledge management and strategic learning, could contribute at a much higher – and much more sophisticated – level than information management alone. Society, and, in particular, information-seeking members of society, was ready for knowledge services.

Knowledge Services Examples abound. In this instance, three can be useful to us. They all conveniently fall under the general designation of ‘library’ and provide us with the opportunity to look at different types of information organizations. As information is managed and delivered, that management and delivery is enhanced through the application of the broader and more holistic knowledge services construct. An Academic Library We look first at a large academic institution, in which there is a classic, long-standing relationship between the faculty which provides formal education and conducts research for the institution, and its students and its external markets. The organizational structure in most such organizations is fairly rigid, having been developed through the years as academic administrators wrestled with balancing the openness and creativity required for successful academic achievement with the traditional managerial hierarchy. In such an environment, senior management personnel (the executive governing board, the chancellors, the administrative officers, and the upper echelons of the faculty) compete with the activist, ostensibly innovative, and free-thinking teaching and research staff. Those who decide how much support is to be designated for each of several information-related activities – from the institution’s traditional library to its information technology staff – have many different agendas to deal with. As a result, the overarching ‘big-picture’ resource allocation process is often fraught with discomfort and no small amount of anxiety about whether favoured and ‘essential’ programs will continue to be funded. In such an institution, the customer base, if it can be referred to as such, is so varied as to be almost impossible to define: if you’re attempting to provide the information resources that the product-development team at the agricultural research institute requires, do you slight the teaching assistants who need extra copies of John Donne’s poems for the library’s reserve shelves? With such ‘political’ decision-making about the support of information management going on, it is no small wonder that the expectations of the information stakeholders become confused, and in the mix-up, confusion reigns. And make no mistake

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about it: in the midst of the confusion, the most outspoken, the most robust of champions will be heard and will have an impact (listen to those teaching assistants when they describe what their first-year English students’ lives will be like if they are not exposed to John Donne). A Public Library Now think about a publicly funded public library in a mid-size American community. For better or for worse, that organizational structure is anything but clear: is the organization the community for which the entity at hand provides library and information services, or is the organization the library itself? Are the employees who work in this public library expected to work as civil servants, identifying the general public as their primary customer base, or are they to work as librarians for the city or other public administration unit? Is the organizational structure – however it has been established – clear to the people who provide its support? Is it clear to the people who work there? Is it clear to the people who use the library, its information customers, as it were – despite the fact that, as demonstrated in Bernard Vavrek’s study, the primary reason the public uses the public library is to borrow books? (Vavrek, 2000, p. 62). Do these customers even care about the library’s organizational structure or the management of information, as long as they can find the books they need to borrow? The people involved in making decisions about how the organization acquires and uses information all come from different perspectives and, not to put too fine a point on it, have different agendas, some fine, and some not so fine, but all, because it is a publicly supported institution, with a right to voice an opinion about how this particular information organization and its particular structure succeeds or fails. Likewise, the information customers (whether they are called ‘patrons’ or ‘readers’ is irrelevant – they are the library’s customers) who come to the information professionals for their expert services have very definite ideas about what they expect from these people, and these customers are not shy about stating that their expectations have not been met, whether those expectations are part of the library’s organizational mission or not. Such agonizing on our part does not even slightly begin to address the concerns of others in the community (if that is the organization within which the library is structured), its leaders, its citizens – readers and nonreaders alike – and the many others who have their own notions of what a ‘library’ should be. Witness the hours upon hours of mindless rhetoric and the reams and reams of published opinion about the role of Internet filters in the public libraries. Regardless of one’s opinions about the issue, it cannot be ignored that – organizational mission or not – the vocal critics will not be stilled until they have changed that mission, whether it is for the good of society or not. If they change it, the society in which they want to live will exist, and all others be damned, and the expectations

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of many information stakeholders in the ‘organization’ become part of and influence the success or lack of success of the library’s efforts. A Corporate Library The third example could not be more different. It is the information resource centre of a large multinational company, one in which the provision of information is directly related to the success or failure of the company to provide a profitable return on the investment that its shareholders and its management have put forward to support the development, production, marketing, and sale of its products. Here we have an organizational structure that already exists (and, yes, if this company is like most, it has gone through interminable restructurings, but there has never been any doubt that an organizational structure was in place – the company could not have hired its first employee or made its first profit without an organizational design that positioned it to do so). The information resource centre exists to support the information management and delivery requirements of the parent organization. As described in the last Chapter, that library, as part of the competitive capitalist system, and its parent organization must concentrate its information management and delivery function on the acquisition and use of mission-critical information – and only mission-critical information, or the library and the company will not succeed in accomplishing what they exist to accomplish. To this end, the customers who come to the information resource centre’s knowledge professionals recognize (or will be taught to recognize, if they have prior misconceptions) that information is a valuable commodity and is part of the raw material – a resource, if you will – that enables the company to produce its profits successfully. Thus, while the expectations of the various information stakeholders within the organization (and, as noted, even the expectations of those who do not need to make use of the information resource centre’s services) might be connected to personal and/or professional agendas, once the layers have been cut through these stakeholders – generally speaking – understand that the information resource centre exists for a very real purpose, and it is a measurable purpose. In each of these examples, the information management function is well under control, for information management is the one ‘leg’ of the knowledge services ‘three-legged stool’ that has been functioning steadily for so many years. As noted earlier (Chapter One), information management is generally defined as the organizational methodology that is concerned with the acquisition, arrangement, storage, retrieval, and use of information to produce knowledge. It wasn’t always called ‘information management’, of course, and the dictionary catalogues of eighteenth century academicians would hardly be recognized by today’s information specialists as information management tools. But in one way or another,

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information management has functioned and continues to function well in most of those organizations that have some interest in or commitment to the management and delivery of information. Of course improvements in the methodologies (and technologies) of information management are continually being developed, and as these come into the information marketplace and are installed in information facilities, information management simply gets better. Even as these improvements are being delivered, however, the fundamental goals of the information management process are being met successfully and most organizations are able to deliver information to the people in the organization who require it. In that definition of information management, though, the key concept is not just the attention to the acquisition, arrangement, storage, and retrieval of information. The critical idea here is expressed in that final phraseology and it establishes information management’s true value to the organization or community. Of course the management of information is essential, but it is in the use of information to produce knowledge that validates the information management function. These same organizations, in which the information management function is successful, must now recognize and establish the knowledge services framework, to identify the knowledge management and strategic (performance-centred) elements of the organization’s information effort and to incorporate them into the organization’s larger operation in achieving the organizational mission. It is now time, in the organizational environment, to ensure that not only is the information delivered, but that as it is delivered it leads to the development of knowledge, and that the knowledge developed through its use is shared. Continuing with the examples, each of them has a specific path to follow as knowledge management and strategic (performance-centred) learning are put in place in the organization. KM in the Academic Library Successful knowledge management in the academic library begins with the establishment of an open culture in which every effort is made to ensure that knowledge, as it is developed, is shared, or is available to be shared, in those academic and research functions for which sharing is appropriate. It is, of course, a task more easily identified than accomplished, for unless there is already an open culture in the larger organization – the university itself – what is really being embarked upon is culture change. We refer to knowledge management as a management practice, and indeed, in the academic library, those with management and supervisory responsibility will be called upon to do whatever is necessary to establish procedures and design methodologies that will permit information – explicit, tacit, and cultural information – to be reused, when necessary, and in all cases to be used to create new knowledge. One of their primary responsibilities is the cultural one, to establish

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an environment in which trust, collaboration, and sharing are clearly accepted as the cultural baseline for the organization. Tactics for achieving such a collaborative environment may vary, from the establishment of committees and teams brought together to make simple purchasing or administrative decisions, to the wholesale reorganization of the library’s management function in order to establish an open, participatory, and customer-focused organization, as was done during the 1990s at The University of Arizona Library (St. Clair, 1999, pp. 170–5). Whatever tactics are used, however, the effort must be brought together by an overall strategy that gives emphasis to the collaborative environment. In an academic setting, does knowledge management call for knowledge management tools, for electronic record-keeping devices that so many identify as KM itself, without considering that KM is a management practice and not a product or a thing? Of course it does, and in every department of the library that has interactions with customers, students, faculty, researchers, and the like, the implementation of even the simplest CRM (client-relationship management) software produces significant results. Being able to record what users research, how the information is used, how their use connects with that of other researchers, etc., provides the university’s librarians with the information and knowledge they require to provide the highest levels of information and knowledge services. There are limitations, of course, and such applications can be used only insofar as the institutional culture permits (as some users resist having information about their research interests recorded in this way). The point is, information that is gathered about the university library’s users can be captured and utilized in such a way that all of the library’s stakeholders benefit, as higher-level information delivery services can be provided. If that university library is accomplishing its information management successfully, and has moved successfully into the KM realm as well, it is only a step away from achieving a knowledge services organizational focus that will, by definition, bring significant benefits to all stakeholders. That step, of course, is structuring the organization’s training and learning programs so that they are application based, relate directly to how what is learned will be used in the workplace, and will, in the larger operational framework, result in higher levels of excellence in workplace performance among the library’s various staff members. Thus not only are public service staff given instruction in how to use particular tools (electronic or otherwise), they are given training in such areas as customer service or CRM/client-relationship management, communication skills, training skills, and the like. KM in the Public Library In the public library, knowledge management issues tend to be a little more delicate than in academic or special libraries, primarily because (in

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most democratic societies) much emphasis is put on the individual privacy rights of the library’s users. As a result, public library administrators tend to back away from applying KM concepts in the management of public services. This is not to say, however, that KM cannot be applied within the organization as an organization. Like any well-managed entity, there are plenty of opportunities for supervisors and department heads to do what they can to establish an atmosphere that encourages openness and collaboration among the staff, and when such an atmosphere is established, services to the public will obviously be better than they would be in an environment where knowledge development and knowledge sharing are not accepted practice. When these knowledge workers are given the opportunity to experience learning activities such as the development of Website catalogues, content collection and posting, collaboration tools management, management skills training, and the like, their efforts in the organization provide them (and their customers) with greater rewards. Even in the management of public services, though, there are opportunities for knowledge management, if the public library’s managers (and its trustees, local civic authorities, and others who have authority with respect to how the library is managed) are willing to seek opportunities for serving their customers better. The primary point here is simply that establishing management practices that lead to openness, collaboration, etc. in order to better accomplish the library’s mission can be advantageous for both the library’s staff and its users. Strategic (performance-centred) learning in the public library starts with the staff and, when appropriate, moves to the offering of training programs for users as well. Thus, in the public library, the strategic part of the definition refers to the uses to which the training will be put. For staff, such learning is undertaken so that staff members can better use tools and techniques in working with users; for users, the strategic purpose depends solely on what the users intend to do with what they learn. KM in the Corporate Library In the corporate information resource centre, knowledge management comes into play after viable information management strategies have been established, or in parallel with their establishment, when information management and knowledge management are implemented concurrently, as is often the case. Strategic learning in the corporate information centre takes many forms, some of which will be fairly typical. For example, the staff of the centre might be instrumental in working with other departments in the organization to establish expert data systems. These staff know many of the key players in the organization, for they have come to the information centre as they’ve initiated or continued research on projects. In this capacity, not only do they know the information centre,

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but the staff knows them as well, and the projects they are involved with. This is a perfect opportunity to use a standard knowledge management system to connect experts with others in the organization who need to know about them and the work they do. It can be done across the enterprise, with the credit for the initiative going to the staff in the information centre. Each of these examples represent what by now might be referred to as ‘classic’ knowledge services strategy, recognizing that knowledge services, when applied in the organization situation, can provide benefits and return on investment that support the achievement of the organizational mission.

Three Principles of Organizational Development The best way to anticipate and, perhaps, to understand the role of the new knowledge services profession in the organization is to consider some of the standard characteristics of organization development and design that are found in most environments. When organizations are analysed and organizational design decisions must be made, three principles apply. These have been identified by, among others, Phyllis Schlesinger and Leonard Schlesinger, and the three libraries described above provide a very effective and useful framework for looking at these critical principles. Social Systems First of all, according to the Schlesingers, organizations are complex social systems, with a system being defined as ‘any set of mutually interdependent elements, within a given set of boundaries’ (Schlesinger and Schlesinger, 1993, p. 210). Certainly the three libraries are complex in their social systems, for each of them has specific and greatly differing societal objectives. The large academic library exists to support teaching and research, and as such, that library must be a classic ‘collection’ of materials – the much-vaunted ‘storehouse of knowledge’ we all know and recognize, and have a tremendous cultural affection for. The library must also be an information centre, a place where its ‘customers’ will come to learn about how the information they require is captured and stored. The operative word here is ‘learn’, for in the academic setting, the information staff is there to maintain the facility, to ensure that the warehousing of information artefacts (regardless of format) is done effectively and efficiently. Equally important, however, is their role as information learning facilitators, as teachers who provide the faculty and researchers with the knowledge they require in order to learn how to find information. Professional librarians and other library staff in academic institutions are

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not ‘hunters and fetchers’. They aid, of course, any of their clientele in the search, but their role is to show their library customers how to locate the information they require, to establish with those customers how knowledge sharing and knowledge development relates to the user’s needs, and then to move on to that same role with the next client, incorporating strategic learning methodologies when required. Yes, they work on specific projects, and in departmental and subject collections, academic librarians often form intimate and participatory relationships with their faculty and research program staff, but the bottom line for them, as it always must be, is to advise, to teach, and to demonstrate how information is found and turned into knowledge that can advance their work. The great attraction for knowledge professionals in an academic setting, knowledge workers who are both detectives (the ‘hunters’) and teachers, is that the level of the advice they are called upon to provide is generally of a high enough calibre that they will not be bored. They will not be – usually – intellectually challenged by having to face, on a daily basis, a raft of questions of the type that begin with phrases like, ‘Do you have the telephone number for XYZ?’ or ‘Can you find me a list of the largest cities in the world?’ They do have these queries, of course, but their stock in trade is the more sophisticated query, the call from the faculty member who needs to see a bibliography of the writings of the Economistin-Residence who will be at the university during the next term, or the request for background materials for a project analysis or a grant proposal that a scientist in an affiliated research institute will require. Again, the academic librarian gets to shine in his or her best role, as advisor and teacher-to-the-teachers, and has the added advantage that once he or she demonstrates to the information customer, the faculty member or researcher, how to find the information, the customer does the finding. The librarian is not called upon, in most cases, to be the ‘fetcher’, to provide the information himself or herself. The librarian provides the way to the information, and it is the customer’s responsibility to obtain it. The complexity of the social system in the large public library is even more pronounced, for public libraries – especially large public libraries, usually located where there is a large enough critical mass of ‘information customers’ to support the establishment and continued functioning of the library – must play an unending and ever-changing repertory of roles for the community or other governmental authority that provides their funding. In a large public library, the connection to education is even more pronounced, but the major difference here is that, as noted, the ‘level’ of the research varies greatly, and for some public library staff, seldom rises above the most basic sort of information gathering. The professional librarians are on staff to teach, all right, but their teaching – while occasionally complicated and intellectually stimulating – does not rise to the level of information teaching that the librarians’ colleagues enjoy in the academic community. Thus for many (if not most) public

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librarians, there is a natural affinity for moving into management or administrative positions within the complex social structure that has been created for the day-to-day maintenance of the public library, and the very people who are left to deal with the public – the school children, the young adults, the hobbyists, the owners of small businesses, and the like – are the librarians and library employees who, while very good at what they do most of the time, do not have the pleasures of intellectual stimulation at a very sophisticated level. Thus the public library moves into many different programs, and the library becomes a community centre, a jobs/employment bank, a literacy forum, and the initiator of the many and varied other programs that today’s successful public library offers. These are all valuable contributions to the community, essential in their very ubiquitousness, but as part of the profession of librarianship and the knowledge services industry, they are not and never will be the exalted ‘intellectual’ calling that they have been promoted as being. The complex social system that is the essential fabric of the modern public library is no less important or valid than that of other information-delivery functions, but by having been idealized in many quarters for so many generations, expectations and disappointments run rampant. In the specialized library, the information centre of the multinational corporation, the social system is also complex, but in this case the larger corporate design drives the complexity. Not surprisingly, the social system in this information centre, the specialized library, is likely to be as different from other corporate information centres (even those with companies working in the same field, competitors or affiliates of the corporate library’s parent organization) as it is from other types of libraries. As a specialized library, as described in a previous Chapter, the entire purpose for the library’s existence does not relate to those of the academic library or the public library. In the corporate setting, the social system is built on the social system of the parent organization, with all that that implies in terms of productivity, service standards, corporate loyalty, and operational and organizational culture. If the parent organization is, say, a financial firm in which analysts are hired specifically to contribute analysis and interpretation to the information provided by the corporate library, and if the library staff’s role is to provide raw data without interpretation, that is what is provided. If, on the other hand, the corporate culture is one in which those who receive the information expect it to be in the form of analysis and interpretation that they can use in their decision-making, the company will hire information professionals for the corporate information centre who are not only trained in procuring information but in providing accurate analysis as well. Whatever the scenario, the complexity of the social system within the corporate information centre will reflect that of the parent organization at large, and the services provided by the employees of the corporate information centre will reflect it as well.

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Dynamic Organizational Designs The second principle of organizational development is that organizational designs are dynamic. These designs define, as the Schlesingers put it, ‘the congruence between different parts of the organization: the people in the jobs, the jobs they do, and the formal recruitment, selection, reward, and reporting structures of the organization’. (Ibid.) Each of the libraries described here exemplifies dynamic organizational design, if we can permit ourselves to accept as dynamic that critical element of organizational management that leads to the achievement of organizational success. Hence we have academic libraries, such as the example given here, stating quite openly and proudly what their missions are, and equally openly, what their vision of operational success will be, that will lead to success in the achievement of the parent institution’s mission and vision. The different parts of the organization – despite the (by now) quaintly nostalgic descriptions of turmoil in the ivory tower – operate in sync with one another, as they must. By this time in the history of academic education, the level of the resources invested in academic library service is so great that the parent institutions simply cannot afford to permit resources to be wasted in trivial pursuits. How the different organizations function will, again, reflect the culture of the parent institution and the role of the academic library within that institution, and recruitment, selection, reward, and the reporting structures in one university library may be the very model of team management, while management at another university library – perhaps even within the same state or provincial system – will abjure team management because in that particular institution the respect for tradition (and for many other reasons as well, of course), the long-established management hierarchy is the one that provides the best return on the investment of resources that the university makes in the library. Not surprisingly, the dynamics of the corporate information centre will build on an entirely different motivational structure, and the successful congruence between the different parts of this particular organization will depend almost entirely on how the information centre staff relates to and embodies the corporate organizational culture. Thus the recruitment of staff may very well be based on graduate education attained, but it might just as well be based on other criteria (the many corporate marketing ‘libraries’, for example, mentioned earlier, or the hiring of research associates for well-paid and intellectually stimulating knowledge-centric positions in a public relations or publishing company, or, indeed, the hiring of financial analysts, without library degrees, to provide financial information and analysis, as described above). In any case, the way in which the information centre is organized, its relationship with the people who work there, its reward structure, its reward system, and its operating system will be, of necessity, linked to those established in the parent organization.

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Commonalities of Organizational Design All of which leads very smoothly to the final principle of organizational design that relates – as do these first two – to planning for professional learning in the new knowledge services profession. ‘There is no one best way to design the organization’, Phyllis F Schlesinger and Leonard A Schlesinger write (Ibid.). Indeed, there are few industries where the variety of organizational design is as pronounced as it is in the information and knowledge services industry. Forgetting for a moment the three libraries – all libraries, remember – described here, the universe of information and knowledge is enormous, and the variety of knowledge functions – and the organizations which provide them – is equally enormous. So much so that we are almost overwhelmed when we attempt to pull the ‘common threads’ together. When we think, for example, just about the vast number of information facilities and communities of practices that make up that ‘splendid continuum’ given so much attention in this series of books, it is no small wonder that each of the titles of the series must, almost of necessity, concentrate on this or that one ‘branch’ of the continuum. Information is a universal commodity, and the need for information, knowledge, and learning is as individual as each customer’s need. In fact, perhaps the only way we can ‘get at’ those common threads is to attempt to understand what the unique branches have in common and how they can, when it is possible, weave those common threads together. Thus we admit, and accept quite comfortably, the fact that the organizational design for the large academic library will, yes, have some characteristics of other large academic libraries, but it will also be specific to the needs of the specific academic community it exists as a part of. Similar relationships apply between the large public library and other public libraries, and between the corporate information centre and other specialized libraries. What we must do, though, is determine what the common threads are and then, when appropriate, determine whether that commonality can be useful as each of the individual organizations moves forward with its own mission-specific and organization-specific design and development. Certainly, just as there is no one best way to design the organization, there is no one best way to design the professional learning structure for the organization. There will be, though, commonalities that can be identified and described and then, hopefully, applied to the needs and the objectives of the information organization in question. When this happens, the professional learning program will work. So we look at the three library structures used here as examples, and in thinking about them and, hopefully, about other information/knowledge management operations within the larger information industry, we can determine that the principles the Schlesingers propose hold true.

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Furthermore, using these principles, we can identify specific concepts and axioms that, although described here in terms of libraries (albeit three very different libraries), can be applied to all operational units in which the capture, management, and dissemination of information and the development and sharing of knowledge make up the operational function. There is no way, obviously, that the three libraries have the same organizational structure, yet all three function as ‘libraries’ or ‘information centres’. In fact, when we think about organization design factors that are universal in all of these situations – the people in the jobs, the tasks they perform, the formal organizational structure, operating systems in place, tasks, people, measurement systems, reward systems, selection and development systems, structure, and so forth (Ibid., pp. 213–14) – we recognize that, despite the vast differences of these three libraries, there are important commonalities. When these factors are considered, and when the disparate factors are combined with other, environmental conditions, a structured and coordinated professional learning and continuous education program is going to make up a significant part of the working lives of the employees who will be hired to work in these institutions.

Organizational and Professional Culture It must be clearly understood, however, that the development of professional learning for knowledge services begins with an awareness of the critical role of the organizational culture and professional culture. Much has been written about organizational culture during the past two or three decades, and by now every manager and organizational leader understands the influence of culture on the success (or lack of success) of the organization for which he or she has managerial responsibility. Within the organization, people act as they perceive they are expected to act, and organizational culture has much influence in determining performance, institutional loyalty, goal achievement, and value formation among the employees who work in or are otherwise affiliated with the organization. And no one is surprised to discover that organizational culture has a significant influence in the management of information organizations, regardless of the organization’s ‘type’ (that is, whether it is a library, a records management department, or another information services unit within the parent institution or organization). Those who manage information organizations, and particularly those who have come into management through their work as librarians or similar information workers, have a particular interest in the role that culture plays in society. For many of these, attention to the role of organizational culture can lead, not surprisingly, to a transfer of many of those concepts into the study of what might be called a ‘professional culture’. Indeed, moving in this direction we are soon able to conclude that the information/knowledge

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services industry has a culture all its own, one that is much influenced by the pre-existing culture of librarianship and related information studies. Another book in this series has explored the recent move toward entrepreneurial thinking in information management, and it is not inappropriate to reiterate here a basic theme, that librarianship and the knowledge services environment at large share specific attributes that do, in fact, define a professional culture for the profession. These are fundamental attributes, the things that are good about librarianship and information services management, and these attributes do indeed contribute to an cultural advantage for those employed in knowledge work who wish to perform entrepreneurially. These attributes include, in the performance of one’s duties as a knowledge professional, such distinguishing qualities as tenacity, a commitment to high service standards, a commitment to seeking the best information that can be delivered (sometimes even when the information customer would be satisfied with information of less quality), a commitment to excellence in customer service and client relationship management, a desire to serve, and a willingness to take on the information customer’s problems. These ‘characteristics of librarianship’, as they are called in that other context, clearly match up with the entrepreneurial characteristics that drive entrepreneurial thinkers to success, including such notable attributes as vision, a willingness to take risks, a focus on the customer, initiative, creativity, a desire for success, and an innovative spirit. (St. Clair, 1996, pp. xv, 3–22) This combination of traits make up a very desirable and prominent component of what might be called the ‘professional culture’ of the new knowledge services profession. On the other hand, those who earn their livings as knowledge workers also share common attributes that frequently serve as barriers to the entrepreneurial progression, as noted in the comments of Marion Paris quoted earlier and, especially, the comments of Susan K Martin, whose cogent thoughts on the professional culture of librarianship (although it wasn’t called that) were delivered in an article about how a new information profession might be envisioned (also previously referred to in this text). Martin’s comments are significant, and can be properly repeated here, for the attributes delineated in her essay are the very attributes that work against entrepreneurial performance in information delivery, particularly now that librarianship and information management are evolving, so importantly, into knowledge services: ‘. . . another obvious influence is that of stereotypes. Librarians’ stereotype of themselves as a profession is probably even more negative than the stereotype of librarians that we perceive is held by the public. We republish derogatory cartoons or stories about librarians; many librarians are even embarrassed to admit to strangers that they are, in fact, members of this profession. We cannot even sell our profession to ourselves, much less to the university presidents who control our professional preparation, or to the

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public who control our livelihood. We do have a sense of the excitement of our profession, and we talk about it among ourselves. But that sense of excitement is overshadowed by our focus on the specific and the present, rather than on the broad-based and the future. There is a common reticence, an inability to speak up and point out with pride the professional skills and expertise particular to librarianship. Librarians need to push themselves forward, to use their imagination and knowledge, to volunteer to do tasks for which librarians are uniquely equipped such as locating and manipulating information, and providing for the information needs of others. This public relations effort may be ignored initially; people have become used to living with librarians in a traditional conservative role and will not be able to immediately accept a new role or vision for our profession. But giving up and fading into the background is not an option.’ (Martin, 1993, p. 210)

The attributes that Martin describes are barriers because, as with all such characteristics that are identified in any profession, they are pretty common to human nature in general, and they must be acknowledged and actively worked against if an opposite perspective, such as entrepreneurial librarianship, is to be achieved. It is, of course, through professional learning that such perspectives can be established and reinforced, as has been demonstrated extensively throughout the management community at large. But without a commitment to a structured and carefully planned professional learning program, moving forward in this direction is nearly impossible, very difficult and totally dependent on the self-motivation of the individual workers who should, at the very least, be offered the opportunity to engage in professional learning. Knowledge services attracts a great many dynamic and energetic thinkers, but as a career option also attracts another sort of worker. Because of the profession’s perceived (that is, as perceived by lay-people and others who have not themselves been employed in the industry) role as a nurturing, caregiving sort of profession – many of the wrong people become knowledge workers, particularly becoming, sadly, librarians. They are the kind of workers who are not immune to the temptations of ‘doing less’ when they are not motivated to ‘do more’, and they find – or seek out – opportunities to avoid putting forth their best efforts. Many of these workers, intellectually liberated and seeking careers where they can conduct intellectual pursuits, choose to come into the field because of its traditional service opportunities (scratch almost any librarian and you’ll find someone who went into the profession because ‘I want to help people’). Yet once they become practitioners, they find themselves settled into a culture that, yes, puts much emphasis on service to the customer, but they also discover, sometimes much to their chagrin, that the information industry has another characteristic. It is a field of work that leaves the practitioner with many opportunities to perform and participate with as little or as much enthusiasm as he or she wishes. One

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reason for this unusual state of affairs – unusual in that there are not many professions or fields of work in which the practitioner has almost carte blanche with respect to performance and performance standards – is the autonomy of the practitioner in the information interaction with the customer. Because most information interactions are one-on-one (that is, the information customer and the information practitioner interact with one another only as the information request is made and a decision is made about how to respond to that request), there is great opportunity for what some call ‘the arrogance of autonomy’, an attitude on the part of the worker that ‘this person won’t be back again, so how I treat him doesn’t matter’. Obviously such a description is an oversimplification, but such approaches to information delivery can be found throughout the information/knowledge services industry, and these attitudes are naturally reflected in the culture of the profession. Such negative approaches to service become more pronounced when the intellectually liberated practitioner chooses to transfer this attitude to his or her motivation with respect to professional learning, for professional learning is not always appreciated for what it can provide in the professional life of the information/knowledge employee. It is not unusual to have librarians and records managers state that they cannot participate in professional learning because, ‘I don’t have time’, or ‘I can’t get away’, or ‘“They” won’t let me’. What such comments actually mean, of course, is simply that the employee doesn’t want to be bothered with going to seminars or attending workshops or having hands-on lesson in this or that new technology. Such activity simply isn’t high enough on the employee’s priority list. The employee has taken the arrogance of autonomy and applied it to his or her own work-life, transferring it from the interaction with the information customer and using it as an excuse to fall back on the status quo ante. Instead of seeing such professional affiliation as an opportunity to expand one’s intellectual achievement, that employee is content to connect his or her professional autonomy to a general sense of ‘entitlement’ that is characteristic of many employees in society today. It’s a sort of ‘I’ll-do-what-I-want-to-do’ approach to one’s work, and it isn’t uncommon (particularly in the information/knowledge industry). The good side of this situation, as noted below in the comments of Richard W Oliver, is that this type of professional autonomy, this emphasis on one’s own personal interests, is a characteristic that can be exploited for the benefit of the customer and for the organization, if it is recognized and identified for what it is, and then transformed into something else when such action is feasible. Of course such negative attitudes can be counterproductive, almost dangerously so. For example, when the staff in a large library (such as any of the three described at the beginning of this Chapter) make it clear that they will not participate in professional learning unless professional learning is undertaken as part of one’s job, with management assuming

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all costs and responsibilities, those managers attempting to initiate such programs find themselves in a situation that is certainly untenable, and almost impossible to correct. It is not unusual for staff in a large institution to refuse professional learning opportunities unless, for example, all costs are paid for by the employing organization, or unless release time is made available, during the regular scheduled work hours, for participation, with compensatory time made available if attendance is required ‘outside’ the regular work hours. What we’re finding, however, is that such thinking, such attributes of the professional culture of information employees, is not reflected in general trends within society at large. In fact, there is now in some environments a shift away from organizationally driven professional learning. Individuals are now taking responsibility for identifying learning opportunities and then pursuing them, sometimes with the support of the employing organization, and sometimes not, a point clearly made most recently in an article that appeared in the literature of the record and information management field: ‘Technology has dramatically impacted the records and information management profession over the last few years. This has opened the door to new opportunities for information managers. Advanced technologies and learning requirements have also added an element of risk to the profession and no pat answers. Heavier work loads and greater responsibilities are heaped onto frustrated information managers . . . . ‘Although a challenging time, this is also a time of opportunity. This is no time to shrink from change. Survival in today’s accelerated business environment requires records and information managers to be in a continuous learning mode. ‘Corporations once took a paternalistic role in developing their employees, who often remained with them until retirement. However, in this age of downsizing and outsourcing, employees come and go. Some employees are less willing to invest in training someone who may eventually take new skills to a better job. ‘According to a recent report issued by the American Society for Training and Development, ‘The growing wage premium enjoyed by highly skilled workers has sent a powerful signal that education and training matter. At the same time, senior management has been consistently sending the message that employees must assume responsibility for the development of their skills’. ‘Increasingly, the responsibility for developing career skills falls onto the shoulders of the employee. Records and information managers who plan to thrive in a rapidly changing industry must first learn to navigate the mostly uncharted waters of professional development.’ (Hipp, 1999, pp. 22–3)

This is not to imply, however, that organizational management has abdicated its responsibility for professional learning. Indeed, if that were the

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case, there would be a very limited readership for this book. The reasons why organizations are moving so seriously into professional learning for their employees and affiliates are many, and competitive advantage aside, there have been few management trends that have been as seriously embraced or provide such effective return on investment as structured and well-directed professional learning. To the extent, it can be noted, that organizations now not only offer training and professional development as such, but in the corporate and organizational world, the concept of the ‘corporate university’ has taken hold, and is experiencing phenomenal growth. Jeanne C Meister, who is recognized as an undisputed chronicler of this movement, has noted, ‘In the late 1980s there were 400 companies with something called a corporate college, institute for learning, or corporate university. Only 10 years later, that number has grown fourfold, to about 1600’ (Meister, 1998a p.8). Such impressive numbers don’t come about without some attention to why these functions are needed. While it must be noted that at this point our attention is directed solely to corporate universities, representing only one component of professional learning, the reasons for the growth of corporate universities speaks volumes about the entire range of professional learning offerings being promulgated in the management community. Meister herself, in another article on the subject, identified two of the strongest motivators: ‘There are several driving factors behind the proliferation of corporate universities. One, the shelf life of knowledge is becoming increasingly shorter, which necessitates continuous learning from workers. Simply put, knowledge changes quickly, and people have to keep up. Jim Moore, director of Sun U, the corporate university of Sun Microsystems, says that the shelf life of knowledge at his firm is only one or two years. He estimates that more than 75 per cent of Sun Microsystems’ revenue in 1996 was generated from products that had been in the market less than two years. ‘Another reason for the rise of corporate universities is the desire of many companies to be perceived as the ‘employer of choice’ in their industries Consequently, they are using their investment in employee education – especially in a corporate university – as evidence of their competitive advantage for recruiting and retaining the best and brightest employees’ (Meister, 1998b, p. 39).

What is happening, it seems to me, is that professional learning is now a collaborative effort, on the part of both the employee and the employing organization, with each party having significant responsibility for taking the initiative and moving the other party in the ‘direction’, as it were, of serious attention to professional learning. With respect to the individual, Hipp writes, ‘If you think of your professional development as a business for which your are the owner, it makes sense to invest in your own career potential. Even if your employer pays for additional training, individuals

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who design strategic attainment and marketing plans for self-development goals will be more employable and feel more in control of their lives’ (Hipp, op cit.). The point is, organizational culture and the professional culture of knowledge services play and will continue to play a critical role in the implementation of a structured professional learning program for knowledge workers. Professional learning in information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning will continue to expand as the number of workers in the field increases and their experience and expertise continue to overlap. In fact, it could be added almost parenthetically that professional development in these disciplines when combined will eventually set the standards for that new knowledge services profession that has been alluded to so often here. The Schlesingers, writing about organization development and design, point out: ‘Every organization has a culture that sets the rules for behaviour in that organization. Culture is the important concerns, goals, and values that are shared by most people in the organization and that are likely to persist over time. In addition at another level of abstraction, the culture is the style or behaviour patterns that organizational members use to guide their actions.’ (Schlesinger and Schlesinger, 1993, p. 213)

What they write has relevance in the information/knowledge/learning industry, both in its individual component parts and, most significantly, in their combined manifestation. The development of structured and wellorganized professional learning offerings will be the essential foundation and overarching practical framework that holds the knowledge services industry together, particularly in terms of excellence in service offerings. The culture of the profession must be considered, of course, and those offering professional learning must take into account the interests and desires of the potential learning group, but if that means changing some attitudes on the part of the learning providers (and the learners) about how knowledge workers will learn, so much the better. In fact, a radical approach might even be called for, if the current culture of the profession is such that it has permitted barriers to professional learning to be erected. Richard W Oliver has coined a name for one group of up-and-coming workers, the young people of today who will be in positions of authority in the not-too-distant future.1 What Oliver 1 For a study profiling these people with specific reference to their values in the information workplace, their skills in managing information, and how they can be managed and retained in the knowledge services workplace, see another title in this series, Developing Information Leaders: Harnessing the talents of Generation X, by Marisa Urgo.

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writes about this group as customers and as employees has much to bear on how we think about some of the people who will be (or currently are) employed as knowledge workers, people who will be undertaking professional learning for their knowledge work. Oliver calls them ‘the ‘My’ generation’, because these are employees and well-heeled consumers who have been, as he puts it: ‘Thoroughly conditioned by technology that screams, ‘My! My! My!’ Their distinction as a group will be their determination not to be lumped into a group when it comes to what they consume and how they work. No black, mass-produced Fords or food for them. No, sir! No standard job description or benefits plan. Thanks, but no thanks!’ (Oliver, 2000, p. 12)

When Oliver’s ‘My generation’ comes to work in knowledge services, they can be welcome and useful employees if their managers will follow Oliver’s advice. He sees them as customers, and offers advice about how to treat them as customers, but what Oliver has to say about these people as customers relates directly to how they will act as knowledge workers. The simple substitution of the phrase ‘knowledge professionals’ for Oliver’s ‘customers’ (he calls them ‘MyGens’) provides telling direction for those who manage libraries and information services organizations, and for those who will be planning professional learning offerings for them: ‘Clearly the first strategic role for companies that want to reach MyGens in the twenty-first century marketplace is to personalize everything. These steps should be considered: ●

‘Embed intelligence in products and services so they can learn the likes and dislikes of the user and configure themselves to individual needs;

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‘Understand ‘customer space’ – what makes each customer unique – and create products that meet those unique needs at the ‘customer’s point of requirement’;

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‘Understand ‘customer time’ – how individual needs change over time – and develop products and services that can evolve as needs change;

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‘Brand your customers by the level of business or potential and give them differentiated levels of personalization;

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‘Allow customers differentiated levels of access to your internet site so that they can personalize their service levels, delivery schedules, and the like;

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‘Never sell or misuse the personal information you get from customers. To MyGens, privacy, security, and trust are the keys to a successful relationship.’ (Ibid.)

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For planning how these people will react in their encounters to professional learning, Oliver has specific advice directed to those who employ his MyGens, and like the statements above, this advice can be applied to the planning that goes into structured professional learning for these employees: ‘Of course the MyGens aren’t going to leave their ‘My’ selves at the door of the workplace. Employers must recognize their needs and expectations as they recruit for the twenty-first century. The successful ones will throw away the standardized rulebooks and develop trained and motivated employees who understand how they individually fit into the organization and contribute to its success. They’ll also do the following: ●

‘Make workplace practices – wages, benefits, work schedules – as individually flexible as possible;

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‘Train people to fulfil their individual potential. Focus the job around them, not them around the job;

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‘Create an environment in which each individual understands he or she is a unique ‘company’ within a larger organization;

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‘Create personalized jobs that allow MyGens to be as self-actualized as possible in terms of career goals, pay, and work hours;

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‘Create personalized work environments that allow employees to bring as much of their personal life to work as possible. Many firms are allowing pets and the like at work;

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‘As with customers, never abuse the personal information given to you by MyGen employees. It’s the cardinal sin.’ (Ibid.)

As it turns out, the culture of knowledge services, heavily influenced, as noted, by librarianship and the core values of librarianship, is a very real culture, and it must be considered as professional learning opportunities are developed and implemented. If staff members in the large academic library, for example, feel that it is an abuse of their ‘rights’ as employees to be asked to give up a week-end to attend a two-day seminar on a subject that relates directly to their work, and attendance at which will enable them to master a difficult service situation, those feelings must be taken into account, and management must work with the employees in question to convince them to change their minds. If staff members at the public library are nervous – because of difficulties with service scheduling at the Reference Desk – about attending a vendor’s presentation that will permit them to provide better reference service, supervisors must consult with them to determine how the schedules can be changed (or the vendor’s course times changed) so that their reluctance to attend can be redirected. And if staff at the large corporate information centre are finding it difficult to participate in ‘train-the-trainers’

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workshops so that they can teach their customers how to find information for themselves, the manager of the information centre must establish principles and guidelines so that employees understand what their responsibilities are, and how they will be carried out, with respect to helping users. For many who think about the purposes of information, and about how information has been codified, catalogued, classified, stored, and retrieved, the move from libraries to information centres has been adequately documented, in both the research literature of library and information studies, and in the popular literature. From the point of view of the information manager who is seeking to establish a structured professional learning program for his or her staff, however, what appears to have happened is that the world of information and knowledge services has become more and more complex, and workers in the information industry are, quite frankly, overwhelmed by what they don’t know and by the many and varying offerings that are being made to them, to help them learn what they don’t know. In fact, it is sometimes not even clear in the information industry what people are talking about, when they talk about their job titles and what they do for a living. As careers are embarked upon, position descriptions seem to run the gamut, from librarian to information manager to knowledge manager to trainer and the like to chief information officer, chief knowledge office, chief learning officer, and similar titles. There seems to be no unifying thread to help people decide what they will do, or what they will call themselves. It is interesting – for our purposes – to note that the World Future Society, in its prediction of ‘Hot Careers for the New Millennium’, gives serious attention to the management of information. In a brief sidebar in the society’s special report, World Future Society members S Norman Feingold and Norma R Miller are identified as having compiled a list of 28 ‘emerging careers and job opportunities of the next 10 to 25 years. Included on the list are the job titles, of ‘information broker’ and ‘information centre manager’ (World Future Society, 2000, p. 6). Obviously there will be a place in the new information economy for people who have information management competencies. They won’t be called ‘librarians’, though, and they probably won’t have been educated in graduate programs of library and information studies, but they will hold down useful and secure jobs. Throughout history, libraries have been places to go to find artefacts, to locate the materials that contain the information one needs, whether those artefacts are books, journals, archives, or similar ‘containers’ of information. Usually, until recent decades, libraries were, in fact, warehouses of things, and if one wanted the information captured in those ‘things’, one had to go to the library to use those materials. Certainly all that has changed now, as has been much documented in the last decade of

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the twentieth century. In the first place, the role of information is now understood to be of much higher intrinsic value than it’s ever been before, for information, as a commodity, now has value (which, of course, accounts for the move from information management to knowledge management and strategic learning, justifying the entire knowledge services effort). Maire’ad Browne makes that point tellingly with the epigraph she puts at the Preface to her book on organizational decision-making: ‘Decisions are only as good as the information on which they are based. Successful managers make business decisions in a step-by-step sequence. Information is the manager’s main tool . . .’ (Browne, 1993, pp. ix). If, as we have all been taught, the business of society is business, then we are surely not surprised that the value of information has changed, and information literally has higher value, now that it is recognized in the business community (with all others following along) that good decisions require good information, good information that can be turned into useful knowledge. This does not mean that the warehouse function of libraries has ended, or that recreational reading has gone by the board. What it does mean, however, is that the very skills and competencies for organizing libraries and the information captured in the artefacts stored in those libraries have been put to use in managing information, knowledge, learning, and the knowledge services operations that have responsibility for this management. This is an assertion that Browne makes pointedly in her Preface, which she begins by referring to the epigraph above: ‘This is the rhetoric which confronts us in the literature of decision-making and information management and also when we talk to the providers of information in organizations. Yet when we have dinner conversations with managers and strategic planners, they do not appear to be seized with any sense of urgency to either adopt a step-by-step approach to decision-making or to use more information in the process. We hear little from them spontaneously, of their approach to decision-making and how essential information is to their effectiveness as managers. Certainly there are some managers who need no convincing. Such managers value systematic decision-making and information and they see these as contributing to the success of their organizations. But, by and large, managers are not conscious of their own decision-making and information, as such, although some may confess to a warm glow when they know they have lots of information available to them should they ever need it to come to a decision. ‘Major studies of how managers work do not contradict this impression. Mintzberg’s landmark study did discover that information played an important role in the everyday life of the manager, but it was not in the context of decision-making that it came to the fore. The manager is, according to Mintzberg, a purveyor of information channelling information about what is going on in the organization to others. In Mintzberg’s profile there was no sense of managers as heavy users of information in rational decision-making (Mintzberg, 1973).

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‘These observations open up two questions. First, why do managers generally not appear to be interesting in thinking about the way they reach decisions and how information might help them? Is the apparent apathy of managers a reflection of the way organizations have been written about and studied? Perhaps the books and articles written for practising managers have simply not convinced the managers that systematic decision-making is necessary. Or perhaps, the writers and researchers have not been looking for the right things. Maybe the conceptual frameworks they have used have resulted in their failing to notice how central information is to effective decisionmaking in the organization. But, perhaps the answer is a simple one, namely that managers find they can get on just fine on a day-by-day basis without reflecting too deeply on how they make decisions or collecting masses of information. Flying by the seat of the pants works for them enough of the time. ‘The second question relates to the causes of what appears to be a wide divergence in views on the importance of information between decisionmakers and the people they employ in the organization to provide information to them. The investment is substantial when the range of units and personnel dealing with information in the organization is considered. Just about everyone in the organization deals with information in one way or another, and the organization will typically have at least one specialist in providing information (called variously, Information Manager, Librarian, Chief Information Officer, and so on) working in areas such as Decision Support Systems, Management Information Systems (MIS), Libraries, Information Centres, and Information Resources Management. ‘Yet, despite the fact that information specialists are employed by managers to collect, organize, and presumably, retrieve information for particular purposes in the organization, the level of use of information by the managers themselves is generally low. At least this is what the information providers think. But when these information specialists complain about how little use is made of information in the decision process, are they perhaps revealing unrealistic expectations of the level of use people will make of the systems they design? It is not unreasonable, after all, for information providers to be strong advocates of their products or their areas of responsibility or even to oversell the potential for information for decision-making. Or are the information providers perhaps revealing a naïve view of how decision-making should happen and are out of step with the hurly-burly of organization life on a daily basis? ‘Regardless of the reasons for the seeming apathy of managers and the despair of the information providers, there is evidence from successful organizations that there needs to be a shared view of the value of information. This is especially true in regard to the decision process and the ways in which effective high-level decision-making can contribute to the success of the organization, thus repaying the investment in information provision. This needs to be so even if it is only to ensure that when the going gets tough in economic or political terms, there is no cut-back on the information support to the organization. It is precisely when the going gets tough that the need for information is probably greatest.’ (Ibid., pp. ix–xi)

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To come to a shared view of information value, however, has more to do with the positions within the organization of the people who are seeking information, and the people who are providing it. If the organization’s mission has been clearly defined and the achievement of that mission clearly directs the flow of products and services within the organization, information and knowledge that is mission-critical will also be seen as of value. Within the information or knowledge services entity, whatever it is, some relationship must be established between organizational outputs, the goods and/or services produced by the organization, and management expectations about the role of the information entity in the achievement of those outputs. When this relationship is established unsentimentally and without layers and layers of organizational and operational barriers preventing its natural success, the providers of the information do not need to be concerned about the value of information, or whether they are perceived as providing value. If decision-making within the organization is recognized as being information and knowledge based, and if the providers of the information that becomes knowledge are recognized as contributing to knowledge development and knowledge sharing, their role in the organization and the professional learning activities they undertake will be recognized for the value they bring to the organization. How professional learning/strategic learning is organized and achieved in organizations, communities of practice,2 enterprises, associations, or operational entities is unquestionably going to have serious impact on the productivity of the organization. Since that is the case, it is to the organization’s advantage to have some influence in the organization of the professional learning/strategic learning structure and, as will be seen, it is equally important that the organization take the initiative (as Jeanne C Meister obviously believes) in providing such learning. Each enterprise or community is required to see that its workers, the employees who provide services to the enterprise’s identified customers, are exposed to and benefit from a structured professional learning program. It doesn’t always happen, but for those organizations whose managements aspire to move in this direction, this book offers now a new methodology, a new way of thinking about and implementing structured professional learning that can ensure its success. It is put forward here so that the knowledge services industry can lead the way in bringing this new learning approach to its appropriate realization.

2 Which communities can include, of course, the old-fashioned, generally accepted sense of the term, that is, organizations and places which might have, as part of their community structure, a publicly supported library, public – e.g., vital – records department, historical society and/or archives, or similarly established information operation.

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References Browne, Maire’ad (1993) Organizational Decision-making and Information, Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Hipp, Deb (1999) ‘Professional development: the door to your future’, InfoPro, September 1999. Martin, Susan K (1993) ‘Achieving the vision: rethinking librarianship’, Journal of Library Administration 19 (3/4). Meister, Jeanne C (1998a) ‘Corporate universities: the new pioneers of management education’, Harvard Management Update, 3(10). Meister, Jeanne C (1998b) ‘Ten steps to creating a corporate university’. Training and development, 52(11). Oliver, Richard W (2000) ‘“My” generation’, Management Review, January 2000. Schlesinger, Phyllis F, and Leonard A Schlesinger (1993) ‘Designing effective organizations’ in The portable MBA in Management, by Allan R. Cohen, New York: John Wiley & Sons. St. Clair, Guy (1996) Entrepreneurial Librarianship: The Key to Effective Information Services Management, London and New Providence, NJ: Bowker-Saur. St. Clair, Guy (1999) Change Management in Action, Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association. Urgo, Marisa (2000) Developing Information Leaders: Harnessing the talents of Generation X, London and New Providence, NJ: BowkerSaur. Vavrek, Bernard (2000) ‘Is the American public library part of everyone’s life?’, American Libraries, January 2000. World Future Society (2000) Forecasts for the Next 25 Years – Special Report, Bethesda, MD: World Future Society.

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1111 Chapter Six 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 A New Paradigm for Professional 9 10111 Learning in Knowledge Services 1 2 3 4 5111 Professional learning for knowledge professionals is currently in crisis, 6 and steps must be taken to alleviate the crisis. The facts are these: 7 8 ● The professions, disciplines, and types of work that support 9 information management, knowledge management, and strategic 20111 (performance-centred) learning require knowledgeable, functional, 1 and productive workers; 2 ● The people are available. The population has grown tremendously in 3 the last half century, and workers – both those currently working and 4 those coming into their careers – are seeking interesting, meaningful 5 employment; 6 7 ● The jobs are there. Never before in the history of the world have 8 there been so many opportunities for job creation, particularly in the 9 industries and services that make up the segment of the workforce 30111 referred to as knowledge services (information management, knowl1 edge management, and strategic learning). While the economy may 2 fluctuate, the need for quality knowledge services in all fields will 3 assure the creation and development of new jobs and the realign4 ment and restructuring of jobs already existing; 5 ● The overall state of professional learning for knowledge services is cur6 rently one of confusion. At one end of this learning picture (as exem7 plified in graduate library and information studies programs), potential 8 employees are asked to make decisions about their careers and to 9 undertake a course of study that purports to include much important 40111 theory about the organization of information. As it turns out, however, 1 these students study very little theory, and much of their attention is 2 focused on what might be referred to as ‘practical education’; 3 4 ● At the other end of this learning spectrum, people wishing to 51111 be employed in – or already employed in – other branches of the

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knowledge services industry must find their education where they can, pursuing an ad hoc professional learning program that leads to better on-the-job performance, but does not necessarily lead itself to providing an understanding of the broader, more theoretical issues relating to the management and delivery of quality knowledge services; ●

Most professional learning, of course, takes place somewhere within this spectrum, resulting in a lifelong professional learning pattern that is confused, segmented, and of limited value;

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The current providers of professional learning are many, and include: ●

Undergraduate programs in computer science, information transfer, and the like;

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Graduate programs in library and information studies, in computer science and engineering, and related graduate programs;

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Academic studies in knowledge management, sometimes for academic credit, sometimes for informational purposes only;

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A variety of courses (many valuable, but many unrelated to one another in any particular framework) offered by professional and trade associations, some with a qualification management component, some without;

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Commercial offerings, of widely varying quality and usefulness.

This book proposes a solution to end the crisis in professional learning. The solution will not be easy to achieve, and it will require a total rethinking of the professional learning outputs needed for success in information work. Attempting this solution – and achieving it, for I am confident it can be achieved – will be easier than waiting for the graduate studies programs at the various universities and the trade and professional associations to achieve it on their own. The hardest part of its implementation will be at the beginning, as those who are employed in the management of knowledge services and the very fine leaders in each of its branches must agree to march to a different drum. They must agree (if I can be forgiven for once again including this quotation in one of my books, for I simply cannot say this as well as Peter Drucker said it in 1992) to abandon what they’ve been doing, and what they’ve been thinking: ‘Innovation depends on organized abandonment. When the French economist J B Say coined the work ‘entrepreneur’ 200 years ago, he meant it as a manifesto and a declaration of intent: the entrepreneur in his scheme was someone who upsets and disorganizes. To get at the new and better, you have to throw out the old, outworn, obsolete, no longer productive, as well as the mistakes, failures, and misdirection of effort of the past.’ (Drucker, 1992, p. 340)

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The new approach to professional learning proposed in this book is such a manifesto. It recognizes, sadly, that the present methodologies for professional learning in knowledge services do not work, and it challenges an entire industry to rise up and do something different, to indeed discard ‘the old, outworn, obsolete, no longer productive, as well as the mistakes, failures, and misdirection of effort of the past’. Those words could hardly be more accurate in describing the professional learning efforts of the component elements of the knowledge services industry in the past, and it is time to do something different. The recommended approach described in this book will do that. At the same time, though, allowing for conservatism and reticence in the industry, the new approach does, if necessary, permit current programs to continue, as the changeover moves forward. The suggested arrangement proposed in this book also recognizes that the current confused arrangement of professional learning will disappear in the face of future success resulting from a new methodology. In many cases it will be appropriate (and perhaps even essential) that the structured professional learning framework suggested here be linked – either through some contractual arrangement or with a looser, simply cooperative arrangement – with professional learning offerings currently in place, but that is expected to be in the long run only a temporary arrangement.

The Proposal The proposal here is that each organization with a knowledge services function establish its own internal professional learning structure, and then match that structure to whatever can be offered internally or through the utilization of external professional learning opportunities. The organization itself will provide the reward and recognition system. However, by cooperating with and utilizing an external record-keeping operation, such as that offered by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) – or, if more feasible, another operation established specifically for the purpose – the record of the employee’s professional learning can be accessed. Thus all organizations offering professional learning for their knowledge workers will be able to participate in the larger, knowledge services environment, and in an activity that provides tangible and measurable benefits. Whether the organization is a major multinational corporation with an array of information centres, records and information management units, organizational archives, computer services department, and similar information delivery functions, or a university library, a small college, a public school system, a oneperson community library, a telephone helpdesk in a telecommunications operation, an Internet service provider, a traditional or electronic publisher, a membership association, or any other of the great variety of

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organizations and enterprises that provide any form of information delivery, each of the organizations will establish a professional learning function (and it is here that the term strategic learning is properly applicable). That function – which might be a department in a larger organization (one of Jeanne Meister’s corporate universities, for example), a structured and well-organized program of study for a one-person library or records manager, or some variation to serve the needs of an information operation falling somewhere in between – will have as its mission the provision of the professional learning products and services that the organization’s knowledge workers require. What is being suggested is that each employing organization must assume the responsibility for its knowledge employees’ professional learning, and that the organization undertake the development of a formal program that will result in the achievement of that mission. Learning has traditionally been seen as the result of individual effort. With this new professional learning paradigm, learning is necessarily an organizational effort. This suggested program will result in the formalization of the title of knowledge services professional, as it will provide the foundation for a body of professional learning that will support the work done by knowledge professionals. At the organizational or employers’ level, the program may or may not have a certification or qualification management component, in the strictest sense of professionalism. That situation, however, is not much different than the current situation, since the current definition of ‘professionalism’ does not include, for knowledge workers, any enforcement method (for all the high-sounding emphasis on codes of ethics, levels of study, etc.), although ideally such a mechanism will eventually be in place. At a separate level, discussed later, such professional and strategic learning will in fact have a certification component through which, if desired, employees can continue their learning and, upon evaluation, achieve distinction as a Certified Knowledge Services Professional. What the program will have is an organizational and management component that can be transferred from the organization where the employee works and which provides the reward and recognition mechanism for the successful achievement of professional learning in knowledge services. Thus, if the employee has a successful career with the organization and continues with his or her employment within the organization, the record of his or her achievements in professional learning are captured and, of course, are reflected in the work. If, on the other hand, the employee moves from job to job, from organization to organization, or even between types of organizations (say, from working in a records and information management unit in a military establishment to a position in a trade association), the record of his or her professional learning continues to be available and can be documented as required. The specific component that is different in this approach is that the professional learning activities are first the responsibility of the parent

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organization of which the employee is a part. It does not negate the achievements of that employee if she has come to the position with prior education and/or professional learning relevant to the work (such as a terminal degree in the library and information studies field, or an undergraduate degree in accounting or organization design and development). Instead, the suggested approach gives that employee the opportunity to build on that previous learning for the benefit of the employing organization, and for her own benefit. On the other hand, this approach recognizes that not all knowledge workers want to be ‘professional’ or ‘certified’ employees (if we are willing to equate professionalism with certification). Such distinctions are well known in the various component ‘branches’ that make up the knowledge services industry (but they are seldom spoken about, since practitioners often don’t want to admit that there are people in the field who are less than stellar colleagues). Not all employees in knowledge services work want a professional career, and they may have minimal interest in being known as ‘professionals’. These employees want white-collar jobs, of course, but their primary life interests are elsewhere, and for them, a job is a job. These knowledge workers can continue on this employment path if they wish, but if they wish to pursue a more professional approach to their work, the organization’s professional and strategic learning offerings, with a lifelong learning basis, are available. In this proposed approach to professional learning, the responsibility and implementation of professional learning becomes organizational, and when appropriate, utilizes relationships with other organizations offering professional learning and training programs. Its beauty, however, is that it does not depend on those programs for success. What it does depend on, though, is a clear understanding and acceptance of the role of collaboration and sharing in the information delivery workplace. The whole effort is constructed around a recognition that knowledge development and knowledge sharing are critical elements in the successful achievement of the organizational mission. A Revolution in Professional Learning What is proposed is nothing less than a revolution (or, perhaps better stated, an evolution) in professional learning for knowledge services practitioners, those people who work in information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning. It is a theory of professional learning that combines the best elements of three separate – and not totally disparate – management concepts that have been or are being much talked about in the general management community. Knowledge management, the learning organization, and the teaching organization are all conceptual frameworks for institutional or organizational management that have proven to be significantly beneficial for the enterprises that give them attention (and which establish formal programs

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for their implementation). Knowledge management, now clearly fixed in the management lexicon (although, it must be recognized, not as universally practised as its proponents would like), has much to recommend it as a methodology for ensuring that all explicit and implicit knowledge in an organization is available for those who need it. The learning organization, a concept brought into the organization development scene in the early 1980s through the work of Peter Senge, builds on the idea that the organizations that succeed in achieving their organizational mission are those in which learning is recognized and its role promulgated throughout the organization. Less well known is a fairly recent entry into the management-studies arena, the concept of the teaching organization. Put forward by Noel M Tichy and Eli Cohen in an article in Training and Development, the journal of the American Society for Training and Development, the idea is primarily a rethinking or a refinement of the concepts of the learning organization, specifically in adding to that concept the sharing of information and knowledge. In other words, as with the learning organization, learning takes place all the time, and there is no ‘break’ or ‘slowdown’ in the learning process within the organization. In the teaching organization, however, that learning is shared and passed on to others, so that the entire organization or enterprise – that is, including all its constituent affiliates and stakeholders – becomes focused not only on acquiring what must be known for the achievement of organizational success, but focuses on sharing that information and knowledge, to ensure that all parties have access to it, acquire it, and are able to use it. With respect to professional or strategic learning, these three ideas combine into a methodology that might more properly be called a ‘philosophy’ of learning. True, it is a methodology, and as described here, it is a methodology for which specific steps and processes are required for success. It is also, though, something more than a methodology or a technique for professional learning. It is a conceptual framework, an approach to professional learning that positions those with responsibility for providing professional learning within an organization or enterprise – as well as those who will participate in the professional learning process as learners, learning facilitators, and/or learning managers – for connecting and linking professional learning directly with the organizational mission. The process is necessarily mission-specific.

KD/KS: Knowledge Development/Knowledge Sharing As a conceptual framework, this design for professional learning builds on two fundamental elements, the development of knowledge, and the sharing of that knowledge as it is being or after it has been developed. As a knowledge-based construct, the phraseology of knowledge discourse

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provides the concept’s essential distinction (and hence the acronym): KD/KS: Knowledge Development/Knowledge Sharing. Knowledge development is the process by which any of us, employee, manager, or other organizational affiliate, identifies, procures, and uses knowledge in order to advance or enhance our part in the achievement of the organizational mission. Within the information and knowledge services industry, such efforts as those of internal reference or inquiry staff to learn more, say, about an industry or subject about which they are receiving a noticeable increase in queries provide a classic example of knowledge development. That employee will seek to identify where he or she can find more information about the industry or subject in question, will undertake to utilize whatever methodology can best provide the needed information (a well-organized Website, perhaps, provided by a trade or professional association representing the industry or subject, or a evening course in the ‘basics’ of that trade or subject being offered at a local community college). And, significantly, that employee will then proceed to use the information that he or she has acquired, in order to address more knowledgeably the queries that come into the inquiry unit or reference service function where he or she is employed. Knowledge sharing, of course, is the ‘piece’ of the learning methodology that librarians and the more traditionally educated knowledge professionals love, for the whole concept of information delivery as practised by librarians, researchers, Internet specialists, organizational Webmasters, and others with an interest in the general dissemination of information is based on sharing what you know (or, for our purposes, what you’ve learned). Even specialist librarians, described so particularly earlier as knowledge professionals whose very existence requires them to relate directly to organizational, mission-specific goals, are open and frank and full of willingness to network, meet together, telephone or email one another, and conduct whatever other activities are required that will permit them to share information and knowledge. Only when proprietary information is involved do specialist librarians and researchers resist (obviously the query staff in a manufacturing company isn’t going to seek – or offer – information that might weaken the parent organization’s competitive position), as is their proper response. In the pursuit of a structured professional learning framework for knowledge workers, such sharing of information becomes part of the follow-up and evaluative activity that forms one of the ‘building blocks’ of the process, as will be seen. When the reference employee mentioned above, for example, completes that evening course at the community college, it is to his or her parent organization’s particular advantage for the employee not only to put the material learned to use in refining the queries posed to the individual employee, but also to establish (perhaps informally) internal discussion groups and/or presentations with other reference employees. They then acquire the same information so that their response to queries

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about the industry or subject in question can be responded to with the same level of expertise and authority as those received by the employee who attended the course. For the professional learning community, the concept offered here, KD/KS: Knowledge Development and Knowledge Sharing, is an approach to professional learning that specifically incorporates – indeed, requires – both knowledge development and knowledge sharing as fundamental elements in its implementation. Without either it is an empty gesture, for KD/KS is both a philosophy for information and knowledge service delivery, and a process that situates professional learning – in any organizational or operational setting – for the highest return on the investment that supports its existence. Whether that return is measured in what is learned, in how that learning is applied, or in the contribution of that learning to the achievement of the larger organizational mission, KD/KS establishes value in professional learning. Knowledge Development/Knowledge Sharing: ●

Can be defined as a framework for professional learning that embodies the highest objectives of knowledge management, organizational learning, and organizational teaching;

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Builds on the assumption that all learning stakeholders accept their leadership responsibility to develop, to learn, and to share both tacit and explicit knowledge within the enterprise;

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Exists for the benefit of the organizational enterprise with which the learning stakeholders are affiliated and which provides support for professional learning endeavours, and for the growth and development of these stakeholders as lifelong learners.

Knowledge Management As noted earlier, knowledge management, as a concept in the management community, began to appear on the scene in the mid-1990s, and was early linked to Thomas Stewart’s ideas about intellectual capital and the value of intellectual capital as a competitive asset. But the ideas didn’t stop there, and while much of the management community treated the concepts of intellectual capital management and knowledge management (particularly its management as a competitive asset) from the larger, organizational perspective, and while much attention was given to the concepts of knowledge management as a ‘new’ sort of management methodology, information practitioners recognized knowledge management for what it was: exactly the same total quality levels of customer service that they had been applying in their work for generations. In fact,

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in the specialized library community (as noted in Marion Paris’s quotation earlier in the book), the basic concepts of knowledge management seemed simply a repetition of what these information professionals do as a matter of course. While other branches of librarianship properly put much stock in such matters as the confidentiality of the information interaction and the privacy of the request, specialist librarians were not so constrained. In fact, throughout their history, specialist librarians have made it their stock in trade to know what the information was going to be used for (so that they could provide the best information) and who else might be seeking information that might be related to such an information request. In the world of specialized librarianship, in which the librarians are part of the larger organizational unit, it was in most cases to the advantage of the information customer to be told what other work is being done in his or her subject area (although obviously not so in situations in which the information transferred was, for one reason or another, proprietary information) Lois Remeikis, at Booz Allen & Hamilton, whose definition of knowledge management is one of several listed in Chapter One, is properly credited with bringing knowledge management as a subject for consideration to the attention of librarians, particularly specialist librarians. ‘One of my colleagues has the right idea’, Remeikis says. ‘She just tackles it head-on. She just tells her people to quit bitching and to look at this positively: change is going to happen, and if you give it the right twist, it can be a whole new adventure. So you might as well just accept it and get on with what you have to do.’ ‘This ‘new adventure’ is exactly what Remeikis has taken on in her work. For one thing, she and the 79 people she supervises in her global group have to look beyond the immediate work that they do, because Booz-Allen & Hamilton is a global firm, a big firm with a strong international presence, and the information professionals can’t expect to limit their work to just the dayto-day sorts of assignments. They have to think in ‘big picture’ terms, and it’s that moving toward the big picture, toward understanding the implications of the global marketplace and global information issues that has lead Remeikis and her people into exploring knowledge and knowledge management. ‘What we’re attempting to do’, she says, ‘is to define, create, capture, use, share, and communicate the company’s best thinking about the many different subjects that impact the company’s work. Obviously this activity, this quest, is a little different in each organization, in each of the sub-units of the company, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be looked at, or that we don’t try to pull it all together.’ ‘And ‘pulling it all together’ is a pretty good way to define the concept of ‘knowledge management’ that Remeikis is bringing to her company, and, not to be dismissed too lightly, to the information services field at large. Of course other people are doing work in knowledge management as well, and there are now employees in many organizations and corporations identified as ‘knowledge managers’. What Remeikis is doing, though, is going beyond

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the basic – and now somewhat established – knowledge management concepts within this or that specific organization and bringing the knowledge management discipline to the information services community at large. She is specifically interested in seeing that the information practitioners – the special librarians, archivists, records managers, even MIS staff – get involved in knowledge management, simply because they are, to her way of thinking, best qualified to do this work.’ (St. Clair, 1999, pp 59–68)

Is that knowledge management, of the kind we’re being confronted with today in almost all organizations and at almost all levels of the organization? Probably so, if we look at how knowledge management has been defined throughout the management community at large. And even here we’re entering tricky territory, for different organizations define knowledge management differently. For some, particularly at the executive level in the profit sector, knowledge management is indeed about the management of intellectual capital, as Thomas Stewart described it about a decade ago. For others, for the librarian, for example, who has information customers coming in on a daily basis, needing to find further information on this or that subject, the fact that the librarian helped a researcher in another department conduct similar research, and that this librarian knows that the research was captured, compiled, and disseminated in a report that was produced by another office in the company, knowledge management is simply putting to use all the resources that he or she has at hand, in order to respond properly to the information customer’s need. Librarians, though, are not the only information professionals who are finding that knowledge management and the current interest in knowledge management as a management methodology has impact on their work. In the records and information management (RIM) community, important work is being done on the role of the RIM staff in the effective implementation of an organizational knowledge management effort. It is one of the RIM leaders (also cited in Chapter One) who provides a useful definition of knowledge management, bringing in the value of both the tacit and the explicit knowledge that makes up the total organizational knowledge construct: ‘Perhaps the most intriguing development is knowledge management (KM), which relates to cultivating and drawing on tacit knowledge; fostering information sharing among employees; finding new and better ways to make fresh, pertinent information available when and where needed; and fostering the active application of knowledge for the strategic advantage of the organization.’ (Dearstyne, 1999, p. 11)

Obviously, though, there is enough interest in knowledge management to ensure that it is thought about (and taught, as a subject for professional learning) in a variety of settings and from a variety of perspectives.

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Thomas Davenport has identified two of the latter. Davenport, whose work with Lawrence Prusak has established the two men as the authoritative voices in connecting the relationship between knowledge management as a business management methodology and also as a subject for discourse among information providers, describes the impact of knowledge management from two perspectives: ‘Since knowledge is information that is highly valued by people and has at some point resided in someone’s brain, people are the most important resource in effective knowledge management. . . . firms that excel at knowledge management will corner the market for people who are adept at creating and using knowledge . . . . Managers will be evaluated not only on how ‘successful’ their decisions were but also on the knowledge used in making them. The most successful firms in the future will make knowledge management every employee’s responsibility . . . . ‘Successful organizations and companies will calculate not only the costs of managing knowledge but also the benefits – in bad decisions averted, in products and services that better meet customer needs, and in wheels not reinvented. Today, the lack of a clear tie to corporate economics is holding back the concept of knowledge management. In the future, at least some firms will have made the connection between knowledge and money.’ (Davenport, 1995/1996, p. 30)

Certainly those impacts on the organizational environment have their recognized value, as can be seen in almost any enterprise that has succeeded with knowledge management. When the attention is on the people, and not on the artefacts that contain only some information, and on the organization’s fiduciary responsibility, the organization is going to react positively. When Mary Lee Kennedy was employed at Digital Equipment Corporation, she shared with her professional colleagues some of the concepts and ideas that went into the building of a knowledge management system at Digital. Primary among these was the ‘value proposition’ the Kennedy and her staff used to guide them as they did their work – their mission was to ‘provide consistent, reliable, authoritative external content, and content expertise for effective decision-making and timely transference and application of knowledge – anytime, anywhere’. While Kennedy’s Corporate Library Group at Digital had brand identity through the corporate intranet, what they also knew was that to be truly successful, they would be required to do more. For them it was ‘the establishment of a new way of doing our work’, and in implementing this new way of work, what Kennedy and her information professionals created was nothing less than a collection of ‘building blocks’ that all knowledge management entities must be built on: ‘The focus of our work is on evaluating, analysing, synthesizing, qualifying, and delivering externally created content. As a worldwide group of 43 information professionals, this is achieved by applying our expertise in strategic

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areas of the corporation. Our work is driven by partnerships with targeted businesses, information programs that cross organizational boundaries, and alliances with complementary corporate groups. What underlies all of our work is the need to ensure the information and knowledge we impart is trustworthy and can be applied, shared, and re-used.’ (Kennedy, 1997, pp. 39–40)

Such ideas are necessarily fraught with semantic dangers, as Stephen Abram has pointed out when he announces that ‘Special librarians cannot manage knowledge’, and advises that particular branch of the information industry to be careful about what it seeks: ‘Currently, we are running the risk of lurching headlong into a new positioning of our profession and our role as ‘knowledge managers’. The plain fact is that knowledge, per se, cannot be managed. In fact, capturing knowledge in any form other than into a human being’s brain, reduces it to mere information, or worse, data. Only the knowledge environment can be managed. ‘The reality is that special librarians – possibly all librarians – have operated at a level superior to mere knowledge management. We play a role in the knowledge ‘environment’ as key catalysts in the knowledge continuum. Information systems technology professionals will have grown from their data rooms into information management and the systems to support information – including delivery, integration, search interfaces, etc. Our success as a profession has historically been when we are associated with knowledgebased enterprises (universities, media, engineering, accounting, consulting firms, etc.) or with the knowledge intensive portions of corporations (research and development, sales and marketing, strategic planning, etc.). This is primarily because our contribution to the knowledge environment of our organizations is a tangible one directly related to successful decisionmaking.’ (Abram, 1997, p. 18)

These are proper, and important, concerns, but what is happening in the knowledge services industry, or so it seems at this particular point in history, is that knowledge professionals, computer scientists, information technology staff, and all the other knowledge workers are doing their best to improve and, wherever possible, to perfect the instruments and the tools that are used in the knowledge/intellectual capital management. If there is an ideal state of knowledge ‘control’ to be reached, it isn’t really being much talked about, and probably wouldn’t be of much interest to the knowledge workers who are on the front line, who every day have to deal with finding the information they (or someone else in the organization) require. In fact, the concerns and interests of the ordinary worker – not the scientist or management leader – are very much considered, and these workers are given good direction for how they can deal with this important new concept:

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‘Knowledge management is a hot topic in many technology and management journals and programs have begun to take off in many organizations, with varying degrees of success. Complaints that the concept of knowledge management is fuzzy at best are justified. However, done well, knowledge management has great potential to improve our work lives. ‘The need for organized knowledge sharing is obvious. Mission critical information needs to be shared outside of its pockets of primary use to reduce duplication of effort and unnecessary errors. As work is increasingly project-centred, people in different functional areas need ways to share, and build on, knowledge. Keeping corporate knowledge intact, including somehow extracting the tacit knowledge of employees, is the reason knowledge management has captured the attention of so many. Knowledge capture and management is a way to make work more efficient and enjoyable. It is a way whereby people contribute good information, shared with other people, to produce valuable, rewarding work. ‘For the moment, forget about finding the perfect, seamless knowledge management system that can do all things. Knowledge management serves the people doing the work, and they are the most logical initiators and maintainers of any knowledge management system. Think about what you’ve done in the past to ensure that best practices are adopted and to encourage and reward information sharing among staff. If you’ve done these things, you’ve made a contribution to the overall intelligence of your organization . . . ‘A quality management initiative, like quality management initiatives in the ‘80s often results in the formation of an office or task force, which becomes removed from the daily operation of the organization. Having someone in charge of knowledge management, making it an entirely top-down mandate, is not the best approach for every organization, particularly smaller ones. Incorporating good practices into daily operations works much better. ‘To maintain a viable knowledge repository, the skills of a librarian are needed, and that librarian needs to know the work being done. The librarian should be someone who does (or has done) similar work, but has an expanded role that includes organizing, filtering, and synthesizing information. When people need to share and extract information to get their work done, they will participate. The more people have control and ownership of their own knowledge bank, the more successful and rich it will become. ‘What can we do to begin to support the people who do the work, the people who are in the best position to capture the information that will improve the functioning of the organization? We can reward good additions to our knowledge repository by recognizing contributors. We can convince managers and decision makers to think of the knowledge repository as a capital asset. We can provide people with a simple set of tools to capture new information efficiently. ‘If knowledge management gets in the way of doing the job, it won’t happen; so make it easy and a natural part of the work to contribute one’s findings to the general knowledge base. To set knowledge management apart as a separately functioning entity is to risk failure. True knowledge management is not a thing apart from the day-to-day operation of our organizations. It is an integral part of any information-intensive industry.’ (Sevilla, 1999, pp. 1–2)

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The Learning Organization The fundamentals of knowledge management (the ‘KM building blocks’, Kennedy calls them) link very naturally to the work that many organizations are doing with another important – and popular – management concept, that of the learning organization. The idea was put forward by Peter Senge in the late 1980s and the 1990s, and it is now pursued philosophically through much management activity in general and, specifically, through the efforts of The Society for Organizational Learning and the MIT Centre for Organizational Learning at the Sloan School of Management. Not surprisingly, the idea has gained popularity because, as with knowledge management as a workplace influence, the advancement of learning from simply ‘something you do’ to a discipline that could be studied, analyzed and, hopefully, enhanced for the benefit of the organization had – and continues to have – tremendous appeal. For those seeking a quick definition, though, the learning organization cannot really be defined, as Senge makes clear. In an interview, he scoffed at the idea of putting a standard ‘definition’ to the concept: ‘First of all, no one understands what a learning organization is, least of all me. Think about it: The whole notion is to think of an organization as a living human community that, like anything alive, is never fixed; it is always evolving and unfolding. So, anyone’s description of a learning organization is, at best, a limited approximation. ‘The five-disciplines approach takes the perspective that organizations work the way they do because of how people think and interact. And if there aren’t changes at that level, then the organization can’t change. We still believe very strongly in that perspective. It’s like the core of a tree. As the tree grows, the core is still there, but [the tree] keeps adding new rings. ‘It was always about learning and about understanding interdependency. But I think there’s been a subtle revolution from roots that, to some degree, had to do with understanding engineering systems to understanding living systems. . . . ‘In many ways, any entity – individual or collective – learns from the outside in, from its increasing appreciation of the world it’s in. Business corporations have ignored their environments. But, gradually, they’re beginning to think of them more seriously, as opposed to just inputs and outputs. ‘Family and community structures have been decimated by the growth of the industrial age institution, the corporation in particular. When our workers have problems with their spouses or teenagers, do we say, ‘That’s an HR problem and we’ll get somebody to counsel them’, or do we ask, ‘What is it about the way we organize and work that might be contributing to or creating the conditions for those problems?’ (Abernathy, 1998)

Nevertheless, much that Senge does say, and much that other people have said and written about the learning organization as an organizational

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concept, provides a wealth of insight about the concept, and why it seems to work so well in those enterprises that have given the learning organization serious attention. For one thing, in the learning organization, performance is linked to learning, as Senge commented on another occasion: ‘. . . superior performance depends on superior learning . . . The impulse to learn is at its heart an impulse to be generative, to expand our capability. . . . In the learning organization, leaders are responsible for building organizations where people are continually expanding their capabilities to shape their future.’ (Senge, 1990b, p. 7–8)

So what we find, when thinking about professional learning in practically any context in today’s management arena, is considerable reference to and exploration of the ideas embodied in the learning organization as a management methodology. It is a concept that has been warmly embraced by many administrators and managers in the information industry, and it is not uncommon to find programs loosely built on the theme of ‘howwe-made-our-library-a-learning-organization’ proposed and presented at conferences of the many associations affiliated with librarianship and information studies. It is a subject much discussed in the research libraries environment today. The concepts of the learning organization, as a discipline for study and as a management practice, are now fairly well understood, and they have become almost a touchstone for organizations whose managers wish to demonstrate how they have been able to break out of the traditional top-down, hierarchical management mode to a more embracing, holistic management process. And while it is tempting to attempt to summarize and toss out a few catch-phrases that demonstrate just what the learning organization is, what we’re talking about here is really more of a concept and a broader philosophical approach, than a specific process with specific rules and guidelines. In fact, rules and guidelines are probably the last thing from the minds of those who would embrace the concepts of the learning organization. Yet while the concepts relating to the learning organization as a management philosophy are valuable for their general direction, they must of course be adapted to any particular environment for which they are being considered. For example, the ‘elements of context’ of organizational learning are identified as 1) vision, value, and integrity, 2) dialogue, and 3) systems thinking. Similarly, the five ‘disciplines’ of the learning organization are identified as systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning, and they were recognized by Senge as ‘gradually converging to innovate learning organizations’ (Senge, 1990a, p. 6). All of these concepts should quite naturally be considered in the course of any study that would relate to a professional learning endeavor,

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but what we find is that quite often, these concepts that should be part of the ‘base fabric’, so to speak, of the work are not, and must be pulled up and directly linked to the organization at hand. Nevertheless, it must also be recognized that in seeking to adapt any particular management philosophy in an information environment, it is not always possible to incorporate that philosophy in toto. The specific organizational culture may require additional considerations or a different structure for relating the philosophy to management styles already in place. For example, in some information or knowledge services organizations, it is not possible to establish a total commitment to team learning, as proposed in Senge’s advocacy of his ‘fifth discipline’. In other organizations, though, the idea of team learning takes hold without a problem, but others of the learning organization’s disciplines, such as systems thinking or shared vision, are hard to establish. Other variations and considerations will also be identified in most organizations, and all lead to the conclusion that any learning and development initiative for these organizations must be specific and uniquely organized to fit the unique environment that the organization represents. Despite these caveats, though, there continue to be significant connections between knowledge management and the philosophy behind the learning organization. In one program at which Senge spoke about knowledge management for learning managers, he gave much attention to how human beings learn, particularly in the organizational environment, and noted that what makes information management become knowledge management is context. He then went even further, and stated that in fact, what we think of as ‘organizational knowledge management’ is in reality information management, simply because – agreeing with Stephen Abram – knowledge cannot, in and of itself, be captured: ‘You can’t capture know-how’, Senge said. Giving attention to Polanyi’s theory of ‘passive knowledge’ – ‘We know far more than we can ever possibly tell’ – Senge described how much of the interest in learning, from a business viewpoint, has been centred on discovery, scenario planning, mental models, and similar ideas. But equally critical, according to Senge, is interest in production, in doing, but that’s not given so much attention because that’s where there’s a greater risk of failure. In his presentation, Senge described how it’s easy to get confused when we’re attempting to work with knowledge management. Information is sort of ‘thing’-like, but know-how – what we think of as tacit knowledge – cannot be managed as a commodity. So the two core questions that Senge offers for study are, 1) How is knowledge generated? And, 2) How is knowledge diffused? These are questions that Senge himself admits society will be wrestling with ‘for the next couple of decades’, but there is movement in the right direction. Fundamentally, it is necessary for managers and employees to recognize that the critical and fundamental learning unit of

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any organization is the team. ‘Individuals do not produce value’, Senge said in his presentation. ‘It’s only when individuals collaborate that anything of value can be produced’, so the cornerstone of learning must be the team. In fact, in Senge’s scenario, learning would seem to be irrelevant if it is not focused on teams, since all knowledge is generated in working teams. In the learning organization, according to Senge, the ‘working’ and the ‘learning’ are inseparable, since all learning is contextual. Learning, therefore, is only successful when what is learned is put to work in context. Yet there has been even further refinement of the concept, so that now, in addition to the attention being given to the concepts of the learning organization, work is now being done in the training and development community at large on a practical enlargement or enhancement of the idea. This new emphasis is on what one pair of authors calls the teaching organization, and it is a concept that is catching on in many companies and enterprises. Certainly it has a place in the information industry (particularly with librarianship’s famous and long-standing interest in the sharing of information and resources). Outlined in an article published in 1998, the principles of the teaching organization are not hard to grasp: Noel M Tichy and Eli Cohen, the two men who write about the subject, assert that being a learning organization isn’t enough, and that organizations now must become teaching organizations, which they differentiate as follows, in terms that can clearly be related to the environments in which practically all information professionals work: ‘The concepts underlying learning organizations are valuable. But to succeed in a highly competitive global marketplace, companies need to be able to change quickly; their people must be able to acquire and assimilate new knowledge and skills rapidly. Though learning is a necessary competency, it’s not sufficient to assure marketplace success . . . . ‘Teaching organizations share with learning organizations the goal that everyone continually acquire new knowledge and skills. But to that they add the more critical goal that everyone pass their learning on to others.’ (Tichy and Cohen, 1998, pp. 27–33.)

In Tichy and Cohen’s teaching organizations, leadership and teaching are intrinsically bound up together, and it is the responsibility of leaders to teach. Acknowledging that responsibility provides the organization with a ‘teaching framework’, you might say, one in which teaching takes place every day and on every employee level. In such an environment, with teaching openly acknowledged and going on all the time, the organization is able, so say Tichy and Cohen, to concentrate on critical business issues and avoid ‘the fuzzy focus’ that has plagued some learning organization efforts ‘which have sometimes become a throwback to the 1960sand 1970s-style self-exploration and human relations training’ (Ibid.).

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Building a teaching organization must be done internally, Tichy and Cohen assert, and must draw on unique strengths and talents found within their organization. The most important factor is whether individual leaders are prepared to do it, for if they are going to build a teaching organization, they must follow three rules: ●

‘Consider developing leaders a core competitive competency;

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‘Develop teachable points of view on how to operate and grow the company, and how to teach others to be leaders;

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‘Design and execute methods on a wide scale, and make sure the teaching goes beyond technical skills to include developing and honing leadership abilities.’ (Ibid.)

In refining their theory, Tichy and Cohen have discovered that leaders need to have teachable points of view in several specific areas: ●

‘Ideas. An idea starts with ideas about organizing people, capital, and technology to deliver services or products to customers and value to society;

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‘Values. Many organizations try to launch new strategies without thinking about how the values and behaviours of its workforce need to change – disastrous. Leaders must help people change. That’s why when Ameritech, the Chicago-based former Baby Bell, began to enter highly competitive telecommunications markets, it had to abandon its old, plodding corporate values aimed at satisfying regulatory agencies and adopt new ones that prized speed and service;

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‘Energy. In a competitive marketplace, people are constantly buffeted by changes caused by competitors, technology, consumers, and a host of other things. Leaders find ways to turn those changes into positive, energizing events rather than confusing and demoralizing ones;

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‘Edge. Edge is the willingness to make tough decisions. Leaders have clear points of view about how to face reality, incorporate information, and make and communicate decisions.’ (Ibid.)

A New Opportunity As the knowledge services industry seeks to find a structure for professional learning for its workers, the combined concepts of the learning organization and the teaching organization offer an almost unheard of (certainly unanticipated) opportunity for empowering its practitioners. Knowledge management contributes an emphasis on both tacit and explicit information, not one to the exclusion of the other as has been

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so often the case in the past. It is also, like the learning organization and the teaching organization, built around the concepts of working with people, of helping people to achieve what they can achieve, and with the people themselves seen as the primary resource. Knowledge management has a connection with the organization’s bottom line, whether the organization in question measures profits in financial terms or in services provided well. In any case, good knowledge management leads to success in the achievement of the organizational mission. For a new and structured professional learning scenario, one of the beauties of knowledge management is that it lends itself to – in fact almost requires – cross-boundary partnerships, collaboration, and alliances. In fact, knowledge management doesn’t work when there are ‘turf’ wars. Finally, though, the best thing about linking knowledge management into a new theory of professional learning is that knowledge management improves work, and makes the workers lives better. Certainly this last is a characteristic of the learning organization, and as such, provides a critical advantage to the Knowledge Development/ Knowledge Sharing approach to professional learning. And, as with knowledge management, the emphasis on the worker is intentional: by avoiding rules and guidelines, by being as it were almost indefinable, and by insisting that working and learning are inseparable, the concepts of the learning organization fit into the highest-order professional learning environment. So, too, with the teaching organization, but here the Knowledge Development/Knowledge Sharing is built in to the very foundation of the idea: yes, everyone must continually acquire knowledge, but for the teaching organization to work, that knowledge must be shared. And since teaching is a leadership responsibility, the basic tenet of the teaching organization is that others are taught to be leaders, an approach that is almost idealistic in its democratic appeal. By combining the best attributes of knowledge management, the learning organization, and the teaching organization, KD/KS appeals to more than simply the efficiency and the effectiveness of the organization. Of course productivity is an issue; it always is, and must be. But more than anything else, KD/KS offers employees and management alike a splendid opportunity to combine their best efforts to make professional learning in knowledge services a true asset, an attraction to the industry and a reason for seeking out careers in information work. The information customer benefits, the parent organization or community benefits, and, best of all, the information professional benefits, acquiring and taking with him tools, skills, and competencies that will enrich him for all his life. That, in essence, is what professional learning must be about in the new century, and the KD/KS approach to professional learning can make it happen.

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References Abernathy, Donna J (1999) ‘Leading-edge learning: Peter Senge and Jack Welch share some thoughts about what it means to learn and lead into the next century’, Training and Development,16 November 1999, www.astd.org. Abram, Stephen (1997) ‘Post information age for special librarians: is knowledge management the answer?’ Information Outlook 1(6). Davenport, Tom (1995) ‘The future of knowledge management’, CIO Magazine. December 15, 1995/January 1, 1996. Dearstyne, Bruce W (1999) ‘Records management of the future: anticipate, adapt, and succeed’, The Information Management Journal, October 1999. Drucker, Peter F (1992) Managing for the Future: the 1990s and Beyond, New York: Truman Talley Books. Kennedy, Mary Lee (1997) ‘Building blocks for knowledge management at Digital Equipment Corporation: the WebLibrary’, Information Outlook 1(6). Meister, Jeanne C (1998) ‘Corporate universities: the new pioneers of management education’, Harvard Management Update 3(10). Senge, Peter M (1990a) The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization, New York: Currency Doubleday. Senge, Peter M (1990b) ‘The leader’s new work: building learning organizations’, Sloan Management Review, 32(1). Sevilla, Christine (1999) ‘Knowledge management: beyond the buzzword’, Performance in Practice, Fall 1999. St. Clair, Guy (1999) Change Management in Action: the InfoManage interviews, Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association. Tichy, Noel M, and Cohen, Eli (1998) ‘The Teaching Organization’, Training and Development 52(7).

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Chapter Seven

KD/KS: Qualification Management for the New Profession

On the opening page of this book, the assertion is made that ‘. . . we certainly can’t create, in advance, a ‘grand design’ for a profession that will be managing knowledge services. A few sentences later, of course, the assertion is softened and the grand design is permitted if ‘. . . the author proposing a grand design is willing to admit that what he is offering here is merely his own scheme for a starting point – a first step, if you will – for moving closer to this new profession.’ What is presented here is, indeed, my own scheme. Let us proceed to that starting point. We know what we want. Simply stated, our goal is excellence in knowledge services, and expertise in the performance of duties associated with knowledge services. We want nothing less than the establishment of a knowledge services profession. In this new profession, information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning are delivered at the highest levels of excellence (with excellence being determined by those who are the recipients or customers for the service) and knowledge practitioners perform their duties with the highest levels of expertise. We need a new profession because the many and varied professions, disciplines, and types of work providing products, services, and consultations associated with information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning are too many and too varied. There is no unifying structure holding them together. As a result, services provided to customers are also many and varied, and while good, honest efforts are made to ensure that knowledge services match customer requirements, too often the customer is given less than what he or she is seeking, or the provider of the required product, service, or consultation is not qualified to provide it at the level the customer requires. A structured knowledge services profession will ensure that those who seek to benefit from information management, knowledge management, and strategic

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learning get what they need. At the same time, in a new knowledge management profession, training and professional learning within each company, organization, or other operational entity that will offer these services can be linked to the new profession, contributing to the quality of excellence and the continuing expertise of knowledge practitioners. To build the new profession, one that provides excellence in service delivery and established expertise in its practitioners, there are several steps that must be taken. First, those who are offering knowledge services or any component part of knowledge services within an organizational entity (a training program in a company’s Human Resources Department, for example, or a specialized library in a scientific research institute) must listen to managers, customers, suppliers, educators, and all other stakeholders who interact with knowledge professionals. We must go to them and ask them what they need, what they are seeking to do with the information or the service that the knowledge professionals provide, and what their concerns are about how these services and products are provided. We must gather as much information about the process as we can, from their point of view, to ensure that we knowledge services professionals understand and are meeting their needs. A second step looks beyond the departmental entity itself, for any operational unit providing knowledge services needs to be able to identify and respond to organizational and enterprise-wide knowledge services requirements. In most of our organizations, we are now well settled into a collaborative and holistic workplace environment, and unless our operational entity is specifically structured to provide services for a limited group of users and chartered to be so limited, it is to everyone’s advantage to look to knowledge services provision that is equally collaborative and holistic. A third responsibility is to recognize the diversity of needs in knowledge services delivery. While one department or other unit of the organization might require fairly routine knowledge services products (monthly reports of this or that activity, for example, or basic training in the use of an online management tool), another unit might require information or training that is light-years away in sophistication and intellectual effort. We must be aware that needed information, to be transformed into knowledge in most organizations and companies, is not always limited to one or another ‘type’ of information. For years, corporate libraries focused on delivering external information to their users, while internal information was obtained from wherever in the organization it had been stored. Today such distinctions are no longer valid, and knowledge services delivery simply refers to what Miriam A Drake, Director Emerita of Information Services at the Georgia Institute of Technology calls

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‘business information’. Such information, Drake says, is simply information needed to run the business of the organization. ‘The information can be competitive information, what the competitors are doing, or it can be more than that, such things as trends and development in the economy that affect the business. It can be customer or supplier information that affects the immediate future of the business. Or, more commonly, business information can be internal information located somewhere else in the organization, or external information that is obtained from beyond the organization for the benefit of the organization’s employees. Where the information has been captured is irrelevant; that it is required in a business capacity is what makes it important.’ (Drake, 2001)

Obviously, these different types of information will require different methodologies and formulations for service delivery, and these variations in requirements must be identified, and reconciled within the operational structure of the department providing knowledge services. Finally, and related to the above, it is imperative that all knowledge services professionals, regardless of the branch of knowledge services in which they are employed, discard the arrogance of autonomy. There continues to be much too ‘attitude’ in the approach that knowledge services practitioners bring to their customers, too much authority in their approach to serving others, and too little understanding that the knowledge customer might have (and likely has) as much background and understanding of his or her needs as does the provider. When these postures are changed and those knowledge practitioners who are guilty of professional arrogance assume a little more of their customers’ understanding – that is, when knowledge practitioners recognize that they and their customers are all part of the same enterprise and commit themselves to a holistic approach to the knowledge services interaction – all players will benefit. So to come to this new profession, change is required, and comfort with change is going to be one of the most difficult challenges in the whole process. Numerous experiences during the past century have demonstrated that the very people who are the ‘best’ at providing the products, services, and consultations that constitute knowledge services are also, in many cases, the kinds of people who are not comfortable with change. These workers (and many of their managers and supervisors) will have to be convinced that the changes that must take place are good not only for them, as knowledge practitioners, but for those who are the beneficiaries of their efforts, their customers and users. The best way to convince those who are reluctant to change is to put before them a concept that might be referred to as ‘the case for

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expertise’.1 For those who work in knowledge services, or in any of the component disciplines that make up the knowledge services spectrum, a major change in the workplace has already taken place. There is now a different perception about the role of information, knowledge, and learning. In the modern organization, knowledge services as an organizational function is now recognized (although perhaps not exactly in these terms) as a critical element in organizational success. Information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning are now understood to contribute as much to the successful achievement of the organizational mission as any other operational functions in the organization. As part of this ‘new’ management environment, of course, the people who manage knowledge services are similarly recognized (or should be recognized) as critical players in the organizational management structure. In this new environment, their expertise is evidenced in 10 component attributes. These are: 1. Changed Mentality Not too long ago, information workers did not necessarily mind hiding behind ‘dead’ materials. They were content to manage the ‘things’, the books and files and artefacts that contained the information. They could limit their service to reacting to customer needs, rather than taking a proactive stance in the delivery of knowledge services. That’s changed now. Today’s knowledge professional must go out into the organization, go to the customers’ workplace, and ‘manage by walking around’. Direct interaction with others in the organization is not a choice nowadays – it’s required for knowledge services practitioners. 2. ‘Big-Picture’ Perspective In the past, organizational decisions were made by senior management, with middle management and line staff responsible for implementing those decisions. Knowledge services staff, by definition, were there to ‘plug in’ the required information, which was then used as necessary. Information delivery (not knowledge delivery) was provided in a vacuum, so to speak. Today’s knowledge worker knows how the information being requested will be used, and accepts that the knowledge function is part of the larger organizational function. The librarian, records manager, archivist, or other knowledge services employee is no longer a ‘stand-alone’ functionary. The work this person does must relate directly to the organizational ‘big picture’, or it isn’t done. 3. Permanent, Ongoing Justification There was a time when the component parts of the knowledge services function were simply another part 1 This section represents a reworking of concepts and some of the text of ‘Change Management in Information Services: The Case for Expertise’, by Evelin Morgenstern and Guy St. Clair, InfoManage: The International Management Newsletter for the Information Services Professional 5(3), February, 1998, pp. 6–8.

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of the organizational framework. When they were included in the organizational effort, information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning (or whatever they were called in the organization’s particular environment) were operating because they had been created at some time in the past and were vaguely expected to be providing some benefit to the organization. Not any more. Today’s knowledge services function is as vulnerable to downsizing, outsourcing, right-sizing, and elimination as any other function in the organization, and if knowledge services – as an operational function – does not provide a viable return on investment, its days are numbered. Today’s knowledge services managers expect to spend a certain amount of energy justifying the operation’s existence, simply because every function in the organization must now be justified. 4. Costs Return on investment is not the only form of justification required of information managers, because knowledge services – of which most components were free, or relatively free, at one time or another in history – is no longer considered to be so. Despite the claims of some who object to this characterization of information as a commodity, there is no better word to describe the basic element that underpins knowledge services. Every piece of information, every transformation of information into knowledge, every use of knowledge in strategic learning costs something to produce, and every knowledge services transaction costs something to implement (in staff time, if nothing else). Senior management knows this and, as with all operational functions, expects those who manage knowledge services to understand the relationships between the costs of obtaining the information needed for providing knowledge services and the costs of delivering knowledge services. 5. Customer Focus, Not Collection Focus Not too many years ago, most of those working in what we now refer to as knowledge services were still concerned with building collections. Regardless of whether they were located in a library, records management unit, archives department – or elsewhere in the enterprise – their primary effort went into acquiring as much ‘material’ as they could acquire, so that it would be there in case one of their customers required it. But as customers’ needs changed, one of the things the customers realized was that much of the information they really needed was available through a variety of media. And that, of course, related to another important change: with the availability of technology and the growth of electronic information delivery, knowledge professionals began to realize that they did not, in fact, need to acquire a great many materials ‘just-in-case’ they were needed. Simultaneously, senior management began to realize that real estate is important (and more to the point, expensive), and began to ask why so much space in the organization’s information/knowledge services facility was devoted to

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books, journals, and other hard-copy items. It became just too expensive to maintain a collection that relied totally on hard-copy materials. For most knowledge services operations, though, the most significant change has to do with the expertise of the knowledge worker. No longer does the librarian, records manager, archivist, or other knowledge professional casually ‘slide’ between industries, subject specialities, and the like. Today’s knowledge professional is expected to be a content specialist as well, to know what customers will require in their search for information, simply because the knowledge worker is as much (or nearly as much) of an expert in the subject as is the information customer. 6. Results Orientation Related to this customer focus, the success of the knowledge services transaction is today determined by the success of the result of having the information needed to transform it into knowledge, and to share that knowledge through strategic learning. Today’s knowledge services customer says, ‘I’m working on such-and-such a project and to ensure that such-and-such a result is obtained, I need these specific pieces of information. And I need to have it delivered in a format, quantity, and context that relates exactly to the ultimate result I am seeking to achieve.’ What has happened, in effect, is that the knowledge services delivery picture has changed, and the knowledge workers and the knowledge customers recognize the benefits (as David Bender, formerly Executive Director of the Special Libraries Association characterized it) of ‘just-for-you’ information/knowledge services delivery. As a result, the knowledge professional’s value to the organization increases, and a cycle of quality service comes into being. 7. Competition Nowadays, except for very specialized and very specific materials, the knowledge services customer can pretty much find the information he or she requires in a number of places. And as competition increases for this customer’s ‘business’, management methodologies from the general management community move into information services. As a result, those who manage knowledge services operations are routinely familiar with quality measures, customer satisfaction studies, benchmarking, team management, and similar tools that enable these managers – like other managers – to define departmental goals and measure departmental success. Knowledge services managers now use these tools. They must do so if they are to remain relevant within the organizational context. 8. Life-Long Learning Employers now routinely send employees to training courses, professional development programs, and they like. Or they bring trainers into the organization on a routine basis. At the same time, there is great movement toward individually motivated training, continuing education, and strategic learning. All of which (and probably related to heightened competition within the information industry and the

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knowledge services environment) contributes to better service and higher quality knowledge services delivery for the organization’s or the unit’s knowledge customers. It’s all part of a new mood in the knowledge services (formerly information services) workplace, a mood that’s built on the realization that simply to stay in place is to fall behind, and to fall behind rather drastically. It calls for knowledge professionals to think of themselves as . . . 9. Entrepreneurial Thinkers/Risk Takers No longer is the knowledge services manager interested in doing something just because it’s ‘always been done’. These managers, and the staff who work with them, now question everything, and ask why a particular process or resource is used. They jump at the chance to do something differently, not for the sake of doing it differently but to do it better. And if they must resort to the basics of entrepreneurial thinking, to be prepared to throw out a process or a procedure in order to replace it with a new and better one, they will do so. Most of today’s knowledge services managers, in fact, are happy and willing (even enthusiastic) to move information/knowledge services delivery beyond what ‘might’ have worked in the past to something that will work today. Trying new approaches to knowledge services delivery is standard operating procedure, and a certain level of assertiveness is now accepted in the management of a knowledge services operation. As the old saying goes, ‘it’s better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission’, and today’s knowledge services professionals are no longer shy about putting themselves and their efforts forward. And, since organizational management requires entrepreneurial thinking in order to achieve organizational success, knowledge services managers find themselves working as organizational managers. They do not see themselves (and are not seen as) ‘support staff’ any more. 10. Technology Focus All of which, of course, builds on the role of information technology in society today. In the management of knowledge services, all roads lead – more or less – to information technology. A consideration of and an implementation of information technology, in whatever manifestations are called for, must now be accepted as part of the knowledge services management framework. Boundaryless and seamless information/knowledge services delivery – the delivery of information products and knowledge services regardless of format or location – is demanded, and knowledge services customers (and the managers of organizations that employ knowledge workers) are now requiring of knowledge professionals not only a familiarity and expertise with content, but an awareness– and utilization – of what might be termed ‘connections’. Today’s knowledge workers never say, ‘I can’t get that for you’, or ‘we don’t do that here’. Today’s knowledge services professionals say, ‘let me have a deadline and I’ll find what you’re looking for.’

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Understanding the role that these attributes play in the modern knowledge services operational unit establishes, in an informal way, what our expectations are as we seek candidates to work in the new knowledge services profession. At a different level, though, considerations must be made with respect to the role of knowledge services in the larger management environment. There are three primary considerations. First, and probably most important, there must be collaboration among employers and learning providers as the profession is structured, and learning for knowledge services (both with respect to formal education and continuing professional learning) must include their contribution. We must recognize that the selection of career knowledge services practitioners is currently not driven by employers – the very people who need the work done – and we must structure the profession so that they will be involved as education and training programs are designed for the profession. The current practice, in practically all of the various careers that contribute to knowledge services, gives very limited acknowledgement to the role of employers in determining qualifications for knowledge services practitioners. Second, it is important to recognize that knowledge careers are a threetrack system. This three-track career system is similar to what Martin and the Strategic Visions effort described in 1993, when that group was attempting to establish new standards for formal education for librarians (described in a previous chapter). For them, the proposed career structure would include, among other things, ‘a two-track system which allows the selection of either a career, with the assumption of a continuing contribution to the profession, or a vocation, requiring appropriate training but with no expectation that time or effort will be given beyond the normal working day’ (Martin, 1993, p. 214). Within the proposed knowledge services construct, there will also be these different ‘levels’ of employees, but instead of providing services that are limited to information management (in that case, librarianship), these employees will be working in all three related component activities that made up knowledge services. In thinking about the kinds of people who will be doing this work, we can certainly take into account the distinctions that both Peter Drucker and Karl Albrecht have made about knowledge workers. In the first place, it was, indeed, Drucker who brought the term ‘knowledge worker’ into the language, as has been pointed out in a number of places. Writing in 1994, Drucker noted that he had coined the term in a 1959 book, Landmarks of Tomorrow (Drucker, 1994, p.62), and in the survey which he wrote for The Economist in late 2001, he states usefully: ‘The terms ‘knowledge industries’, ‘knowledge work’, and ‘knowledge worker’ are only 40 years old. They were coined around 1960, simultaneously but

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independently; the first by a Princeton economist, Fritz Machlup, the second and third by this writer. Now everyone uses them, but as yet hardly anyone understands their implications for human values and human behaviour, for managing people and making them productive, for economics and for politics. What is already clear, however, is that the emerging knowledge society and knowledge economy will be radically different from the society and economy of the late twentieth century . . .’ (Drucker, 2001, p. 8)

But society changed during those 40 years, and while the fundamental concepts attached to ‘knowledge industries’, ‘knowledge work’, and ‘knowledge workers’ remained in place, the larger workplace refined them. By the turn of the new century, people like Karl Albrecht had became concerned that the term ‘knowledge worker’ was no longer totally accurate. Now it seemed too broad, and set up expectations for workers, with respect to knowledge work that could not – and possibly should not – be set up (for example, the notion that people will have to learn a completely new way of thinking to succeed in knowledge work). Albrecht’s observation has serious implications for managers in knowledge services, particularly in terms of who is hired to work in the field (and for whom training/strategic learning opportunities are to be provided): ‘Peter Drucker’s concept of the knowledge worker needs updating. We must recognize two categories of workers: knowledge workers and data workers. Knowledge workers include scientists, researchers, planners, managers, writers, teachers, designers, consultants, doctors, lawyers, and others whose contributions depend on their grasp of information and their ability to apply it. ‘Data workers, forming a lower caste as it were, are people who handle formatted information in predetermined ways. Information technology has made a whole range of low-skilled workers more productive – not by transforming them into different kinds of thinkers, but by transforming their work into data work. The 19-year-old McDonald’s worker doesn’t have to know how to add up a customer’s order or even what prices to charge. He or she just punches a coded button, and the software does the knowledge work. At the upper end of the scale, semi-skilled medical technicians now use information technology to perform laboratory analyses that were beyond the skills of experts a decade ago. In those and many other cases, the technology actually reduces the demand for knowledge and information skills rather than increases it. ‘One could argue for an in-between category – the information worker, who does more than manipulate data in routinized ways. The escrow clerk in a real estate office, for example, may need to know a few basic things about property transactions. But, for the most part, this person carries out higher-level tasks designed by someone else.’ (Albrecht, 2001, p. 27)

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Actually, now that knowledge services requires a broader employee base (the Strategic Visions effort was related only to librarianship), we can see that there are, in fact, three levels of employees working in knowledge services: support staff, those who might still be characterized as ‘vocational’ staff (using Martin’s good definition), and professional staff. Support staff is already clearly defined, and at this point in the history of management science, everyone understands who ‘support staff’ are and the work they do. They are, indeed, ‘white-collar’ workers, but their work is not predicated on using ‘professional’ skills requiring ‘professional’ education and learning. In fact, they are Albrecht’s ‘data workers’. These employees are not expected to have professional skills or professional ambitions (although, in the new knowledge services profession, they will have opportunities to move into a higher level of work if they are interested in doing so and if they are capable of attaining professional qualification). Vocational staff are those staff members who will be employed in knowledge services at a level higher than support staff, perhaps that ‘in-between worker’ that Albrecht characterized as doing ‘more than manipulate data in routinized ways’. These employees will indeed requiring appropriate training, but they make up that large group of workers who have no expectation of giving time or effort to their professional endeavours, beyond the normal working day. They will be good knowledge workers, and the limited training that they receive on the job will be enough to sustain them as good knowledge workers, so that the organization will of course benefit from having them on staff. The difference will be that they do not expect, and indeed will not be expected to, ‘advance’ in the knowledge services profession. Like support staff/data workers, vocational workers can advance to a higher level of work, if they are interested in doing so and if they are capable of attaining professional qualification. At the next level, professional staff are employees who are expected to provide excellence in the delivery of knowledge services and to have the expertise to do their work as well as it can be done. These knowledge services professionals recognize that they have a double purpose, first to provide the highest levels of knowledge services delivery within their employing organizations that can be provided and, second to advance the knowledge services profession. The two goals are certainly compatible but, as we now recognize, these goals will not be achieved as long as the many and various professions, disciplines, and types of work providing products, services, and consultations associated with information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning continue in their disparate state. These knowledge careers – and how they are different from one another – must be recognized as the knowledge services profession is

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established. Obviously, most of the higher education required will be for professional staff (and that is the target audience for the learning activities described in this book). It must also be recognized, nevertheless, that support staff/data workers and vocational staff all contribute significantly to the successful implementation of knowledge services in any organization. Their learning and training needs will of course be given attention from a wide variety of learning providers as they experience their careers. And, indeed, if these employees desire to advance into a higher level of professionalism, the studies and training that they have already undertaken successfully, as support staff/data workers and as vocational staff, will provide an appropriate introduction into the knowledge services profession. Obviously, then, the new knowledge services profession will require a unifying structure. What is needed is an overarching framework that will pull together the various, disparate parts of the profession, creating a holistic structure that will lead to that excellence in service delivery and expertise in the practitioners that is so strongly required, and desired. We can build this framework by going back to the basics, by thinking about what it is we really want to achieve with this effort: we want to provide higher-level, better workers for knowledge services. To have those workers, we must establish a framework that will permit their work to be as good as it can be. This aspiration leads, quite naturally, to the third consideration that must be made with respect to the role of knowledge services in the larger management environment, the system of qualification management to be put in place. If we can come up with a framework that ensures the quality of the workforce, we can build the new knowledge services profession. Designing the framework can begin with stating what we want. Our effort here is nothing less than the creation of a profession made up of people who are qualified to provide excellence in the delivery of knowledge services and who have the expertise to do so. This effort will result in nothing less than the creation a new worker, the certified knowledge services professional.

The Knowledge Council To achieve this goal requires the development of an organization which will have the authority and responsibility to plan, execute, and oversee qualification management for knowledge services professionals. This authoritative and specially created organization, probably called something like, ‘The Knowledge Board’, ‘The Knowledge Services Board’, or ‘The Knowledge Council’ (which is what we’ll call it for

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now)2, will be constituted as an independent body. Its purpose will be to establish standards for the practice of knowledge services management as a profession, to establish qualification criteria, and to certify successful candidates who apply to be knowledge services professionals. Additionally, The Knowledge Council will create and disseminate information and knowledge about the management of knowledge services as a discipline, and sponsor research in the discipline. To be effective, the council will be organized as an international body (although, for legal purposes, it will most likely be incorporated in the United States), and its expected reach is, by design, global. This bipartite structure of The Knowledge Council will allow for the two services to the knowledge services profession to be managed separately, but in tandem. As noted, one role of the council – its reason for existence – will be to certify knowledge services practitioners as professionals; the council will be chartered as a certification entity, not as an educational organization. Certification will be the responsibility of the council’s ‘Qualifications Board’ (as it might be called), and that board’s work will be strictly limited to qualification management for the knowledge services profession. Its function will be to administer a certification process in order to establish that successful candidates are qualified to practise as board-certified knowledge services professionals. Certification will probably be done on an annual basis, both for entrants into the profession and for the annual certification of continuing practitioners. As stated, the board will not be a learning provider itself, but it will collaborate with recognized learning providers (academic, commercial, and others) to determine their products’ compatibility with the established standards of the council. The other role of The Knowledge Council will be to provide research services for the knowledge services profession. As a global, independent organization, the council will include a ‘Research Board’ (it might be called) to operate a think tank with a speciality in knowledge services management. The board’s role will be to conduct research, sponsor visiting scholars programs, convene conferences, make forecasts, assess trends, publish information and analysis, and bring knowledge services professionals together to benefit from networking with one another. 2 It should be noted that ‘The Knowledge Council’ is the name of a subgroup of The Australian Population Institute Inc. (www.apop.com.au/news/july2000/ 0700_7.html). Both the phrase ‘The Knowledge Board’ and ‘The Knowledge Services Board’ are also in use, one to describe ‘the portal of the European KM community’ (www.knowledgeboard.com/) and the other as subgroups of various professional or scientific organizations, such a that of the British Computer Society (www.bcs.org.uk/publicat/ebull/nov01/comment.htm). These are common terms, and naming the organization will probably require much study and consideration before a decision is made.

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One particular characteristic of The Knowledge Council is that it will not be affiliated with any other professional association (that is, it will not be organized as part of any of the currently existing professional organizations whose members work in the fields that make up knowledge services, and it will not be a new professional association created for the purpose). It will be separately organized. The reason is simple: the knowledge services profession is too broad and includes too many disciplines, professions, and types of work to fit under any one professional association, and no one of these ‘feeder’-type groups can have the broad overview required. As an example, if The Knowledge Council is established as a branch or sub-unit of, say, an information science organization, the scientific and theoretical ‘agendas’ of knowledge services will be served. But the role of management and its emphasis on organization culture and customer relationship management might be subverted, or lost, or the historical framework of archives management (as another related discipline) might be dismissed or not treated seriously enough for that discipline’s practitioners. A broader-based organization will be required, but it must of course build on the strengths of associations and organizations representing existing (and future) disciplines. A similar attribute of The Knowledge Council relates to its organizational structure; it will be a private organization, and it will not be a function of any governmental agency. Again, the reasons have to do with independence and, in this case, with the global focus that the council will provide. If sponsored or chartered as part of a larger, transborder organization (the European Union, say, or UNESCO), the council will not be able to be independent and, as one of a number of bureaucratic institutions, will run the risk of losing its effectiveness even before it is organized. On the other hand, if The Knowledge Council is to be successful, some affiliations will be required. Obviously the council will not be affiliated with any existing academic, philanthropic, or commercial organization as part of that organization. It will, certainly, require support from such organizations for its initial development and continued growth. There are many such organizations that will be able to lend influence and support to the council, as it is developed, and these organizations will, in fact, benefit from their affiliation. Nevertheless, these will not be organizational or structural affiliations but shared relationships that support all parties’ goals. Organizational issues, naturally, must be resolved. Certainly the suggestions offered here will unquestionably be reworked, and additional considerations will be posed by all participants in the development of the initiative. Still, we can safely assert that the first specific issues to be resolved will include the following. Educational standards The first question to be asked must be: What do people need to know to be board-certified knowledge services professionals? People will be drawn

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to the certification process for a variety of reasons, as described earlier. They will also be coming from a wide range of professions, disciplines, and types of work, some of which we can elucidate rather quickly3 but others which we cannot anticipate (or even imagine, for there will be relevant types of work that have not yet even been conceived). Whatever their background, or their original studies and/or experience that have led them toward a career in knowledge services, those aspiring to be certified as knowledge services professionals must possess four qualities: 1. Expertise in their profession, discipline, or type of work; 2. Leadership ability; 3. Managerial expertise; 4. Commitment to a continuing contribution to the profession. In a nutshell, it would appear that what is being sought (that is, standards/ criteria to be established by The Knowledge Council) is a framework similar to that required for a graduate program in business development, leadership development, or similar programs that are, of course, already in place, either in academic institutions or, in less-theoretical guise, in programs being offered by educational/professional associations and commercial learning providers). The difference with the program proposed here is that these other programs, as good as they are, do not necessarily reflect the requirements of knowledge workers’ employers. These employers need to be able to find employees with leadership and management skills that specifically link to knowledge services, and to the delivery of knowledge services products, services, and consultations to users specifically identified by the employers. Prerequisites for Application for Certification Since it is the intention of this initiative to provide a framework for professional certification, it will be up to The Knowledge Council’s Qualifications Board to determine how the applicants’ prior work contributes to his or her professionalism. Obviously, some types of work already have in place an educational or training standard that must be attained before 3 Obviously, from the perspective and observations of the author, the disciplines considered in the much-referred to ‘Splendid Information Services Continuum’ would be included, types of work such as that done by professionals working in publishing, information technology, telecommunications, librarianship (both specialist and traditional librarianship), records management, archives management, information brokerage, information consulting, and similar fields. This ‘continuum’ might even be renamed, now that ‘knowledge services’ seems to be so much more popular as a descriptor than ‘information services’.

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the individual can be called a ‘professional’, and these can be observed. Such fields as librarianship, for example, requiring a terminal degree in the field, will continue to recognize that standard, and it will probably be recognized as the prerequisite for librarians who wish to become board-certified knowledge services professionals. Similarly, other types of work which require an established course of study or certification (such as records management, for example, or the several certificate programs in knowledge management) will be accepted as prerequisites, as long as the standards of the field do not conflict or weaken the proposed standards established by the council for its own certification qualification. In all cases, of course, The Knowledge Council and its Qualification Board will work with these disciplines and professions, to ensure that compatibility is continued. Council Membership The Council will intentionally be kept small (25 members seems to be a viable number of participants, although this may change as the initiative is developed). Ideally, the Council will be a partnership of corporate and organizational leaders, and membership will be made up of people working in the fields that require excellence in knowledge services and expertise in the knowledge workers who provide knowledge services. Leaders in such areas as banking and finance, energy, information and communications, public health, transportation, engineering, utilities, water supply, chemicals, agriculture, science and technology, and the arts (in fact any organization involved in research and development) should be approached and invited to participate. These leaders should be at the highest levels of their industries and fields of work, and they should be carefully recruited. How leaders are recruited to join The Knowledge Council, and what is offered to them to encourage their participation, are questions that will be answered as the initiative goes forward. Practically speaking, a foundation-funded study of the feasibility of the development of the council will be the first step. As the study is conducted, leaders will be identified and, as the study progresses, their interest and potential for involvement will be ascertained. Funding Again, this is an issue that will be resolved as the initiative develops, but it can be reasonably expected that, once a feasibility study has been completed, additional start-up funds can be solicited. Actual support for the Council’s work, once is has been established, can be expected to include annual membership fees from the members and the companies or industries they represent, revenues from the products and services offered by the Research Board, and fees from applicants for certification.

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Secretariat/Administrative Functions Much that is needed, as far as managing the council is concerned, has already been set up, through the efforts of the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (and probably other organizations as well). The Knowledge Council can use this structure as a model and create its own secretariat, or the council can enter into a partnership with IACET, if the leaders of that organization are interested in the council’s work.4 In the proposed scenario, the organizational and administrative structure is relatively simple. The members of The Knowledge Council will establish an Executive Committee or some such body with oversight and policy responsibility. The Qualifications Board and the Research Board (each of which will ideally include some members of the council, as well as qualified members chosen from outside the membership of The Knowledge Council) will have responsibility and authority for their respective activities, and there will be a secretariat or administrative function. Obviously what is envisioned here is a new organization that will be specially created to support the new knowledge services profession. The council will be unaffiliated in any official or legal way with the organizations that currently provide direction and manage qualification and performance standards for the many fields that contribute to information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning. In fact, the vision of the organization will be, as stated earlier, to promote: a) Excellence in the delivery of knowledge services; b) Expertise in knowledge services professionals. The mission of the organization will be to: a) Promote the establishment of standards of excellence in knowledge services provision and performance; b) Provide qualification management for the knowledge services profession, including the establishment of qualifications and the certification of qualified practitioners; c) Provide collegial networking opportunities for knowledge services professionals and for those who aspire to careers as knowledge services professionals; 4 The work of the IACET is described in two valuable documents, The Continuing Education Guide: The CEU and Other Professional Development Criteria, by Louis Phillips (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 1994), and the IACET’s own Criteria and Guidelines for Quality Continuing Education and Training Programs (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 1998).

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d) Monitor the evolving state of leadership in knowledge services management, communicate progress, and identify the opportunities and challenges that are to come; e) Spotlight innovations in knowledge services research, management, and delivery; f)

Share the generic lessons of leadership, collaboration, and management as they relate to excellence in knowledge services.

The importance of the organization, as an organization, will be only as strong and as effective as its cast of characters. Thus it is critical that The Knowledge Council to be made up of individuals (a small group of individuals, probably, as noted, not more than 25 people) who are committed to the vision and the mission of excellence in knowledge services. The larger portion of these people, if not all of them, should be from the business, research, and management communities. The focus of their efforts will be the integration of knowledge services into society at large, using the highest standards of expertise in providing products, services, and consultations in information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning. It should be emphasized that this new organization is not intended to replace any organizations or authorities that are now in place. In fact, one of the beauties of the establishment of this organization is that it is first, a new organization, one seeking to bring together the best of the different component organizations, structures, educational establishments, and other participants in the several disciplines that make up knowledge services. Second, the proposed organization is conceived as a supra-organization, which is to say that it is not being created to be one among many organizations (commercial, academic, those of professional associations, etc.). Neither is it being created as a federation of existing organizations. Indeed, its purpose is to be the next step, as it were, for individuals who want to pursue careers in the knowledge services profession. They can come from any of a variety of professions, disciplines, and types of work already in existence, or they may (and probably will) come from new fields of study and endeavour that have not been established yet. Finally, it should be noted that the work of The Knowledge Council (or whatever it is to be called) is limited. If we review the proposed vision, it exists to promote excellence and expertise in knowledge services delivery. The implementation is almost as simple; the few goals of its proposed mission statement are there to support the vision. In the long run, it is that vision that we are seeking to bring to realization, so that society will have a new and clear opportunity for benefiting from the best that can be had in knowledge services.

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References Albrecht, Karl (2001) ‘The True Information Survival Skills’, Training & Development. 55(2). Drake, Miriam A (2002) Interview with the author, 15 January 2002 Drucker, Peter F (1994) ‘The age of social transformation’, The Atlantic Monthly, 274(5). Drucker, Peter F (2001) ‘The Next Society: Survey’, The Economist, 3 November 2001. International Association of Continuing Education and Training (1998) Criteria and Guidelines for Quality Continuing Education and Training Programs, Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. Martin, Susan K (1993) ‘Achieving the vision: rethinking librarianship’, Journal of Library Administration, 19(3/4). Morgenstern, Evelin, and Guy St. Clair (1998) ‘Change management in information services: the case for expertise’, InfoManage: The International Management Newsletter for the Information Services Professional, 5(3), pp. 6–8. Phillips, Louis (1994) The Continuing Education Guide: The CEU and other professional development criteria, Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt.

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Part II

Learning in the Organization

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Chapter Eight

KD/KS: Conducting the Learning Audit

Within those organizations that offer some version of knowledge services as an organizational function, training and learning pursued by professional knowledge workers must be designed to ensure that those workers contribute to the achievement of the unit’s stated mission. Whether the knowledge services operation is in place to provide information management, knowledge management, strategic learning, or, ideally, for supporting all three within the framework of a dedicated knowledge services function, learning activities will reflect the unit’s goal of providing the larger organization with the highest levels of excellence in knowledge services delivery. It is not an easy progression, this integration of professional learning into the daily working lives of knowledge workers. As has been noted in many places (including in this book), training and learning in general is usually relegated to a sort of ‘fringe’ activity in most organizational environments, and continuous professional education, embarked upon after the completion of formal academic learning, is most often a ‘catchas-catch-can’ pursuit, accomplished with little focus or structure and generally undertaken on an ad hoc basis. Such does not have to be the case, however, and it is in this spirit that this book recommends the establishment of a structured professional learning program for professional employees who work in information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning. Their organizational activities, while generally considered support/overhead roles within the larger managerial construct, are in fact critical to the successful achievement of the organizational mission. In doing their work, these professional knowledge workers are required to assume responsibilities for professional activities that go far beyond normal organizational routine. They are accountable for nothing less than the provision of the essential elements that management decision makers must have to drive the organization. As such, their continuous professional education is too critical to be left to chance.

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Planning a Professional Learning Program Planning the development of a professional learning program is done in four stages, actually five if we consider the – generally undocumented – first stage, which is the recognition that a professional learning program might be worthwhile, together with a decision to investigate the development of such a program. Once that decision has been made, the actual development of the program continues with the learning audit, followed by an exploration of goals and expectations with respect to the potential program. These steps lead to designing the program, and, finally, giving attention to what are probably the activity’s most important element, establishing processes for monitoring, measuring, and evaluating the program’s progress and creating an environment for ensuring that the program works within the organizational framework. When related to the concepts associated with knowledge development and knowledge sharing, as described earlier, the development of the professional learning program takes on special significance for the organization, not only because these essential elements, by definition, inform excellence in knowledge services delivery. Knowledge development and knowledge sharing are also essential to professional practice, and the professional knowledge workers who participate in the activities provided through the professional learning program ascribe to and seek to achieve standards of excellence in service delivery that cannot help but be beneficial to all knowledge services stakeholders in the organization. Still, it must be realized that undertaking the development of a professional learning program for knowledge services staff, while undoubtedly a worthwhile activity, is one that will not immediately be recognized as such. Sadly, despite the acceptance of the value of learning in the societal – and management – environments at large, it must be stated that some organizations and communities are not always particularly receptive to a formalized training and professional learning program. In many organizations, the very idea of allocating organizational resources for what is thought of as a ‘fringe’ activity becomes a first barrier for knowledge services managers who want to move in this direction. As a result, many knowledge professionals with management responsibility for information management, knowledge management and strategic learning find themselves facing a sort of ‘are-you-serious?’ reaction when they want to establish a formal (or at least a structured) learning initiative for the specialized library, records management department, or other information delivery operation for which they have management responsibility. For those who persevere, though, and who pursue their advocacy through the organizational hierarchy to success, the opportunity to devise and organize a staff learning program is one of the most exhilarating and rewarding functions that manager can perform. There are five reasons why this is so.

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Management Commitment In the first place, undertaking such a program demonstrates a level of seriousness, a management commitment that cannot be ignored. One of the critical essentials for instilling quality and excellence is a commitment – from managers – to continuously improve knowledge services delivery. No more serious message can be sent to staff than one that says, ‘You’re doing a fine job, but let’s keep looking. Let’s see if we can do an even better job’. Working with staff in the pursuit of a formalized learning activity demonstrates that commitment. Ultimately, the source of the initiative is irrelevant. Whether the idea for the formalization of the learning activity comes from the department’s manager, or from staff who report to that manager and are supported by his or her enthusiasm for the initiative, doesn’t much matter. What is important is that the manager and the staff have agreed that – through the design and implementation of a structured staff learning program – service delivery can be made better, and together they are willing to move into a formal training and learning arrangement to ensure that service excellence is achieved. All employees in the knowledge services unit, managers and staff alike, understand that staff training and professional learning can led to such achievement, but without the commitment and enthusiasm of management, and especially the commitment and enthusiasm of the department’s head, their unit will be, in effect, standing still. Which is just another way of saying that without that management commitment, service will ultimately deteriorate, a scenario which none of them – management or staff – can afford to have occur. Management commitment is the underlying foundation for the successful implementation of any organizational change initiative, but for the establishment of a formalized staff learning program, it is particularly critical. Desire for Quality Linked to that management commitment, though, is a slightly different requirement, and one that is sometimes harder to identify, or quantify. That is a desire for quality, a desire universally shared throughout the organization and explicitly articulated by all – or most – of the large cast of knowledge services stakeholders who are affected by or connected in any way with the organization’s information/knowledge/learning function. And it is a large cast indeed, including all knowledge services staff, all management staff in the knowledge services unit (if there is a separate department providing all of these services), information customers, the various levels of management in the larger organization, staff in other organizational units (particularly those who have any interaction with the knowledge services staff in the course of their work), suppliers, vendors, and perhaps even professional colleagues who are not employed in the same workplace but who are influenced by or have some influence with

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those who organize and deliver knowledge services within the parent organization. All can affect, or be affected by, decisions made about the quality of knowledge services delivery in the unit, and the common thread that influences their intermingled and various relationships must be their desire that knowledge services delivery be of the highest standard, that the quality of service excellence as provided by the unit cannot be compromised. Leadership Responsibilty Thirdly, and at another level, simply raising the issue of staff training and professional learning in an organizational context means that the manager is taking seriously his or her leadership responsibility, a perspective that is sometimes lost in the knowledge services community, particularly in libraries, records management units, archives departments, and so forth. Generally speaking, lay-people (that is, those who are not part of the knowledge services industry and who don’t deal with knowledge services on any sort of regular or organized basis) don’t know what librarians and other knowledge workers do. But they think they do, because for most people, information and the seeking of information are so common in their daily lives that they don’t even think about it. Or when they do think about it, their thoughts turn to the simplest kinds of analogies (‘I don’t know what’s so special about being a librarian – I have books all over my house and I can find anything I want’, or, more likely, ‘What’s all this ‘information management’ business?’ ‘What’s all this knowledge management stuff?’ ‘I’m pretty good at searching the Web and I don’t need people in the marketing library telling me how to find what I want’). Consequently, many people in the organization don’t have any particular respect for librarians or other information professionals as managers (especially if the library or information centre or other information unit in the organization is small, with limited or minimal staff). All members of the organization recognize one management fact, however, and that is that managers – by definition – are required to carry out four functions within the larger organization: managers are expected to conceptualize and plan the operations of the unit for which they have managerial responsibility; they are expected to organize; they are expected to direct and motivate, to control; and they are expected to evaluate or monitor operations. In all cases, managers are expected to lead, and it is these four responsibilities in the workplace environment that make up the essential components of the leadership role. In a knowledge services operation, all four functions are carried out within the unit, but when we characterize these four elements as a leadership role, the picture changes considerably. Leadership, while requiring attention to the successful accomplishment of planning, organizing, controlling, and evaluating, also requires an enterprise-wide, holistic

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approach, going beyond the autonomy of internal activities and taking the initiative in working with other units of the parent organization or community. If, in these circumstances, it becomes clear to other management employees that training and learning activities in the knowledge services unit are essential functions within the unit, other managers will recognize that knowledge manager’s leadership skills. In a common example, the manager of a knowledge services unit attends biweekly management meetings at which senior HR staff hold discussions about human relations issues within the organization. Even more common is the example in a smaller organization, in which department heads meet daily for a few minutes, to outline common expectations and themes for the day’s work. In both situations, the effect is much the same: the manager of the knowledge services unit has the opportunity not only to relate the role of the unit to the larger organizational function, but can convey that relationship to others who are not concerned with (or sometimes even affected by) knowledge services management and delivery concerns. When the subject of staff learning comes up, as it inevitably will, the knowledge services manager is in the position of describing not only what takes place in his or her department, but can influence other managers who must – or should – consider training issues as well. It is now commonly accepted within the management environment that training and staff learning are a necessary and critical operational function in today’s work environment. By taking the initiative when working with other managers, the knowledge services manager is once again asserting his or her authority as a management employee, an activity that cannot help but enhance that manager’s position within the larger organizational context. The message gets delivered, and the knowledge services manager finds himself/herself recognized as a management employee, and not ‘just the librarian’ or ‘just the records manager’, etc. Such interactions, and such recognition, are essential in establishing (and, more important, in maintaining) the value of the information unit within the organization. Service Excellence Related to that leadership responsibility is the manager’s desire to move the knowledge services unit into the organizational mainstream, an aspiration and, yes, a willingness and a vision that becomes a fourth reason for devising and organizing a formal training/learning/teaching program. Few markers demonstrate quality in the workplace more effectively than the highest levels of excellence in product or service delivery, or in the development of departmental products that lead to that excellence. Yet the only way to ‘stay on top’, to identify the innovations that will enhance the department’s output, is to have staff constantly and eagerly seeking new training and learning opportunities. Thus the manager of

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the knowledge services unit (whether it be a specialized library, a records management department, a community archives, or any other kind of information management operation) is almost required to establish a structured staff learning operation, in order to ensure that the employees over whom he or she has managerial responsibility have every opportunity to learn to improve performance. A Leadership Position Finally, if done well, the organization and implementation of a formalized training/learning operation positions the knowledge services unit itself in a leadership position within the larger organization or community. It’s no secret that in many organizations, training and staff learning responsibility is often relegated to a – shall we say – less than ‘serious’ position in the chain of activities and functions that are given organizational attention. Certainly, as society changes, and as management in all organizations and communities comes to recognize the value of training and learning in the delivery of quality products and services, more attention is being given to these activities. So, despite all our good intentions, much has yet to be done to guarantee that the training and learning function is given appropriate consideration. Most organizations and communities do not have formal, structured organizational entities for managing this critical responsibility, which means that the manager of the knowledge services unit has a splendid opportunity for taking on this role. If, in establishing a formalized training and learning structure for the department for which he or she has managerial authority, the librarian/information services manager can demonstrate that the structure brings improved, enhanced, or additional service quality to the delivery of information products and knowledge services within the wider organization, that structure can be used as a model for other departments and units throughout the organization. Obviously the knowledge services manager and his or her staff will be required to give up a certain level of autonomy, and shared expertise will become the order of the day, but since it is all for the benefit of the larger organization, there should be little resistance or reluctance on the part of the knowledge services staff. In fact, because of the opportunity that such shared experience brings to the knowledge services unit itself, the unit’s role in the organization does become, in effect, a leadership role. Such an example has been clearly demonstrated in the work that Lany McDonald and Pamela Gallop Brooks have done at the Time, Inc. Research Center in New York. Their challenge was to expand the skills of their staff, and their staff’s visibility, to the larger organization. As McDonald, the Research Center’s Director, noticed that Time Inc.’s management had begun to build ‘a revamped technology infrastructure,

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rewiring the building to allow for greater systems capacity and the potential for greater connectivity among departments’, she recognized that this connectivity would be critical to the future success of the Research Center. Agreeing that an ‘overlay’ of quality content should connect with the basic intranet structure, the Research Center staff put together an intranet presence that was intentionally designed to ‘exploit librarians’ unique skills: evaluating, organizing, and presenting information’. The success of the effort has been described: ‘The centre launched a major training initiative along with the homepage. The training team, headed by Pamela Brooks, blanketed Time Inc.’s New York headquarters with invitations to attend free sessions on the Research Center Homepage and ‘E-Mags’. Since the entire company was moving to a standard browser, and this was the first exposure many employees had to the Internet, training was given in browser tips as well. The Research Center staff became the in-house Internet search experts. As a result of that initial training, the Research Center has partners with the IT department, which pays the librarians to develop and teach Internet and intranet search classes for the company. While IT offers many applications-oriented training sessions, they rely on the Research Center when it comes to teaching information finding.’ (Brooks & McDonald, 1999, pp. 32–3)

It was not a process that was delved into lightly, as was demonstrated in another context when McDonald was asked about the role of leadership in an information services environment that is challenged to institute major change and, at the same time, to institute cultural change as well: ‘McDonald and her management team – and the senior management she reports to – all agreed that training would be the key to success in this particular environment. ‘No question about it’, McDonald says. ‘You spend so much money on training. You spend whatever it takes. In our case, during the downsizing phase of this process, we were obligated, through our guild contracts, to provide training, and we jumped at this opportunity. We trained those being laid off and we trained those being kept on. It had to be done. We could not change the culture if we weren’t willing to train our staff to do the different type of work that they would now be doing. We couldn’t ask them to be news researchers if they didn’t know how, and we knew they already had a level of information expertise. We just needed to train them to be better at what they were already good at.’ ‘But we have to be careful here, for we don’t want to oversimplify. At Time Warner – thanks to McDonald and her master plan – the training is not limited to staff. In fact, the training function has become one of the services that The Research Centre has come to excel at, and Pam Brooks, who heads up the operation’s training function, sees to it that the training is passed on. She and McDonald (and, to be fair, the rest of the research centre staff as well) are quite open about their role as corporate information

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gurus. They say to management and to the company’s editorial staff: ‘We will help train your staff to be smarter, better end-users. We’ll train, we’ll create resources, we’ll help you create resources, whatever it takes.’ (St. Clair, 1999, pp. 299–301)

The Learning Audit Such a process – moving into a KD/KS: Knowledge Development/ Knowledge Sharing structure – begins with the learning audit, a methodology that has as its primary advantage the fact that it provides substantive support for the activity. Instead of having learning and training programs put in place because of some loose, possibly nearly amorphous ‘feeling’ by the departmental manager and some of the more conscientious employees that ‘something must be done’, a learning audit starts with facts. By beginning with the learning audit, all information and knowledge stakeholders (or those representing them) have the opportunity to contribute to the establishment of a properly organized, highly focused learning program that will, at the most fundamental level, provide the knowledge services unit with a framework for learning. That in itself is recognition that service excellence in the unit will be invigorated. The learning audit is a variation on the much-used information audit, a technique employed in many organizations as management attempts to determine not only the value of information in the organization, but the effectiveness of the information delivery function performed there as well. As with the information audit, the term ‘audit’ is used intentionally in describing this process, to emphasize that the methodology not only seeks to assess and analyse the need for the activity in question, the training and learning function within the unit, but accompanies that analysis and assessment with an evaluative element that incorporates accountability and responsibility. As such, the learning audit ensures that all parties coming to the table understand the seriousness and the valued outcome of the undertaking, and commit to the establishment of a function that will be implemented and managed with the same high level of service excellence that is applied to the performance of the unit’s primary responsibility, the management and delivery of knowledge services that meet the needs of their identified constituency. In its simplest form, the learning audit is a management methodology that looks at a department, service unit, or community of practice for the purpose of determining if that department’s staff is capable of delivering agreed-upon services to the larger organization or community environment and if not, to determine and recommend an appropriate professional learning/strategic learning structure for supplying staff with the required skills, competencies, and abilities that they need. The learning audit has several essential component parts, including, first, a study of the unit’s

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service environment and a determination of the service needs that are required, or expected. With respect to the delivery of services through an information management operation (a library, records management unit, archives department, or similar administrative entity in which information is the chief ‘product’ of the unit’s activity and its delivery the primary ‘service’ that the unit provides), that determination will have been made through a study of the structure of the department and its place – its position – in the larger organization or community, together with an assessment and an analysis . The same studies will be conducted for any formal or structured knowledge management and strategic training/ learning elements that are in place. Then, in a process that cuts through all administrative layers in the organization or community, the second component of the audit determines what services (in this case, knowledge services delivery) are required. The next step in the process identifies the types, levels, and scope of training and learning required for providing these services and includes an analysis that calculates the training and learned already achieved, or in the process of being achieved. The learning audit then proceeds to codify and establish standards for a structured and comprehensive program of training and learning activities that will lead to the establishment of performance levels commensurate with the needs of the larger organization or community. In many organizations, the process described here might be thought of as a needs assessment or analysis, particularly if the situation is one in which there is no structured training and learning program in place. In most cases, however, some training – and perhaps even some learning, if we look back at the earlier definitions established for this work – are in place, however informal. So key audit concepts come into play, for not only is the operational unit seeking to structure a learning program that will provide a valid (and valued) return on investment for the larger organization, the work that is currently being done must be evaluated and viewed in the larger, holistic setting. The ‘audit’ point-of-view is important for another reason, when management is attempting to determine whether a formalized training and learning program is appropriate for a knowledge services unit. Certainly the department can continue with present practices, identifying training/ learning opportunities as required and, if there are not more pressing matters (and there usually are), providing staff with the resources for participating in these activities. With the completion of the learning audit, however, the unit’s manager and the management colleagues with whom he or she works, and senior management to whom they report, become apprised of the costs of whatever training and learning activities are in place. These costs can then be calculated against the value of learning and training as it affects the successful (or not successful) achievement of the unit’s mission, an exercise which provides management with needed information that will be useful in many different ways. Or, to put

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it another way, in purely management terms, the learning audit is nothing less than an accounting of how good the current training/learning effort is. It measures and evaluates the quality of the training/learning function in the operational unit. A third benefit from a successfully completed learning audit is a significant heightening of awareness about the value of training and learning, particularly a heightened awareness beyond the confines of the knowledge services unit in question. As noted earlier, when word gets about in the larger organization or community, even in a governing authority in which a public library is firmly established as the cultural focus of the community, that the information unit – the library – has successfully moved into a formal training and learning program for its staff, and that service delivery has become better, the unit itself becomes something of a example for other operational units that seek the same sorts of benefits for themselves and their operations. This, in itself, is a valuable reason for embarking on the learning audit and incorporating it into the work of the knowledge services unit, for – once again – the unit is now recognized for its leadership in the larger organization or community. The Process The process for the learning audit begins with establishing a plan, and one of the best structures for the effort was provided in another context, in Susan Henczel’s book on the information audit. The framework is the same and, in fact, it is being used successfully in other audits, particularly in organizations in which the knowledge audit is being conducted. The structure is the same – it’s the content and the findings (and of course the recommendations) that are different in each situation. Henczel’s research determined that ‘a standard process is used by information professionals who conduct information audits, but they tailor the process according to the organization to which they belong, the resources that are available, and their reasons for conducting the information audit’. As Henczel notes, in her model ‘each stage follows on from the previous one, and within each stage alternative methodologies are discussed in terms of how they can be adapted to suit the physical, financial, technical, and human resources that are available’. When applied to the learning audit, the structure requires the auditing team to, in Henczel’s terms, ‘determine your objectives prior to conducting the audit so that your expectations are realistic and so that you follow an appropriate for your organization’. The seven-stage information audit model, which can adapted successfully for the learning audit, follows: ●

Planning;

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Data collection;

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Data analysis;

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Data evaluation;

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Communicating recommendations;

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Implementing recommendations;

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Establishing the audit as a continuum. (Henczel, 2001, pp. 16–19)

In a learning audit, these stages might be refocused as follows: Planning In organizing the learning audit, the first step is to develop clear objectives developed and obtain agreement about the scope of the project. During the planning state, the methodology for the audit is chosen and communication arrangements are decided upon. It is also during the planning stage of the learning audit that management support and the identification (discussed in Chapter 11) of advocates and champions for the project – if required – are decided upon. Data collection Once the methodology for the audit has been chosen, a survey instrument is devised and the survey is conducted, using a learning information resource database for storing the data. Face-to-face data collection is also generally used in this stage, to obtain more ‘impressionistic’ information, the kind that is more difficult to codify but which yields important cultural information relating to learning in the organization and, specifically, to the standing of knowledge development and knowledge sharing as an organizational philosophy, within the enterprise. Data analysis This is the stage in the learning audit in which data collected is compiled, edited (as required), and analysed with respect to the project’s objectives. Data evaluation Before learning strategies can be developed, data collected and analysed must be evaluated in terms of problems and opportunities identified, gaps analysis, and KD/KS flows must be interpreted within the scope of the project. Recommendations are formulated during this stage, and an action plan for change (that is, for the implementation of the recommendations) must be developed and delivered to the project managers. Communicating recommendations Generally, the project proposal will have identified a methodology for communicating recommendations, which usually include a written audit report, oral presentations, sometimes seminars or other ‘workshop’ type activities, certainly some level of Webbased or other electronic dissemination (possibly via an organizational intranet), and procedures for feedback and discussion.

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Implementing recommendations The most exciting and stimulating ‘piece’ of the learning audit is implementing the recommendations, bringing strategic (performance-centred) learning into the process. Change management and change implementation are now called into play, and the creation of KD/KS learning activities – at all levels of employment and incorporating all relevant management styles and supporting the requirements of all knowledge stakeholders – are organized and applied. Establishing the audit as a continuum An ongoing process of matching learning to organizational needs is developed in this stage of the learning audit, complete with revisiting the several elements of the planning stage, such as establishing objectives, reviewing communication procedures and methodologies, etc. At the same time, specific procedures for measuring and assessing change are developed and monitored and reviewed on an on-going basis. Not a Needs Assessment For many, of course, some of these stages would be part of a classic needs assessment or analysis, but in the learning environment (and indeed, in the larger knowledge services community), there are differences. In the larger management environment, much attention has been devoted to the concept of the needs assessment, and particularly in the library/information services field, the needs assessment is an established management methodology. The problem with the needs assessment, as such, is that it is a tool in which practitioners simply look at a situation and then attempt to design and provide services that meet the identified needs of the service community. An audit, on the other hand, seeks not only to identify needs, but also to identify practices that are already in place for serving those needs and, as noted above, provides an evaluative framework for judging those practices on their effectiveness and their overall contribution to the accomplishment of the organizational (or the organizational unit’s) mission.1 In the training and learning community, the concepts have been further refined, especially in a paper published by Jeannette Swist: ‘Often overlooked as the first step in the performance improvement process is the training needs assessment. A need is not a want or desire. It is a gap between ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’. The needs assessment serves to identify the gaps, and considers if the problem can be solved by training. 1 Much of this concept, as put forward by the author, has been described before, notably in Customer Services in the Information Environment (London and New Providence, NJ: Bowker-Saur, 1993) and in ‘Matching information to needs’, in Information World Review, March 1992, p. 21.

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The assessment is part of a planning process focusing on identifying and solving performance problems.’ (Swist, 1997)

Swist continues, answering the rhetorical question, ‘Why Conduct a Training Needs Assessment?’ with very specific answers that apply whether the condition under consideration is training, per se, or the more complicated (but no less valuable) connection with learning: ●

To determine what training is relevant to your employees’ jobs;

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To determine what training will improve performance;

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To determine if training will make a difference;

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To distinguish training needs from organizational problems;

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To link improved job performance with the organization’s goals and bottom line. (Ibid.)

The needs assessment, then, becomes an integral part of the learning audit, but it is not a substitute for the learning audit. It is, in fact, an exercise that comes into play when management in the organization recognizes that one or several activities that relate to departmental performance in the knowledge services unit have begun to fail in matching established performance indicators. A typical example comes from the more sophisticated knowledge services centres that are now found in several of the world’s largest and more productive multinational corporations. In these organizations, knowledge services staff are working harder – and ‘smarter’, as the fashionable management jargon puts it – in providing information services delivery, but not the usual ‘quickanswer’ reference queries of days past. In today’s ‘re-invented’ corporate information centre, that level of information delivery is self-service, with staff throughout the organization finding the information they require through access to specific tools available on their own desktops. On the other hand, however, a clear pattern of support for these searches has begun to develop, in which information staff take on the role of organizational help-line function, and while a few corporate library staff will be available to provide ‘quick-answer’ information on an ongoing basis, they are often expected (or required) to show their customers how to use the electronic tool or database that will provide the information. These staff members are not necessarily trained as ‘trainers’, but as the information unit’s manager determines that this sort of active training will be required, the staff members themselves must be sent to training courses so that they will be able to train users in accessing the information for themselves. In Swist’s terms, what that manager must do is assess the situation to determine if the required training is relevant to the employee’s jobs

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(it is), what training will improve performance (specific training in how to train users), if training will make a difference (it obviously will, especially to the unit’s customers who want to be brought up to speed with these tools, so they can become expert themselves), if the training needs can appropriately be distinguished from organizational problems (which they can, since this is a ‘quick-fix’ situation in which the larger organizational entity will achieve substantial benefit), and if the proposed training will link improved job performance with the organization’s goals and bottom line, which, from a management perspective, it certainly will. In fact, the acknowledgement that a needs assessment and analysis are required is but the first stage of what might be called the ‘preliminary planning and approval’ process, especially in terms of creating a formalized and structured training and learning program. In the example given above, we have a typical situation as found in most library and information units, with respect to training and learning. Although the early needs assessment determines that specific work is required, to enable information staff to meet the training requirements for some of the ‘quickanswer’ reference tools, the implementation of the effort is less than satisfactory if the training is undertaken in a haphazard or ad hoc way. What must precede the implementation of such an activity is a variety of preliminary planning and approval procedures that will provide the departmental manager with the information that he or she needs to proceed to a more formal activity. Having said that, however, the beginning stages are pleasantly informal. In some organizations and communities, these are continuous processes, with everyone (and especially the knowledge services unit’s managers) understanding that the best way to collect preliminary information is to engage in such time-proven activities as MBWA, staff (and user) perception research, changing expectations and behaviours (with respect to staff training and learning activities), and informal – but valid nevertheless – departmental meetings and conversations. In the first of these, the popularly invoked ‘management-by-walking-around’ continues to inspire suppressed smiles when talked about in ‘proper’ management circles, but in every organization, it’s true: the managers of libraries and information centres who know what is going on in the departments for which they have management responsibility, and who have a clear understanding of how successful their unit’s client relationship management program is (regardless of how the specific clients for the service are identified), are the very managers who are out among their employees, working with them as the employees work with users, and who have a first-hand knowledge of the areas where their information staff require further training and learning. A manager has only to observe more than one staff member fumbling with a particularly difficult piece of equipment, or an online service, or a new concept for a report being prepared for a client,

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to recognize that additional training and/or learning will make life much easier, for the staff and for the clients. Similarly, staff (and user) perception research involves nothing more than observing staff as they do their work or, particularly in organizations where the information staff is small and all staff, including management, must work together in a team environment, identifying those areas where all staff have difficulty and taking appropriate action to see that training and learning activities are available for these information workers. The exploration of changing expectations and behaviours is a much more difficult management area to tackle, primarily because so many different influences can seriously affect how information staff members do their work. Much discussion of this subject – especially in training and staff learning situations – centres on such factors as age or career experience. Much comment is made about situations such as one in which young librarians, with their extreme facility with electronic information, might be expected to take a particularly unsympathetic view when an older staff member is having difficulty learning a new process or technique. Of course it isn’t a problem when the young person has had older mentors who have willingly shared expertise and experiences with him or her, or the older employee is one who is anxious to learn about new ideas. But the more typical situation is one in which there is an age barrier, and real work has to be done to break such barriers down. Age is not the only attribute that contributes to difficulty with changing expectations and behaviours. In the global information environment, there continues to be, in some countries, reticence about the acceptance of English as the international language of business and research, and while there are many points that could made about the ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ of the situation, or even about the essential fairness of the situation, it has become a fact that English is accepted as the language in which one does business or conducts research across international borders. This is a massive sea-change for many people, especially people who have not been brought up in countries where English-as-a-second-language is experienced, and certainly, for example, older information workers from the former Soviet bloc countries – having been taught that Russian would be the language in which they would be working throughout their careers – have had to make major adjustments in their career plans to cope with these changes. Such changes in the workplace are bound to affect expectations and behaviours, and the astute information services manager knows to recognize when such external change must be addressed in the working environment. Surely the most useful and arguably the most productive method for collecting preliminary information for a formalized training and development program is the plethora of informal meetings in which managers and their staff engage during the course of a day or a week. There is probably no better way to determine just what it is that

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employees want training and learning with, than to ask them, as they discuss the current trends, activities, and tasks that they are working with on a day-to-day basis. Having come to this stage, and with a list of desired (but still informal) objectives in hand, the manager of the library, information centre, records unit, archives department, or other information delivery operation moves to establish a motivation for proceeding to a more formal study. By this point in time, enough examples, failed efforts, etc. have been documented that the manager can now begin to think about what might be accomplished if a structured training and learning program were in place, and how it might be organized. Once informal, preliminary information has been collected and the knowledge services manager (perhaps together with his or her staff) has decided to explore a move to a formalized, structured training and learning program, the needs analysis becomes an operational function in and of itself. When this stage is reached, however, it is time to begin thinking in terms of the learning audit, to acknowledge that the project, as conceived from this point on, will be an evaluative activity as well as a search for further information. While such a distinction might seem almost simplistic in approach (or at least somewhat semantic), this change in what might be thought of as an ‘attitudinal’ or cultural approach is required, for the possible establishment of a formalized, structured training and learning entity for the organization is not going to happen simply as a result of an established ‘need’. It is going to be the responsibility of the entire project team, including all stakeholders and participants, to agree to study the learning situation in the organization (or at least in the information unit, the current subject of study) objectively and unromantically. Many people have very warm feelings about the role of information units in their organizations and communities, particularly if those information departments are libraries, or records management departments, or organizational or community archives. The objective of the learning audit, it must be remembered, is to determine the best methodologies for organizing training and learning programs that best match the specific needs of the parent organization or community. To achieve this objective, all participants must step back and attempt (and attempt is all they can do, for these emotions are well established in the culture) to study the situation as objectively and as unemotionally as possible. Such work as that undertaken in a learning audit is not undertaken lightly, or without the commitment and enthusiasm of senior management staff in the organization or community. The knowledge services manager must – at the very least – inform senior management that such an important step is being considered, and, depending on the organizational structure in which knowledge services are delivered, must seek senior management buy-in into the process. In some organizations, such

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a major step and movement to such an innovative activity must go through a formal approval process (for it is a major step, as will be seen, in terms of resource commitment and allocation, participation, and, not least of all, anticipated cultural change). The knowledge services manager, knowing this process from other innovations he or she has put in place, will determine the best procedure for achieving senior management approval. In other organizations, though – and in those management environments in which librarians and other information workers are most likely to be employed – we no longer have the old fashioned hierarchical ‘we-vs-they’ situation in which the knowledge services manager must go ‘hat in hand’ seeking ‘permission’ to manage innovatively and entrepreneurially. In these more typical situations, the manager of the information/ knowledge services unit studies the situation, reviewing the information he or she has gathered in preliminary information-gathering, and describes expected results in terms of how the organization at large will benefit from the proposed study, particularly in terms of mission-specific goals. This employee then usually moves to seek cooperation (not approval) and, yes, a certain level of enthusiastic support from senior management, and the needs analysis moves forward. It is here that a determination will be made as to whether the needs assessment and analysis will be made in-house, or whether it is will turned over – totally or in part – to an external consultant. There are many excellent commercial entities specializing in such work, and while this is not the place to address questions of in-house versus external expertise, the issues of staff time, resource availability, project management expertise, and objectivity must be considered and explored. Most likely, the manager of the knowledge services unit will make a decision to begin a sort of ‘compromise’ program, since a certain amount of staff time is going to be relegated to the project anyway. As described below, even if the total learning audit project is turned over to an external firm, a staff member must be designated as the project’s internal project manager, and that person will devote a considerable amount of time to working with the consultant (and usually the contact officer is the most senior employee in the knowledge services delivery unit – the department’s manager – or one of his or her direct reports, depending on the size of the operation). In either case, it is at this point that the decision will be made as to who will manage the project, and once that decision has been made, together with an agreed-upon financial framework and timeline or schedule, the learning audit can move forward. Therefore, the first questions to be asked – before the learning audit begins – have to do with the rationale for the project, its stated objectives, and the agreed-upon scope for the audit. Each of these should be determined in conversations and meetings with appropriate knowledge services staff and management, as well as with other organizational

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employees who might have some interest or influence in the project (management staff in an organizational training department, say, or senior staff in the organization’s human relations department). Once agreement has been reached in these matters, these decisions must be documented, both for the record and to provide a project plan to ensure that the learning audit does not go ‘off the track’. Obviously, if an external consulting firm is used for the project, that person or team will provide a proposal document, and that document – once agreed upon and signed off on by all appropriate parties – will serve as a plan for the project. Overview In general terms, an overview for the learning audit might describe the project as a management procedure for determining the current training/learning situation within the knowledge services unit, the potential (and appropriate) participants in the training/learning program, potential volume, time, cost, etc. Whether put together by an internal employee, a project team, or a external entity in consultation with the department manager and appropriate employees, the learning audit has certain specific component parts, and these are usually detailed for the benefit of all participants. The objective for the project will be stated and, in most cases, the rationale for the audit will be addressed. In most cases, the proposal includes a project strategy and work plan, a statement outlining the tasks that will be undertaken to complete the audit, and – in a recognition that such an important activity can’t be introduced casually – a budget and schedule (as well as a description of the qualifications of the personnel conducting the audit) are described. Objective The learning audit’s objective is usually a description of the proposed goals of the project, such as the assessment of investments (and the return on investment) of training and learning activities currently in place, the development of training programs for specifically identified staff, the creation of learning activities for broader educational achievement (including career development programs), the design of educational activities for the learning, capture, and sharing of intellectual capital known to be present in the organization, and similar goals which have been already ascertained and which match the previously established organizational mission. Scope At this point, the document also states the scope of the learning audit, describing how inclusive it is to be, and how much of the overall organizational or community structure it will incorporate. For example, in large corporations, there are often any number of corporate libraries, data records units, and so forth. How these are administered is the prerogative of each of the companies, and while some may have a hierarchical structure, in which each unit’s manager reports to a larger oversight unit, other corporate settings are less restrained, and similar knowledge services units

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will be connected only through a loose ‘federation’-type arrangement. What has to be determined, with respect to the learning audit, is just how much of the larger organization will be included in the audit, and how many of the related units will participate, a decision that is obviously going to be based on the current structural arrangement and, of course, the corporate culture of the organization or community in question. Rationale The rationale for the project will usually state (in gentle terms, of course, being sensitive to the political situation that exists in all organizations) why it has been deemed necessary to conduct a learning audit. Are training programs in place that are not providing the kind of training that the organization needs? Is there a lack of coordination in training and learning activities, so that duplication of work is a problem or, worse yet, critical subjects and programs are being neglected? Has the knowledge services unit fallen behind in basic, mission-critical activities, due to lack of training or education on the part of departmental staff? Are there external forces (economic, societal, organizational) that are influencing staff performance, resulting in less-than-satisfactory service delivery? On the other hand, the rationale for a learning audit and the possible move toward a formalized and structured staff training and learning program might simply rest with the departmental manager’s own vision of what the unit should be doing. In the parent institutions which employ knowledge workers today, management now recognizes that quality-level professional development and training result in higher levels of service excellence, increased usage of information facilities, enhanced organizational support, and improved staff/customer/management relationships. All of these are valid reasons for undertaking a learning audit, in order to determine just how far the department should proceed in setting up training and learning arrangements. Project Strategy The project strategy and work plan describes how the learning audit will be conducted, and includes, generally, a list of basic methodologies that will be utilized for the audit. While a number of different approaches can be equally valid, in terms of the information that will be brought forward from the audit, certain techniques are almost invariably included: ●

Environmental scanning;

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Surveys;

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Interviews;

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Focus groups;

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Pilot training programs, seminars, discussion programs, etc.;

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Benchmarking and a study of best practice in similar organizations;

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Discussions with training and learning management staff in similar organizations or communities, or those already in place in the larger parent organization or community.

If necessary, a statement outlining specific tasks to be carried out in the project can be included, but generally these are not listed, simply because a certain level of flexibility is required for the successful implementation of the project. As noted, the budget for the learning audit will be developed by the knowledge services department’s manager, in consultation with others who will be involved in the project. Similarly, a timeline or schedule for the learning audit will be developed, in order to facilitate the conclusion of the audit and establish a starting date for the implementation of the recommendations that will be made at the conclusion of the audit. Environmental Scan Once the project document has been written, edited (for many people will have opinions and wish to contribute to the proposed activity), and agreed to by all parties with management or resource allocation authority, the learning audit gets under way. The initial activity, as noted, is the development of an environmental scan, a subject described in another volume in this series (St. Clair, 1997, pp. 31–4). In this context, it is necessary only to note that the environmental scan, in a knowledge services setting, is simply a detailed study of the various environments in which the unit operates. The methodology identifies those various environments and influences and seeks to determine the level of control or authority that they might bring to the successful implementation of a formalized and structured training and learning program within the knowledge services unit. As noted in that earlier description of environment scanning, this technique is an ‘essential component’ of strategic planning, and it is no less effective when the planning is for training and learning than it is in any other management exercise. Data Gathering Once the environmental scan has been completed and the results collected and codified, the knowledge services department is now ready to move on to the actual gathering of data required for the learning audit. Essential to the process is the development of appropriate survey instruments, but before the survey instruments themselves are organized, decisions must be made about the scope of the audit and which techniques will be used. For most organizations and communities, a twopart activity is best for gathering information, using a carefully organized survey instrument for objective, quickly measurable information, and interviews, focus groups, group meetings, and similar activities for more subjective, ‘softer’ information. For both, a certain level of familiarity with the individual unit in question, as well as with the larger parent organization or community, is

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required. Thus the importance of the role of the team leader for the learning audit must be recognized, and if the audit is being conducted by an external consultant, the work with the project manager for the sponsoring organization becomes even more critically important. Questions will generally be designed to elicit information that can be useful in the organization of the training/learning entity, if that becomes a recommendation from the results of the audit, and generally speaking, the objectivity of the survey instrument and the subjectivity of the focus groups, interviews, and group interviews will be studied together, to form a unified ‘picture’ of the training and learning needs of the unit being studied. Questions, both for the developed survey instruments and to be used in interviews and focus groups, should be designed to draw out the needed information and they will, of course, be different for each individual situation. Each organization and each community – and the knowledge services units that are part of those organizations and communities – will have a different culture, structure, and operational framework to be used when seeking this kind of information, and each learning audit will be only as successful as the queries in the audit relate to the specific situations and mission, vision, and objectives of the specific organizations. Results and Recommendations When the work has been completed, the learning audit will have created an enormous quantity of information, all of which must be compiled, tabulated, analysed, and digested by the responsible parties. It is at this point that the value of the team approach to such an activity becomes clearly apparent, for the benefits of organizing, codifying, and discussing the findings are almost overwhelming, and it will be very difficult for any one person to perform this task well (even external consultants will spend a considerable amount of time working with the staff of the knowledge services unit, discussing findings and attempting to rank them according to organizational priorities that will be learned during the audit process). The assembling of audit results, particularly the tabulation of objective data as elicited from the objective survey instrument, is not difficult, and depending on the size of the effort, the work can be done in-house with minimum support staff involvement, or it can outsourced to one of the several companies which specialize in this work. Similarly, there are products on the market that offer the auditing organization an electronic tabulation, thus avoiding the necessity for going to an outsourced agency for the tabulation of the objective results. The compilation of the subjective information, however, is a much more sensitive activity, and requires a considerable level of skill, experience, expertise, and background on the part of the manager of the knowledge services unit being audited and/or any external consultant

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brought in to work with that manager. An understanding of the training/ learning environment with respect to libraries and other information management organizations is required (and is thus a first requirement when interviewing potential consultants for this work), and a willingness to become almost intimately involved with the information unit is almost as critical. The objectivity of the participants in the audit cannot be overemphasized, but at the same time, there must be recognition that those involved in the work (particularly if they are brought in from outside the parent organization or community) must be willing to, and even be enthusiastic about, becoming ‘attached’ to the organization and the information unit as the learning audit is being conducted. This combination of objectivity and subjectivity is required because, as the learning audit begins to wind down (that is, when the survey instruments have been returned and the findings compiled, and the extensive notes from the focus groups, group interviews, and private interviews have been organized into a manageable format), the next stage of the audit, developing the recommendations, will require much time and effort. The information services manager and his or her associates in the project – whether they be consultants hired specifically for the project or internal staff who have been assigned to it – will spend a considerable amount of energy going through the massive amounts of information that has been collected and attempting to identify patterns and trends that can be used to guide them. Their job now is to attempt to put together a plan for a formalized, structured training and learning program for the information unit, and the recommendations that come from the information that they have compiled will be used as the basis of those recommendations. Expected outcomes will have been identified as the work of the learning audit started, and it is these outcomes that will guide the project managers as the audit is completed. While these may or may not influence the way the audit is conducted, there are a number of specific results that the information manager and the larger organization or community can expect. These outcomes (or ‘deliverables’, if an external consulting firm is engaged to work with the organization in the learning audit process) can be advantageously listed: Documentation One of the beauties of the learning audit is that it is an audit, and the product of the activity is a document or set of documents that provide guidelines for the implementation of the recommendations. Once the learning audit has been accepted and the recommendations approved by those in the organization who have managerial authority in these matters, the information unit has a training and learning plan in hand, and work can begin immediately with the implementation of the recommendations.

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Training/learning policy Ideally, the audit’s recommendations will include a methodology for the design, discussion, analysis, and achievement of an organizational training and learning policy, to be applied throughout the organization. Even if the policy is not to be applied to the larger parent organization or community, the immediate information services unit now has the background information for the development of a learning and training policy for its own use. Changed structure It is quite possible – and is often the case with most learning audits – that upon the completion of the audit, organizational structural changes will be required. These may take place within the library or information unit (or perhaps in the larger organization or community as well), but the need for such structural administrative changes will be obvious; specific changes will be required for the highest levels of training and learning to take place. Changed work plans A common outcome of the learning audit is a revision of work plans and procedures, and changed workload for staff. Once the data collected in the learning audit is organized and distributed throughout the information unit, staff will often determine that tasks should be modified, restructured, or, in some cases, simply discontinued, as in their present methods they do not ‘fit’ the ‘new’ framework that will be in place, once the training and learning program is established and implemented. New procedures For monitoring work, justifying activities, and evaluating and measuring productivity and services, new procedures will be required. One of the most prevalent outcomes resulting from the learning audit is a new attention to measurement, particularly in terms of return on investment, and pay-off for resources expended. Since, in most organizations and communities, training and learning activities (to say nothing of staff and personal development activities) are relegated administratively to a tangential position in the organizational structure, the learning audit provides an important new impetus for looking more seriously at how well the information staff is prepared. Most managers take advantage of this situation to work with staff to design, where they can, appropriate measuring methodologies. The knowledge services delivery operation in any organization, regardless of structure, is going to be only as good as the learning and training that the information staff has. With the results of an organizational learning audit in hand, however, management has now documented specific needs, and these can built into the structured professional learning/strategic learning program for the organization. By using KD/KS as a framework for the program, the organization’s learning managers

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(whether they be employees of the Human Resources unit or, preferably, senior management in the knowledge services function) can build a formal program that takes into account the organization’s learning needs and at the same time enables the organization to develop a knowledge/ learning strategy. Obviously the specifics of the learning structure will build on all that has gone before, looking to a future that provides the level of learning and development that is required for the organization. Elements of many different resources are built into the design of the program, and much that has been described in this book will naturally evolve and appear in a different framework in the development of the organization’s learning entity. Once the learning audit has been completed, these elements include, typically, a determination of goals and expectations for the professional learning program; the operational plan, or business plan for the program; a program design that includes direction for choosing the curriculum, identifying faculty, and the development of a marketing plan; a plan for measuring, monitoring, and evaluating the program; and the first steps toward the implementation of the program.

References Brooks, Pamela Gallop, and Lany W McDonald (1999) ‘Time Inc.’s “strategic asset”’, Library Journal, 15 November 1999. Henczel, Susan (2001) The Information Audit: A practical guide. Munich: KG Saur. St. Clair, Guy (1999) Change Management in Action, Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association. St. Clair, Guy (1992) ‘Matching information to needs’, Information World Review, March 1992. St. Clair, Guy (1997) Total Quality Management in Information Services, London and New Providence, New Jersey: Bowker-Saur. Swist, Jeannette (1997) ‘Conducting a training needs assessment’, McLean, VA: AMX International, Incorporated, 16 March 2002, www.amxi.com/ amx_mi30.htm.

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Do This! Use This Checklist for The Learning Audit for the Enterprise Determine if a structured learning program for knowledge services is required. Identify a group of knowledge services stakeholders to consider the issue. Determine if a learning audit is required/develop background/establish rationale/determine scope. Initiate preliminary planning/establish desired outcomes/identify funding. Establish management participation. Obtain approval to proceed. Identify auditors (internal or external or a combination?). Identify participants. Organize a needs assessment or analysis of the current state of learning for knowledge services/establish project strategy. Develop work plan. Collect information; analyse, compile, and tabulate findings. Prepare project document with recommendations.

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Chapter Nine

KD/KS: Determining Goals and Expectations

In the knowledge services environment, a structured professional learning program has one purpose: its single overarching objective is to ensure that agreed-upon service levels are achieved. Regardless of the organizational environment in which the information unit is positioned, the structured professional learning program exists so that performance and service levels meet established standards. Indeed, even within the knowledge services unit itself, whether it is a specialized library, a records management unit, an archives department, or any other informationfocused operation, management and staff (and the organizational culture of which they are a part, of course) determine the level at which information will be delivered and knowledge shared. A well-designed, well-managed structured professional learning program provides the framework for achieving that level of service. One of the results of the learning audit – probably unstated – is that organizational and knowledge services management now have a picture and a general understanding of the learning environment as it exists in the organization. When conducted under the auspices of the organization’s knowledge services operation and with the prospect of enabling the emerging convergence of information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning, the results provide valuable information for the planning, further development, and implementation of the structured professional learning program (Fig. 9.01).

Knowledge Service Stakeholders What seems to be in place in these organizations is a knowledge services functionality that has been established as one or more (and hopefully all three) of the disciplines that provides knowledge services products for the organization. The professional staff of the unit acquires their expertise from their formal education, from on-the-job training, and from

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Formal Education

On-The-Job Training

Professional Learning

Knowledge Services Unit Professional knowledge Workers Providing Information Management Knowledge Management Strategic (Performance-Centered) Learning

Internal Customers

Industry Customers

Subject Speciality

Parallel Information Units

Management

Knowledge Services Industry

External Customers

Corporate Clients

InformationSharing Relationships

Figure 9.01

professional learning, and of course it is for these professional-level knowledge workers that the structured professional learning program is being devised (although, as will be noted later, as learning activities are determined to be appropriate for other knowledge workers in the organization, they will be given the opportunity to participate in them as

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well). These professional knowledge workers and their colleagues in the knowledge services unit are employed to provide one or more (or, as noted, hopefully all three) of the component elements of knowledge services to the organization. Their ‘market’, as illustrated, is far reaching. Theoretically, of course, these services are to be provided to three groups of users within the organization: Internal Customers Such as employees in a manufacturing company’s R&D unit, for example, who require scientific data or historical data with respect to this or that product being developed, or in a publishing enterprise, editorial staff who need background information for the stories they are writing or publications they are developing. Not only do these employees (and fellow colleagues of the knowledge services staff, it should be remembered) depend on the knowledge services unit for the information they must have. They are also, in many cases, dependent on that function for learning how the information they seek fits into the larger work they are doing and how it can be developed into knowledge with applications that can be shared with others doing the same kind of work. Organizational Management And all the support staff who work with management, who are dependent on the knowledge services unit for supplying information that supports the running of the business. They, of course, are obligated to understand how pure data, collected in such departments as human resources, financial management, business development, or advertising is retrieved and turned into useful knowledge. This, of course, is the information that is most likely to be developed into working knowledge and shared within the organization, as this is the kind of information that is obviously connected to how well the organization is managed and directly affects the successful achievement of the organizational mission. Parallel Information Units In the organization, themselves candidates for knowledge services, as they are developed separately and specifically along functional lines (such as competitive intelligence or marketing). These departments have traditionally had ‘libraries’ that collected and disseminated information as required and that information, of course, was naturally and unwittingly developed into working knowledge that was not only essential to the organization’s success, but to its ongoing operation as well. As these activities expand, their embrace of the full knowledge services spectrum of products and activities also grows. Beyond these customers, though, there are others, generally unremarked upon. In almost every knowledge services operation, a considerable amount of attention and resources is devoted to a fourth and fifth group of ‘customers’. The knowledge services units provide information for

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these people, often information that is directly transferred into knowledge and shared among various stakeholders that require it. These can be characterized as ‘industry customers’ and ‘external customers’. Industry Customers Within the industry or type of work itself, whatever that might be, there is often a traditional interest in working with others who are doing similar work. So whatever the subject specialty of the organization, whether it is a research institute with a specialization in chemistry, or an engineering firm providing clients with complex and unique products, the employees in the organization will be sharing ideas, industry trends, and the like with employees who do similar work in other organizations. Obviously we’re not talking about proprietary information here, nor are we describing competitive intelligence or any form of work that affects the organization’s ability to compete in its market. Beyond proprietary and competitive information issues, though, the vast proliferation of professional associations, trade groups, scientific societies, and the like all attest to the fact that, regardless of the business of the organization or corporation, its employees (particularly its professional employees) are going to work with others in their industry and share information and knowledge that is appropriate to be shared. The knowledge services unit that supports the organization where the employees work is going to be called upon (within reasonable limits, of course) to support these activities. Similarly, professional staff (and even some levels of support staff) who work in knowledge services will find themselves demonstrating allegiance to their own disciplines by doing the same thing, through their participation in their own professional associations and related activities. Here again, the knowledge services products and activities provided for the parent organization’s staff will permit the knowledge workers who are employed there to capitalize on knowledge services resources already in place. External Customers External customers for the knowledge services unit also tend to fall into two groups. First, and most obviously, there are the corporate or commercial clients who benefit from the fact that the organization has a management function which provides knowledge services. In many cases, such capabilities are specifically designed for an external client market, formalized and organized to provide profit to the parent organization. As was demonstrated so effectively in the 1980s and 1990s (when specialized libraries and information technology departments were discovered to have significant potential for becoming profit-making corporate units instead of being considered an internal overhead), knowledge services products, even if developed originally for an internal clientele, can contribute significantly to the overall success of the organization. These clients now make up a large part of knowledge services outreach in many organizations, and are generally operated as part of the overall corporate profit function.

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There is one other type of external customer benefit of the organization’s knowledge services function, one that is similar to information and knowledge sharing that take place within the larger industry with which each organization is affiliated. In this case, though, such relationships are not industry specific, and are usually part of the company or organization’s interest in participating in activities that promote the larger societal good. Smaller organizations have difficulty with such participation, simply because there is often neither personnel nor resources that can be made available, but for the organizations that do participate, knowledge services staffs will and usually do support these external programs. Typical activities might be public-private partnerships in which leaders of various companies, educational institutions, government organizations, and so forth come together in some forum to identify local, regional, national, or societal (or even global) issues that require cooperation and knowledge development/knowledge sharing. Recent examples include the many activities sponsored by such organizations as UNESCO or the World Trade Organization or, more dramatically (especially since the events of September, 2001), the efforts of a variety of groups seeking to combat world terrorism or to raise awareness about the necessity for critical infrastructure protection. In all these cases, organizational knowledge services units participate fully, not only in supplying required information to the parent organization’s participants, but in broadening that support to include methodologies and products for knowledge development and knowledge sharing. This generalized picture is certainly useful and will provide valuable information as organizational management and management in the organization’s knowledge services unit begin exploring policy and policy development for a structured professional learning program. They will, of course, rely on the findings of the learning audit with respect to identifying knowledge services stakeholders in the organization. Of equal importance (but, sadly, often neglected as new program initiatives are undertaken) are the findings of the learning audit with respect to the professional/workplace culture in the organization and within which, of course, professional knowledge workers carry out their responsibilities. The expectations of knowledge services stakeholders will obviously influence the approach that is taken as a structured professional learning program is considered. These, too, will have been determined through the learning audit process and will have, hopefully, provided solid footing for the organization’s needs with respect to professional learning for its knowledge workers. These professional knowledge services practitioners have certain expectations themselves, of course, and consideration will be given to previous training and development efforts (if any), and how those efforts were received by the professional practitioners. Customers and users, certainly, the very workers with whom the professional

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knowledge workers interact on an ongoing basis, will have expectations that, in the learning audit, will have been identified and codified. And by all means recognizing and giving consideration to management expectations is fundamental to the success of the effort. In fact, it is this last group of stakeholders, the management staff in the organization, that is key to the success of the development effort for the structured professional learning initiative. To recognize this fact is to understand that support for any new endeavour – especially one that is liable to be looked upon by the uninitiated as something ‘extra’ or an activity not taken very seriously by leaders in the organization – must be top down. Management must support and, if possible, demonstrate enthusiasm for the effort if it is to be given enterprise-wide acceptance. Hopefully, the learning audit will have provided the ‘right’ answers to the following: ●

Was organizational management involved from the beginning of the learning audit?

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Does management benefit from the presence of a knowledge services unit within the organization?

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How is the knowledge services unit perceived by senior management? Is it a profit centre? Or is it a money bleeder?

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What is the relationship of management to other (if any) learning efforts within the company?

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Does senior management participate in the organizational staff development process in any way?

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Was management dissatisfaction (for some failed or inadequately realized program, activity, or situation) the motivation for the original consideration for establishing a structured professional learning program?

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Does (should) senior management care about knowledge services and excellence in knowledge services delivery within the organization?

Expectations In most organizations, as a plan for a professional learning program is developed, expectations will fall into several categories. Most of these can generally be classified as either measurable and tangible effects, which might be referred to as ‘hard’ expectations, and a second group of expectations that have more to do with cultural change and intangible effects, or what might be called ‘soft’ expectations. The first group, of course, includes a given, what might be stated as ‘improved efficiencies’. The program would not be considered if things were not going to be

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‘better’ in the workplace, and there is a long list of expected efficiencies, including such things as: ●

More efficient use of staff time (e.g., less time wasted looking for the ‘right’ information);

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Faster decision-making;

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Easier information collection, knowledge development, and knowledge sharing;

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Reduced staff tension and higher job satisfaction;

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Reduced information ‘clutter’;

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Better time management.

These (and, of course, many others) can all be among the expected benefits in efficiency that a structured professional learning program will help to put (or keep) in place. Specific and often measurable changes in the way people work will also be expected. For example, in some information/knowledge services units, it becomes possible to replace report delivery with access. Once a report has been prepared and electronically captured, instead of providing a printed copy of the report when requested, the user is simply referred to the electronic location. The knowledge employee’s work is changed because there is no need to deal with output or delivery issues (and, of course, there are no printing or publishing costs to be dealt with). The knowledge worker can provide more such information transactions in the same amount of time that was previously devoted to providing printed reports. At the same time, however, the employee’s work changes in another way, in that the work now requires a higher level of accountability and responsibility, simply because there are more – and faster – information transactions. In another example, a professional knowledge services employee might be responsible for providing a particular set of documents or information items to an identified user group on a regular schedule. Such a document might be notes prepared from attending a meeting, perhaps, or the delivery of an archived presentation. In a workplace in which the emphasis is on knowledge development and knowledge sharing, as the set of documents is created and distributed, the employee with responsibility for managing the documents will not only track their distribution, but will actively seek responses from the recipients and compile and distribute those responses for the benefit of the entire group. The employee’s work changes because the end result of the process is not simply the distribution of the documents but a more comprehensive process that includes determining their value and, as appropriate, sharing that knowledge, as well.

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Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services

Another tangible benefit is an increase in productivity and a change in the attitudes of people about their work. Some of this can be measured and some cannot. In most cases, such tangible change is specific. Its success is evaluated through the use of standard measurement instruments, which will be incorporated from the earliest planning stages into the work of the structured professional learning program and will, of necessity, become an integral part of organizational function as a whole. Tangible change produces specific, quantifiable results, such as increased quality in responses to patron queries, for example, or fewer complaints from line staff about supervisors’ procedures. Related to these improved efficiencies is also a set of expectations, probably from all knowledge services stakeholders, that a structured professional learning program will provide knowledge workers with the ability to monitor their work and describe measurable benefits realized from the establishment of such a learning program. Tangible change measures normally include return-on-investment and cost benefit analysis, and these can be used to measure quantifiable improvements (increased efficiency in input applications, for example, or numbers of staff in training or development programs at any given time). Other metrics, though, are being similarly developed and can be applied for measuring the success of the less tangible components of the structured professional learning program. While conventional wisdom generally would not be expected to allow for the measurement of intangible benefits in the knowledge services workplace, in fact these metrics are being developed and are coming more and more into use, and their utilization will eventually be expected and, indeed, incorporated into standard management practice. Nevertheless, it must be stated that there are intangible benefits related to the knowledge services workplace that are difficult to measure. These benefits, when realized, identify the workplace in question as a good environment in which to work. Recognized early by such management leaders as Peter F Drucker and others, the role of the knowledge worker is now understood to be a responsible and accountable one. In fact, in his 1999 book on management challenges for the twenty-first century, Drucker made specific recommendations in this connection and identified six major factors that determine knowledge-worker productivity, a list that is uniquely relevant to the discussion of knowledge services measures: 1.

Knowledge worker productivity demands that we ask the question, ‘What is the task ? ’;

2.

Knowledge worker productivity demands that we impose the responsibility for their productivity on the individual knowledge workers themselves. Knowledge workers have to manage themselves. They have to have autonomy;

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3.

Continuing innovation has to be part of the work, the task, and the responsibility of knowledge workers;

4.

Knowledge work requires continuous learning on the part of the knowledge worker, but equally continuous teaching on the part of the knowledge worker;

5.

Productivity of the knowledge worker is not – at least not primarily – a matter of quantity of output. Quality is at least as important;

6.

Finally, knowledge-worker productivity requires that the knowledge worker is both seen and treated as an ‘asset’ rather than a ‘cost’. It requires that knowledge workers want to work for the organization in preference to all other opportunities. (Drucker, 1999, pp. 142–3)

Although these enhancements are, indeed, about productivity, they represent another category of change results, what we might call intangible change. This group of results is, of course, more subtle and probably not so easily evaluated with standard measurement methodologies but they are, nevertheless, observable, and will be noted as the efforts of the professional learning program and its offerings begin to ‘pay off’. Such changes as new and different attitudes of staff about their work, partnerships between staff members and their immediate supervisors, more ‘comfortable’ interactions between staff and the knowledge services unit’s customers (for both parties), and similar changes in the ambiance of the organization will begin to manifest themselves. As professional staff return to the workplace and apply what they have been exposed to in learning activities organized through the structured professional learning program, their contribution to workplace success will become more defined for them, and they will recognize that their work relates to the larger organizational mission. That, of course, is the whole point. It is the mission of the professional development program to enable professional workers in the knowledge services unit to support the organization in the achievement of organizational objectives. Obviously, as professional staff development outcomes and staff recognition/reward policies and procedures are incorporated into planning and policy development for a structured professional learning program (and specifically as those activities link to the stated mission of organization), this overarching emphasis will be the focus of the work. When this happens, the development of the program and the implementation of its learning activities can be expected to provide very specific cultural changes that will resonate throughout the organization. These can be expected to include: Improved Interactions between the Unit’s Customers and its Professional Staff Better service will be provided and fewer complaints about service will be received through the offering of learning activities for professional

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employees (particularly for staff who have responsibility for direct contact with users), emphasizing service excellence and the employee/customer relationship. Making a Difference Related to this, attention will be given to establishing specific tools for staff to use in working with their customers. Making a difference in the information customer’s life will be a key focus, resulting in what Stephen Abram characterizes as ‘transformational librarianship’, that is, interacting with the user with such a high level of success that he or she is decision-empowered and enabled through the outcome of the interaction with the knowledge services professional) (Abram, 1997, p.23). ‘Putting yourself in the user’s shoes’ will be an underlying theme in learning activities relating to service excellence. The Enterprise Affiliation ‘Experience’ As a result of participating in learning activities created as part of the professional learning program, staff members will be able to recognize and build on the four-way connection that characterizes the unique situation in place at the particular organization. These components (the unique activity and mission of the parent organization, the expertise of the professional knowledge services workers, the mission of the knowledge services unit, and the appropriate level of services) can then be used to formulate service delivery and staff members will be able to establish a unique service framework for its delivery. Immediate Impact/Action Plans A major emphasis of the program’s learning activities will be the immediate application of learning, and programs developed for the professional knowledge services staff will include discussions about how material learned in the program will be put to immediate use in the workplace. Follow-up activity, where appropriate, will reinforce this effort. Results/Measurement Feedback about the value of professional learning offerings is a critical component of the operation and will be given proper attention. Enhanced Partnership/Link between Management and Staff As much as anything else, the creation of a structured professional learning program sends a message to professional knowledge services staff that management cares about staff and is willing to establish processes and procedures that will enable the professional staff to improve performance. One obvious (but always surprising) expectation that will be realized from the development of a structured professional learning program for the knowledge services staff is the change in staff attitude, as people become

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aware of how much ‘better’ their work is because they are encouraged and expected to think about their workplace as one in which knowledge development and knowledge sharing are the norm. It is not unusual, as noted in the conclusion of Chapter Three, for an employee to comment, after a fairly short time of working in a knowledge services environment in which professional learning is emphasized, that he or she now ‘likes’ working for the organization more because ‘I’m learning new things all the time’. All of which means that the first and most obvious expectation is a cultural one, as the knowledge services professional staff is now managed with the obvious goal of ensuring that all knowledge accessed by the organization’s staff is developed and shared. When this happens, the organization is continually renewing itself and creating new knowledge, leading – it is to be fervently hoped – to better delivery of current products and services and the creation of new products and services. All stakeholders (and particularly the staff of the knowledge services unit) come to recognize that it is not only to the organization’s advantage that knowledge be well managed and shared, but to their own professional and personal advantage as well. Such cultural change is, of course, an intangible benefit and difficult to measure – except perhaps subjectively. It is nevertheless an important benefit and will be recognized within the organization’s sphere of influence as a major asset of the organization.

Challenges Such is the picture of knowledge services within the organization that should be available when the learning audit has been completed and its findings have been discussed and assimilated by both knowledge services management and senior management in the parent organization. Following a review of the audit’s findings, it is important to establish the connections between identified and stated organizational goals, and those of the information unit itself. Without a direct and strict agreement about goals, vision, and strategy, the learning program cannot be expected to support the services anticipated by the organization’s knowledge services stakeholders, and every effort must be made to determine that all elements of the learning program match the organization’s larger purpose. Such an ideal arrangement is, of course, easier talked about than achieved, simply because every information/knowledge stakeholder has his or her own agenda or plan for information delivery and knowledge sharing. Unless a commitment to the organizational role is acknowledged and made early on, many additional ‘layers’ of interest and activity will come into the picture, and the true purpose of the learning program will get muddled, with the program becoming fragmented and unfocused. Establishing the realities of the company’s organizational goals is one of the most difficult challenges faced by those who have responsibility

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for planning a structured professional learning program. In order to determine how learning in the company reflects organizational goals, those involved in the development process must look carefully at what is on ‘display’ throughout the company, and not just the mission statement and vision statement published and framed throughout the company’s offices, or the several strategic plans and reorganizations that are undertaken every so often. The culture of the company, too, must be identified and characterized. If innovation, creativity, and support for new ideas are part of the enterprise culture, the development of an operational professional learning program will be successful. If not, some attention must be given to determining whether the culture can be changed or, indeed, even if it is worthwhile to begin the struggle to create a learning entity if it is going to be perceived as running against the prevailing culture in the organization. Ideally, organizational goals, the organization’s vision, and the strategy for achieving them have already been connected with the work that is performed in the organization’s information/knowledge services unit. Certainly one of the drivers for seeking to structure a formal learning entity is simply the leadership of forward-thinking management, both organizationally and within the unit itself. The affinity and indeed the ‘connectedness’ of information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning are now commonly accepted in the management community as a good thing, a new way of looking at formerly independent functions that when converged can provide tangible and measurable benefits to the organization. Even in those organizations that have not yet, for a variety of reasons, been able to undertake the actual convergence of information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning, there is an understanding and a recognition that if (or, as it is usually expressed, ‘when’) such convergence takes place, the organization expects to benefit from the convergence. In these forward-moving environments, organizational goals, vision, mission, and the strategy for achieving them have been established and knowledge services, as an operational function, participates in that move forward. On the other hand, it must also be acknowledged that another driver for establishing a structured professional learning entity emanates from the negative side of the operational management spectrum. In some situations, there has been or is perceived to be dissatisfaction and/or frustration experienced when a staff member in the unit, or one of its customers, cannot successfully access the information service, product, or consultation that is required. As this experience is repeated, and especially if repeated with some frequency, efforts to provide better service must be made, and the role of learning in the knowledge development/knowledge sharing activity becomes more prominent. These are the kinds of issues that confront those with responsibility for studying or determining the need for a structured professional learning

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program. Who this group is, and how they became involved in this activity, will vary from organization to organization (and, indeed, from department to department within organizations). Generally speaking, the group – or occasionally a single individual – has been assigned this responsibility due to some identified need within the knowledge services unit or in the larger organization. For example, within a large corporation, not only is staff throughout the company overwhelmed by the amount of information being pushed at them, the number and complexity of resources that contain this information is equally overwhelming. In most companies, little attention is paid to how staff is taught to access these various resources, and training is usually sporadic and on an asneeded basis. In order to develop the information contained within these resources into mission-specific knowledge (and to structure that knowledge so it can be shared with those who need it), focused training programs must be developed, programs that look at how the information relates to the organizational mission, and at how the knowledge developed from it will be used and, when appropriate, shared. To be successful, information management must link to whatever training is available in the company, and knowledge workers responsible for providing information – through a corporate information centre, records unit, etc. – must also have available to them the resources for providing strategic learning methodologies for themselves and their customers. When the link is not in place, someone or some group of people must identify the problem (probably following a series of failed or costly activities that could have been prevented) and begin to discuss how information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning can converge, for the benefit of the knowledge services unit itself and, of course, for the benefit of its customers. Another example might be found in the medium-size information technology firm, offering electronic document management and possibly even some level of electronic-based knowledge management to its clients. What’s missing at the company is an enterprise-wide strategic learning activity, since most training is organized through the company’s human resources office and not through the knowledge services unit or similar department. As a result, someone in authority is eventually going to discover, possibly due to a lost customer or similar financial situation, that without a connection between the knowledge services unit and the human resources training program, a certain amount of awkward struggling is going to be taking place. Additionally, that person (or group of people) is also going to discover that by connecting information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning, not only can products and services be provided to customers within the company, a solid capability for the company’s clients can also be developed. So organizations – as they seek to establish structured professional learning programs for their knowledge services staff – are confronted with

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very real challenges, and these are usually identified by some person or group of people who have determined that ‘more can be done’ in terms of knowledge services. Some of these challenges can be articulated: ●

The overwhelming amount of information that must be dealt with, and the equally confounding number of information resources that contain the information that must be accessed before knowledge can be developed, much less shared;

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Management and customer expectations about information delivery and the role of the knowledge professional in not only delivering information but structuring it so that knowledge can be developed and shared;

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The quality of information management and information delivery;

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The recognition that the knowledge services entity in the organization is but one component part of an overall knowledge services discipline, not only within the organization, but in the larger management community and, in many cases, in society as well;

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Conversely, the uniqueness of each knowledge services entity is recognized, but that recognition combines with a parallel recognition that the culture of the entity must provide information management and knowledge services delivery that match established workplace realities;

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Of critical importance, the recognition that there is frequently a disconnect between what is being taught (both in preparation for a career in knowledge services and in continuing professional/strategic learning activities) and what is to be provided – in terms of productivity, quality of service, and staff initiative – by knowledge workers in the workplace.

The first step, then, to establishing goals and understanding expectations for the structured professional learning program is to link learning goals to organizational goals. Referring to the findings of the learning audit, those with responsibility in this area should be able to state unequivocally what the organizational goals are, what the organization’s vision of itself is, the organization’s role in attaining those goals, and its strategy for doing so. It is Rosabeth Moss Kanter who has put forward some of the distinctions that can help with the linking process, for as the structured professional learning program is being developed, it must match what the larger enterprise requires and, at the same time, demonstrate its own strategy for what Kanter calls ‘mastery’. Empowerment, of course, is essential, and the knowledge workers who are providing information and knowledge services to the organization must be empowered to do what they have been hired to do. Beyond empowerment, however,

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Kanter seeks more, and while she is not writing about professional learning, per se, as she provides these suggestions, her list is appropriate here: ‘Empowerment should not be confused with open-ended responsibilities with no boundaries. Higher-commitment settings are also characterized by a great deal of focus, clarity, and discipline. People like projects that are challenging but in which priorities are clear. . . . In big as well as small companies, rigorous goals and deadlines are considered an asset – and seen as a stimulus to creativity, not a stifler of it’ (Kanter, 2001, p. 209). And in very practical terms, Kanter goes on to describe, in her examples, how for the companies that succeed, the priorities must be ‘schedule, then quality, then cost’ (Ibid.). This is the type of environment knowledge services managers must seek to develop as they move forward with their plans for structuring professional learning for their staffs and for the customers whose information and knowledge services requirements are to be addressed by these knowledge workers. If the professional learning structure is going to be successful, it cannot be an ad hoc or casual activity. Priorities must be established, and they must be clear priorities. Learning Goals Regardless of the circumstances that have lead to the interest in building a structured professional learning program, learning goals can be established. These include: Strengthened information-delivery processes Knowledge development and knowledge sharing is the goal, and the purpose of strategic (performance-centred) learning in any environment is to enable workers to do their work better and to be smarter about how they work. So, too, is the purpose of professional learning – in the larger professional environment – related to the work professionals do. Even when these workers are, in fact, engaged in providing learning services themselves, as employees in knowledge services, it is to their advantage to be able to address issues that affect how they do their work. Thus professional learning for knowledge services – the subject of this book – is intrinsically linked to highervalue methodologies, techniques, and, of course, technologies that inform and enable information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning, with the result that products, services, and consultations will be as good as they can be in the organization. In knowledge services, professional learning takes on particular significance because learning, in this unit of the organization, casts a wide net. The learners will be, of course, knowledge workers employed in the information/knowledge services unit itself, whether it is a specialized library, a documentation facility, or some other entity designed and organized specifically for the purpose of providing information and knowledge services delivery. The object is to manage, retrieve, and deliver information

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in a manner that not only gives the person requesting the information what he or she requires, but delivers it in a framework that permits knowledge development and knowledge sharing. Thus the professional learning program organized for professional knowledge services staff must connect to information management, knowledge management, and performance-centred learning as delivered to the knowledge services unit’s constituent users. Its purpose is to enable them to do their work better, and to deliver the products, services, and consultations that are required. Alignment between Organizational/Departmental Goals and Staff Skills/ Knowledge Goals and expectations are as individual and as idiosyncratic as the people who have them. To develop policy and design a structured professional learning program, management must require that that the findings of the learning audit be articulated, condensed (if necessary), and broadcast throughout the enterprise. This activity is undertaken for the express purpose of detailing, for all learning stakeholders, what the findings represent. Such awareness raising also informs stakeholders that, as the findings are studied and different approaches to learning are considered, it is critical that skills and knowledge to be acquired match organizational and departmental goals. For example, if among the findings of the learning audit is one of the challenges referred to earlier, concerns about the quality of information management and information delivery, how these concerns are dealt with will be a large, broad-based effort undertaken throughout the organization. Questions must be asked, including such necessary questions as, ‘What do you mean when you say that information delivery is ‘not good enough’?’ ‘Do your concerns take into account levels of service delivery established for the organization? Or are you seeking a level of service that is outside the parameters of what this unit is authorized to provide?’ Obviously some of this information will have been gathered as the learning audit was conducted; what happens here is that the information is now identified with and linked to individual expectations. Specific steps can now be taken to ensure that organization goals can be matched to staff skills and knowledge, and service delivery can be provided in a realistic framework that matches organizational goals. Increased Satisfaction from Clients/Stakeholders (both internal and external) Related to the above, client satisfaction becomes a specifically stated goal, and an important component of the structured professional learning program is the development of mechanisms for ensuring that client satisfaction is achieved. It will be clear from the learning audit that measures are required, but beyond ROI and performance evaluation, standards of effectiveness will be introduced, and professional employees will be judged by how information, knowledge, and strategic learning products and services are received by their users.

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Enhanced Organizational Strength Visibility and heightened awareness of what is being offered – and what is being valued – are critical elements in any professional learning activity, and the structured professional learning program proposed here is no exception. The information/knowledge services operation will be recognized at several levels for the strength of its efforts. Four come to mind immediately: 1. Support/contribution to organizational mission; 2. Internal recognition; 3. External recognition; 4. Industry leadership.

Identifying Benefits Policy development for the establishment of a structured professional learning program for knowledge services will be based on the findings of the learning audit. As organizational management and those with management authority in the knowledge services unit move in this direction, concepts that might be termed ‘Strategic Learning Objectives’ will come into play. It is important that these concepts be clearly identified and articulated as the process begins, as they are fundamental to the success of the venture. Primary among them, of course, is the establishment of a standard of service excellence to be pursued. As will have been determined from the findings of the learning audit (and can seen from the learning goals described above), service excellence is highly desired by all learning stakeholders in the organization, and professional staff in the knowledge services operation will expect to perform their work at the desired level of service excellence. In order to ensure that all parties have a clear understanding of what is expected of them in the knowledge services environment, service excellence is defined: it is the level of service perceived, defined, and experienced by customers as necessary for the successful delivery of information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning products, services, and consultations for the achievement of their workplace endeavours. As employees in the knowledge services unit, professional knowledge workers participate in professional learning activities that support the performance of their duties to achieve that service excellence. To get to this stage, however, and to be able to apply these concepts to the development of policy for the establishment of a structured professional learning program, a certain level of responsibility and accountability must be considered. Obviously this responsibility and

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accountability builds on the findings of the learning audit, including an understanding of the organizational culture that was identified and characterized as part of the audit. These concepts all come together in the recognition that certain essential conditions and requirements must be in place as the professional learning program is developed. These include, on the part of senior organizational management, the management of the knowledge services unit, and all other management staff in the organization, the following commitments: ●

To recognize that the establishment of a structured professional learning program is critical for the successful achievement of the knowledge services unit’s mission and the organizational mission;

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To recognize professional knowledge services staff as the key resource in the successful achievement of knowledge services unit’s mission (and to support their participation in professional learning activities);

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To link professional learning to staff needs and to service excellence;

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To relate professional learning to performance excellence and career advancement for all professional knowledge services staff;

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To undertake continuous evaluation and analysis of learning needs of the professional knowledge services staff;

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To coordinate individual participation in a manner that relates successful participation in the activities of the professional learning program to professional recognition and, when appropriate, to organizational advancement;

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To measure results accurately, and to utilize an established methodology for reporting specific learning outcomes and organizational benefits to organizational and knowledge services management and, when appropriate, to other authorities as well.

These are obviously objectives of the highest professional order, but they are not so grand that they cannot be realized productively for the benefit of the parent organization and, especially, for the organization’s knowledge services operation. Once this list has been accepted as a fundamental baseline or, if you will, as a point of departure for the development of the professional learning program, all learning stakeholders know what they are working toward and the levels of service excellence that are going to be expected in the organization’s knowledge services operation. In such an environment, educational objectives – like stakeholders expectations, described earlier – would seem to fall into two categories. The first of these was categorized as measurable and tangible effects, which were referred to as ‘hard’ objectives, and the second group

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described as those results that have more to do with cultural change and intangible effects, or what might be called ‘soft’ objectives. In devising a structured professional learning program for knowledge services staff, these learning objectives can be categorized. Measurable/tangible effects will be such things as performance improvement, operational/functional improvement (including enhanced technology skills when appropriate), better service delivery, and continuous improvement of processes, programs, and procedures. Cultural change and intangible effects will include such things as improved attitudes among staff, patrons, etc., workplace enhancements, established recognition and reward programs, and the like. Within this framework, it can be anticipated that general learning objectives common to all learning activities organized through the structured professional learning program will result in the following desired outcomes on the part of professional knowledge services staff: ●

An ability to understand the value of service excellence in the delivery of information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning products, services, and consultations;

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Professional-level skills in performing all tasks relating to services delivery in these areas;

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Professional-level skills in both written and oral communication, including presentation skills;

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Professional-level skills in the use of all appropriate informationdelivery, knowledge management, and learning media, including both printed resources and/or information technology;

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Competency in working at a professional level with the knowledge services unit’s users, and competency in working at a professional level in groups of fellow employees;

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With respect to the realization of the learning goals of the professional learning program, an ability to recognize and understand the critical value of partnerships, trust, and collaboration at all employee classification levels, in the achievement of excellence in knowledge services delivery;

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An ability to understand and to act upon the fundamental concepts of performance improvement, with performance being defined as onthe-job behaviours which produce accomplishments valued by the person who receives the results of the task being performed and valued by the organization as a whole;

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Competency in working to the best of one’s professional, operational, and functional abilities, including the introduction and utilization of

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information technology into one’s work when technology products are demonstrably shown to provide more efficient and effective results than manual operations; ●

A capacity for studying and understanding the fundamental elements of workplace tasks and for seeking continuous improvement in processes, programs, and procedures;

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Within the established organizational structure, the ability to understand and to recognize the value of relationships that exist among all employee classifications, including an awareness of the purposes of supervision, the significance of measurement, and the value of consistent, enterprise-wide standards of excellence in job performance;

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Competency in working with and participating in employee recognition and reward programs, to ensure that all professional staff members understand their value to the organization as a workplace and to the successful achievement of the organizational mission.

It is anticipated, of course, that these general learning objectives, which can be expected to be achieved through all learning activities under the auspices of the structured professional learning program, will be complemented by parallel changes in the knowledge services unit’s culture, a thread that has intentionally been woven through this chapter. Hopefully, depending on the level of commitment of senior management and the management staff of other operational functions, cultural change in the larger organization will be realized as well. But whether change is ‘local’ or enterprise-wide, the establishment of a structured professional learning program cannot succeed without an expectation of cultural change. In fact, the importance of identifying and understanding the current culture in the organization, and in the knowledge service unit cannot be overestimated. Generally speaking, the learning audit will have demonstrated that there is interest throughout the enterprise in the establishment of a structured professional learning program, with responsibility for, primarily, professional training, learning, and knowledge development. In other words, there is a desire throughout the organization for the organization to be – from the staff’s point of view – a learning organization, with the knowledge services staff taking on the leadership and responsibility for providing this service to the organization. It will also have been generally accepted (and heartily anticipated among some staff members) that the establishment of a professional learning program for knowledge services staff will be instrumental in bringing about desired cultural change at large.

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References Abram, Stephen (1997) ‘Post information age for special librarians: is knowledge management the answer?’, Information Outlook, 1(6). Drucker, Peter F (1999) Management Challenges for the 21st Century, New York: Harper Business. Kanter, Rosabeth Moss (2001) Evolve! Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Do This! Use this Checklist for Determining Goals and Expectations for a the Professional Learning Program for the Enterprise Using the learning audit, prepare a comprehensive description of the knowledge services learning environment in the parent organization. Identify all knowledge services stakeholders, both internal and external. Identify and codify learning requirements (both expressed and unstated) for stakeholders. Identify measurable and tangible goals and expectations (‘hard’ expectations). Identify intangible, cultural goals and expectations (‘soft’ expectations). Identify challenges. Identify and codify benefits to the parent organization and to the specific departmental units providing knowledge services.

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Chapter Ten

KD/KS: Defining the Approach

Early in the process, it should be recognized that there are distinctions to be made as we think about training, continuous education, professional learning, staff development, and similar activities. For example, while the terms are often used interchangeably (as even occurs occasionally in this book), the activities are not necessarily the same, as evidenced by a new and important term – strategic learning – that is appearing ever more frequently in conversations and in the literature of continuous education and professional learning. Subtle distinctions have been established, and they should be noted and, when necessary, incorporated into the professional learning vernacular. Perhaps the best way to begin is to look at how the terms are defined.

Definitions of Learning There are several generally accepted terms that are used when we discuss professional learning, and in knowledge services, it has become customary to talk about learning activities using these terms. There is even a sort of learning-types ‘hierarchy’, for those who are so inclined, and the types of learning undertaken in knowledge services includes a rather broad range of activities. Training, for example, is usually thought of as an activity through which an employee or a co-worker acquires a specific skill, usually a new skill that the employee has not been able to practise prior to the training activity. A common example is the side-by-side instruction one receives from a colleague when a new task is assigned, and the colleague has experience performing that task. Other examples are database search skills, unique to a particular product and usually acquired through training provided by the product vendor. In both cases, the learning activity matches the phraseology generally accepted in the professional learning community today, as defined by Louis Phillips and used by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training:

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‘[Training is] a planned learning experience whereby individuals learn to perform specific skills. [The term is] generally interpreted as being more narrowly focused than the term education.’ (Phillips, 1994. p. 133)

Continuous (or continuing) education is a ‘grander’ subject, building on the age-old definition of education and defined for our purposes, again by Phillips, in a description that associates easily with knowledge services. Education, Phillips says, is ‘the process of acquiring knowledge whereby individuals learn to think and reason’ (Ibid., p. 132). Obviously, in this context, the migration to continuous or continuing education is a comfortable one, with continuous or continuing education being defined as: ‘Formal education programs/activities for professional development and training, or for credentialing, for which academic credit is not awarded, or of personal interest to the learner, for which academic credit is not awarded.’ (Council on the Continuing Education Unit, 1985. p.7)

It is a definition which Phillips refines usefully for our purposes: ‘Structured educational and training experiences for personal or professional development in which participants are assumed to have previously attained a basic level of education, training, or experience.’ (Phillips, op.cit., p. 131)

Examples abound, of course, but among the most popular might be a refresher course sponsored by a graduate school of library and information studies, at which local librarians working in the business community can update the knowledge they acquired when they were pursuing their graduate degrees at some point in the past. They have the basic education, and the purpose of the current course is to educate them even further in the same subject. Similarly, information services managers who go away for a week in the summer to attend a management institute are also pursuing continuous education, building on basic education that they have already acquired. There are many sources for continuous education, thanks to the various professional associations and organizations, community colleges, commercial learning enterprises, and the like, all of whom are making serious and conscientious efforts to satisfy a growing marketplace with the continuous educational programs that are being demanded. Professional growth, staff development, and professional development are also terms which are used in the professional learning community, and while these terms have come into the professional jargon in a more informal (and perhaps roundabout) fashion, they have been embraced by many of those active in the training and development field, and their use is now pretty commonly accepted. Generally speaking, the terms have to do with the more educational concepts that influence one’s workplace

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activities, and their appearance in the learning and development environment probably indicates a desire to move away from (and perhaps ‘above’, if a hierarchical arrangement is important to these learning staffs) the more ‘mundane’ activities associated with training. Certainly that conclusion can be surmised as the motivation for the current trend toward using the term ‘continuous education’ (instead of ‘continuing education’) to describe learning activities that take place after formal education has been completed. Such distinctions are only semantic, but as language is used, so it is changed. If there are those who are more comfortable with ‘continuous education’ than ‘continuing education’ (as this author is), and who hear in the newer phrase a refinement and perhaps a more ‘crisp’ descriptor than the earlier phrase, no harm is done and eventually the language of professional learning will reflect that refinement. As mentioned above, a new term that has appeared in the learning community in recent years is strategic learning, and it is a term that is invoked frequently in this book, particularly in connection with an already much-used and much accepted term, professional development (or, in some cases, professional learning). The terms are not necessarily interchangeable, however, because the latter term, professional development, implies an individual approach to learning, an approach that looks to the individual learner and defines the learning experience in terms of the benefits the experience will bring to the individual learner. Strategic learning, on the other hand, is a more holistic – and frequently multidimensional – approach to education and learning, based on the understanding that the most effective learning relates to and supports the strategy and the nature of the organization of which the learner is a part. In the strategic learning environment, learning systems (including the direct teaching of learning itself as a skill) are developed for enabling staff and management to achieve organizational strategic initiatives. The learning experience is directed at providing the learner with solutions to real-life, meaningful problems, and the focus in strategic learning moves from the individual to the organization, with benefits accruing for all stakeholders. As we think about terminology in the professional learning community, the one term that seems to be here to stay is the now-accepted lifelong learning. It’s a good term, and describes exactly what it is we’re talking about, without nuances having to do with educational hierarchy, higher (or lower) levels of learning, and similar considerations. And one of the reasons for the appeal of the term is that it reflects – within knowledge services – the field’s long-term preoccupation with egalitarianism. As such, it has an appropriate place in the learning arena, as can be demonstrated in those organizations and communities where even the most basic skills have to be taught to staff members, if they’ve come to work without the required skills, or if these skills are determined to

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be necessary for the position after the employee has been in the position for a while. For a useful definition, however, the term lifelong learning is best characterized with the approach that Jeanne C Meister uses when she defines the term, as she describes the major and expanding world of corporate universities. The term, according to Meister, is now part of our vocabulary: ‘It describes the need for workers to continue their education and development throughout their lives as they face multiple careers in changing economic circumstances. Increasingly, employees are recognizing that work and learning are becoming the same thing, with learning occurring in the workplace rather than in a university classroom. This need for lifelong learning is best captured by Richard Soderberg of the National Technological University when he says, ‘People mistakenly think that once they’ve graduated from college they are good for the next decade – when in fact they’re really good for the next 10 seconds’. . . . Because lifelong learning has become so crucial, corporations are increasingly shouldering the responsibility for servicing the educational needs of working adults. Education, once the purview of the church, then the government, is now rapidly falling to corporations.’ (Meister, 1998, pp. 212–13)

While Meister’s definition is absolutely correct when describing the educational activities (using Phillips’ definition of ‘education’) that take place in the corporate or organizational environment, the term can also be used to describe many different learning activities that must be offered in the workplace or, for that matter, embarked upon privately for people who want to learn to do something they cannot presently do, or to do something better than they presently do it. In the library/information services field, a particular example can be found in a large academic library in the United States with, say, a specific collection reflecting a focus or culture that is not normally associated with the library’s location (research materials on Asian art, for example, or the collected works of a particular Eastern European author during the Soviet era). While the subject experts in these departments – probably natives or recent immigrants of the country in question – will be well educated and have no difficulties with English as a second language, certain support staff may be employees who have less facility with English, and will require training in such subjects as telephone deportment, customer service, and similar areas. Certainly what they acquire, when the parent organization provides such training, can be classified as ‘lifelong learning’, but it is hardly at the level of the subjects taught in corporate universities. Thus the term, because it is so useful, is pretty much accepted throughout society as an appropriate term for describing the activities in which any sort of nonformal learning takes place, work-related or not. On the subject of lifelong learning, and as an appropriate ‘bridge’ into the discussion of learning styles, some attention might be given to

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whether, in curriculum planning for professional learning, there is a place for the ‘softer’, self-help skills. Certainly the Special Libraries Association, in offering its famous list of competencies expected of specialist librarians in the twenty-first century, anticipates that professional learning programs will be available for aiding practitioners in acquiring – or becoming more expert in applying – the twenty professional competencies described in the document. Can not the same be said for the 13 personal competencies that were identified? If that is the case, then specialist librarians, if not other knowledge workers, might be expected to be undertaking professional learning in such areas as seeking partnerships and alliances (Personal Competency 2.4), communications skills (Personal Competency 2.6), or team participation (Personal Competency 2.7) (Special Libraries Association, 1996). If this is a path to be followed, it is not inappropriate to suggest that other personal skills might be offered in professional learning programs. And whilst it would be convenient to assume that these personal skills would necessarily be workplace-related, there is no guarantee that this would be the case, a subject which causes no small consternation for some managers in knowledge services who find it singularly inappropriate for their staff to be using ‘company time’ and ‘company resources’ to learn personal skills. Obviously. But if the need is there, does not the organization have an obligation to provide the learning? The issue is raised – but not resolved – in a provocative essay published by a group of information scholars in the United Kingdom. Seeking to identify and analyse the personal qualities demanded by employers in the library and information services field and the personal qualities that new graduate entrants were perceived to lack, the study provided much food for thought. The 10 qualities considered most lacking in new graduates were identified to be (and were so ranked): 1. Committed to organizational goals; 2. Friendly; 3. Able to accept pressure; 4. Reliable; 5. Energetic (vigorous/active); 6. Flexible (respond to change); 7. Logical; 8. Written communication skills; 9. Confident about ability; 10. Able to work with and for a range of colleagues.

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The essay continues, and concludes: ‘As information and library work has been transformed by technology, social, and political priorities and economic policies, so the nature of people likely to be successful in the information profession has changed. Given the labour intensive character of information and library services and, therefore, the importance of staff to the success of the organization, workforce planning issues including the supply of and demand for suitable staff have always been a high priority for managers. However, the need for new graduates who meet employers’ requirements for staff able to flourish in a high-pressured environment, responding to change with a positive approach, is clearer than ever if the profession is to face the challenges of the new century in a confident and dynamic manner.’ (Goulding, et al., 1999, pp. 218, 222)

So the question must be asked: if these personal skills are not present in new hires in knowledge services, should their professional learning include the acquisition of these skills? It is a question that will be much debated, as the knowledge services discipline evolves and customer (and management) expectations continue to rise.

Learning Styles In addition to the terminology of learning, however, and the ‘types’ (for lack of a better word) of learning to be considered, some attention must be given to learning styles as well. These, too, require some elaboration before the professional learning process can begin. As Julie Todaro has noted, there are many theories relating to learning styles, and what managers must do is to help their staff identify – before the professional learning programs begin – what learning styles work best for the employee group in question. ‘Some theories’, Todaro writes, ‘categorize learners based on their senses, some on their personality traits, and some on their social learning (such as ‘are you a group learner or do you learn alone?’)’ (Todaro, 1999, pp. 192–5). In knowledge services, it isn’t necessary to delve as deeply into learning styles and the theory of learning as in, say, the education community, but the rudiments of understanding employees’ styles (or one’s own style, if one is thinking about designing a professional learning plan for one’s self) can be usefully described. In Canada, at the National Adult Literacy Database Inc. (NALD), much attention is given to the basics of learning styles, and a brief outline of the NALD learning-style ‘list’ can be used as professional learning programs are initiated. These can be considered, as a learning program for knowledge services is being put together:

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Physically-centred Learner 1. Learns by watching, learns by doing; 2. The learner does not need a lot of verbal instruction; 3. Needs enough time to practise and complete the activity; 4. The content of the activity must be practical and useful to the learner’s life; 5. Learns well in cooperation with others. Emotional/Relational Learner 1. Learns by listening to others; 2. Learns by talking about the activity with other learners; 3. Learns by relating the activity to his/her personal life; 4. Learns in a relaxed atmosphere; 5. Can divide attention amongst many different activities when learning something new; 6. Learns in a creative atmosphere; 7. Often does not know what he/she knows until he/she says it out loud to others. Mentally-centred Learner 1. Focuses on the idea or theory of the activity; 2. Learns what he/she values; 3. Learns independently; 4. Enjoys talking about ideas with others; 5. Concentrates deeply on one thing and cannot divide attention to listen or watch other things at the same time. These are useful categories, and can be effectively adapted for learning programs in knowledge services. When we use them, however (as the researchers at NALD make clear), ‘it is important to recognize that different researchers have different ways of defining learning styles and thus often use different terms to refer to the ways people prefer to perceive and process information’ (National Adult Literacy Database, 2000). For those who wish to think more theoretically about learning styles, the Academic Research Centre at the University of Michigan also has a list of learning styles, and the educators there are also quick to note

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that such generalizations must be understood to be exactly that, just generalizations: ‘There are many different learning styles. Identifying your preferred learning style leads to metacognition (self-awareness). Your preferred learning style is like your favorite shoes: what you go to first. But your favourite shoes are not always appropriate, so you have to try something different.’

Similarly, the researchers remind us that: ‘There is no right or wrong learning style. Although you may prefer one style over another, preferences develop like muscles: the more they are used, the stronger they become. Successful students have flexible and integrated learning styles.’

The list of learning styles described at Western Michigan University follows: Print

The print-oriented student prefers to learn through reading.

Aural

The aurally oriented student is likely to learn best though listening. This person enjoys audio tapes and listening to what other learners have to say.

Interactive

The interactive student enjoys discussions with other students on a one-to-one basis or in small groups.

Haptic

Haptic learners do best through the sense of touch. This type of person assimilates information through a hands-on approach.

Kinesthetic Kinesthetically oriented people learn best while moving. Olfactory

This refers to the use of the sense of smell in learning. (Western Michigan University Academic Skills Centre, 2002)

Another learning style which should be considered, particularly as managers in knowledge services prepare to move into a structured professional learning program for their staffs, is the very modern, very twenty-first century approach to learning referred to as ‘free agent learning’. While at the present time more of a trend than a learning style, per se, the idea of the free agent learner was captured succinctly by Shari Caudron: ‘As a market, they represent an estimated 41 to 76 million adults, most of whom have college degrees and good incomes. They’re a highly motivated and sophisticated group of buyers, and competition for their business is fierce. Colleges and universities are after them. Training suppliers want a piece of the action. Online companies are getting into the act. Even cable providers, professional associations, booksellers, and the Public Broadcasting System have joined the bidding.

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‘Who are these consumers, and why are so many organizations clamouring for their business? They are the growing legion of free agent learners – those independent and highly motivated adults who are taking responsibility for their own ongoing learning and development, as opposed to relying on employers to provide it for them. They’re people who understand the need for lifelong learning and are doing something about it.’ (Caudron, 1999, p. 27)

Certainly the free agent learning experience has its appeal in the knowledge services field, as knowledge workers struggle to balance the ever-increasing demands on their time. And as many of these workers – certainly librarians are so characterized – have an almost ritualistic commitment to independence and ‘free-thinking’, the advantages of free agent learning are clear, and stunningly attractive, so it can be expected that much energy and effort will be put into this type of professional learning in the future. E-learning Obviously driving ‘free agent’ and similar learning approaches to professional learning are the many different avenues to learning now available, thanks to enabling technology and the great variety of perspectives and points of view now offered to knowledge workers who want to learn. These come together when we take another look at some of the concepts embodied in both learning and training, and move into the newer domain of e-learning. Of course in this day and age, everyone has heard of and knows what the term means; ‘e-learning’ is now part of the vocabulary of management, and certainly of learning. We all understand the term to mean, as was noted in a newspaper article, ‘education and training delivered via the Web’. Or as the journalist who wrote the article noted, we think of e-learning as ‘distance learning, twenty-first-century style’ (Stellin, 2001, p. 7). E-learning is used for both learning and training, but, as is frequently noted (as has been commented on before in this book), they are not the same, and attempts to ‘attach’ learning and training in the e-learning approach requires careful attention to the outcomes being sought. Another way of stating this idea is provided by Marc J Rosenberg, whose book on e-learning strategies provides an essential text for managers seeking to establish a structured professional learning program within their organizations: ‘Learning and training are often thought of as synonymous; they are not. Training is the way instruction is conveyed; it supports learning, which is our internal way of processing information into knowledge. But since there are many ways we can learn, an effective learning strategy must transcend training. . . . In business, learning is a means to an end. Generally speaking,

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that end is enhanced workforce performance, which in turn reflects its value – better products and services, lower costs, a more competitive posture in the marketplace, greater innovation, improved productivity, increased market share, etc. ‘In the context of business, learning is the process by which people acquire new skills or knowledge for the purpose of enhancing their performance. . . . learning enables an individual or groups of individuals to work faster, better, and smarter so that they and their organizations (or employers) reap business benefits.’ (Rosenberg, 2001, p. 4)

E-learning is one of the methodologies the structured professional learning program will use to meet its goals and to provide the highest levels of professional learning for the organization’s knowledge services practitioners. Of course others in the organization will benefit as well, when their work attaches to the organizational knowledge development/knowledge sharing strategy. Ideally, as Judith Lamont has noted, e-learning is an endeavour that applies throughout the enterprise. Since enterprise-wide software systems are used throughout the organization, it only makes sense that e-learning applications not be restricted to one or another department of the organization (Lamont, 2002, pp. 12–13). From the beginning of the effort to organize the structured professional learning program, a management decision must be made to be as inclusive as the enterprise will allow. In some organizations, Lamont notes, this turns out to be a reasonable proposition, simply because the ‘continued convergence of training with knowledge management’ permits consistency throughout the organization (Ibid.). There are many reasons for doing so, and for the layperson (or for the organizational executive who must be won over as an advocate so that those establishing the structured professional learning program will have his or her support), the easiest list is, in fact, that provided by Stellin: ●

E-learning is less expensive than classroom training;

●

E-learning is more accessible to large numbers of employees;

●

E-learning makes it easier to measure the benefits of in-house training;

●

E-learning is preferred by many employees, since online classes tend to be broken into one-hour modules, offering a flexible schedule for busy people. (Stellin, op. cit.)

Rosenberg, too, has a ‘quick list’ for justifying e-learning, noting that the first question learning managers will be asked is ‘Does/Will e-learning save money?’. Starting with financial justifications for e-learning, Rosenberg offers four responses:

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1.

E-learning is more efficient, as it can take anywhere from 25 to 60 per cent less time to convey the same amount of information as in a classroom;

2.

Delivery cycle time is reduced;

3.

Financial benefits accrue to the client organization, not to the training organization, and these benefits are almost always on the delivery, not the development, side;

4.

The largest chunk of money to be saved is not in instructor costs, or travel and living, as is the popular belief, but in ‘student’ costs (i.e., lost opportunity costs). (Rosenberg, op.cit., pp. 214–18)

For a more expansive list of benefits, Rosenberg goes beyond the financial: 1.

E-learning lowers costs;

2.

E-learning enhances business responsiveness;

3.

Messages are consistent and customized, depending on need;

4.

Content is more timely and dependable;

5.

Learning is 24/7;

6.

No user ‘ramp-up’ time;

7.

Universality;

8.

Builds community;

9.

Scalability;

10. Leverages the corporate investment in the Web; 11. Provides an increasingly valuable customer service. (Ibid., pp. 30–1)

The true advantage of e-learning – and certainly within the context of knowledge services – is the connection with knowledge management. If in fact, as we are attempting to establish here, the convergence of information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning into the new profession of knowledge services will enable change and its accompanying benefits for all knowledge workers, the role of e-learning in this process simply cannot be understated. Rosenberg makes this connection and goes further to suggest how the convergence of learning and knowledge management provide a level of performance support that he describes as ‘very powerful . . . because it directly integrates knowledge and performance, significantly increasing the value of the total system’. In fact, Rosenberg has put together a neat chart comparing training, knowledge management, and performance support, which is worth reproducing here:

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Comparing Training, Knowledge Management, and Performance Support Training

Knowledge Management

Performance Support

Purpose is to instruct.

Purpose is to inform.

Requires the interruption of work to participate (even online). Program dictates how the user will learn.

Normally requires less work interrruption than training. User determines how s/he will learn.

Goal is to transfer skill and knowledge to user.

Goal is to be a resource to user.

Sales Example 1 Teaching selling skills.

Sales Example 1 Accessing customer information in preparation for a sales call. Technical Example 2 Accessing an interactive troubleshooting database on a particular piece of computer hardware. Characteristic user expression I can get the information that will help me do it (but I still need to learn how to find the information I need).

Purpose is to guide performance directly. Least interruption from work (ideally integrated directly into work tasks). Task at hand defines what the tool will do. Learning is secondary to performance. Goal is to assist performance (or do it completely). Sales Example 1 A tool to help create a sales proposal.

Technical Example 2 Training technicians to fix a computer system.

Characteristic user expression I know what to do, and why (but adding information and tools will help me do it better and easier).

Technical Example 2 Using a diagnostic tool to pinpoint a failed component in the computer. Characteristic user expression I don’t need to know how to do it-the system does it for me (but I still need to learn how to use and monitor the system).

(Ibid., pp. 72–8)

With such a striking list of benefits to be realized for the enterprise, most managers, and especially those with responsibility for leading the organizations’ knowledge services professional learning initiative, can reasonably expect e-learning to be the preferred delivery mechanism for training and learning, but it isn’t there yet. The American Society for Training and Development 2002 State of the Industry Report notes: ‘The growth of e-learning and the decline of instructor-led classroom training has been widely heralded for several years’ (Van Buren & Erskine, 2002). In some research, predictions had been that as much as 23 per cent of

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all training time would be delivered by e-learning by the year 2000, based on reports of 9.1 per cent of training time devoted to e-learning in 1997. The actual amount of e-learning ‘has fallen far short of the projections’, to only about 8.8 per cent 2000, with classroom training increasing from 77.6 per cent in 1997 to 79.4 per cent in 2000. The ASTD report continues: ‘Last year, we concluded that perhaps the rise of e-learning was not finished but on hold. Some firms indicated that in 1999 they held the amount of elearning steady while making significant new investments in e-learning systems and courseware. These firms told us that their e-learning levels would grow in 2000, which in fact did happen. Given the stability of these estimates, it appears that e-learning in the typical firm will finally settle in at 20 per cent of all training (versus 65 per cent in the classroom), but it may take some years to get there.’ (Van Buren & Erskine, 2002, pp. 17–18)

With this information, we can indeed alter our expectations so that they are more realistic, in terms of what knowledge workers are going to be using for their professional learning, and what learning providers, such as the organization’s structured professional learning program, will be offering to them. Realistically speaking, however, it seems clear that with the convergence of knowledge management and learning, now not only being expected but implemented in many organizations, e-learning will play a large role in professional learning for those working in the new knowledge services profession. The role will not be an exclusive one – nor should it be – but with the emerging interests in e-learning, distance education, the development of appropriate learning management systems and learning content management systems, we can expect both online learning and classroom learning to coexist with benefits for all stakeholders. In approaching the larger subject of professional learning for ‘knowledge workers’, one thought becomes immediately clear. While the nature of their work and the knowledge base utilized for success positions knowledge workers as somewhat ‘different’ from other white-collar workers, in their quest for learning they are riding the crest of the wave along with every other worker. Those of us employed in knowledge services arena are struggling with the same issues and seeking the same success patterns as other knowledge workers (as Peter Drucker called us back in 1994), and it is to our advantage to look at how professional learning is being delivered in a variety of industries, and to think about which ones will work for knowledge services (Drucker, 1994, pp. 66 ff).

Delivery Methods If we are all struggling with the same learning issues, we can benefit from knowing what some of the accepted delivery methods are, those

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utilized throughout the training and development environment at large. One of the best models is that used by the National Training Laboratories and often cited in the study of organizational development. Known as the ‘learning pyramid’, the model not only lists the various types of learning that are offered – generally – by providers in the professional learning community, but includes an analysis of average retention rates for the information conveyed in the specific types of learning. Thus we discover that the lecture format, for example, is at the peak of the pyramid, with an average retention rate of 5 per cent, for the attendees at the lecture, in their retention of the information conveyed. When the reader reads the information, approximately 10 per cent of the information is retained. If the information is presented in an audio-visual format, 20 per cent of the information is retained, and if presented as a demonstration, approximately 30 per cent of the information is retained. The highest retention levels occur in the next three groups of activities, which make up the three ‘base’ layers of the learning pyramid: those who participate in discussion groups retain approximately 50 per cent of the information discussed in the meeting, those who ‘practise by doing’ retain 75 per cent of the information conveyed, and those who are taught by others and can put the information to immediate use retain 90 per cent of what they have presented to them (Morgan, 2000). It becomes obvious, then, that some combinations of the above techniques is going to be the best format for those taking part in professional learning activities, and we find ourselves looking at a great variety of different ways for presenting material and information to professional colleagues. For example, seminars, per se, are not included in the learning pyramid as a specific format, but for those who teach (and for those who participate), the classic seminar arrangement, with a facilitator or leader providing certain lecture-type presentations, followed by group discussions, can be expected to result in retention rates that would be higher than either lecture or discussion groups alone would offer (in fact, this author frequently conducts what he prefers to describe as ‘Seminar/ Discussions’, in order to ensure that attendees recognize that they are expected to participate both passively and actively in the process). Audiovisual presentations are now the norm in most professional learning activities, with both non-electronic and electronic (PowerPoint, etc.) overheads, for example, being used both as an aide-memoire for the presenter and as printed handouts for the attendees. Other variations are common, and it is not unusual to have professional learning offerings include many different combinations, depending on the expectations and knowledge levels of the attendees, and the preferences of the instructor/facilitator. The activities taking place within the presentation format have been given much attention in recent years, primarily because – in some cases – presenters and instructors have become concerned lest professional learning become simply another form of entertainment for attendees. This

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is obviously not an issue when one is learning skills, concepts, and competencies that will be put to immediate use in the workplace, but in other situations (attendance at a professional conference, say, with a halfday or day-long course scheduled into the conference activities), many attendees are satisfied to sit passively, watching the overheads as they are projected, and at the end of the day – grasping their printed handouts – leave the program without giving the program’s subject another thought. Such inactivity on the part of attendees is appropriately a concern of presenters (to say nothing of employers who are sponsoring the attendee’s participation in the program), and seminar/discussions for many organizations now routinely include case studies, discussion groups, and exercises for attendees to complete as part of the program. In fact, in many organizations that offer professional learning activities, the inclusion of group activities such as the solving of specific problems or the undertaking of specific projects (often submitted by attendees prior to the session) are routinely included in the learning activity. Again, these are but another set of variations on the tried and true methods of teaching that, in the long run, are expected to benefit the attendees, and such activities are to be encouraged. One information/knowledge services organization, offering a two-and-a-half day seminar on knowledge management, for example, might have the middle part of the seminar devoted to the attendees breaking into smaller groups (of five or six participants, say) and using that time to construct a real knowledge base that can be applied in the workplace of the attendees when they return to their work. Such activities tend to incorporate most if not all of the standard delivery methods of the learning pyramid, and can only be beneficial for the attendees in helping them increase the level of retention of the material provided. It remains to be seen how the many training and learning methodologies will ‘shake out’, and which will end up being the preferred technique for conveying information to knowledge workers. Particularly with respect to professional learning for knowledge services employees working in organizational units or departments providing information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning, it is probably impossible to predict which learning delivery technique will be most successful. If past experience is any guide, we can expect a continuing reliance on a variety of learning activities and formats, and although e-learning would seem to be the format that would be expected to capture the loyalty of knowledge professionals, it will be some time before that methodology is foolproof. And in the continuing spirit of the collaborative workplace, a concept which is continually growing in acceptance in the management community, it seems likely that learning formats that bring people together will continue to be the formats of choice. In the long run, of course, it doesn’t matter, simply because management is going to rely on choosing the format that provides best delivery of

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learning information, however ‘best’ is defined in the particular situation. The decision will undoubtedly be based on the quality of the learning activity’s content, not on how it is delivered.

References Caudron, Shari (1999) ‘Free agent learner’, Training and Development, 52(8). Council on the Continuing Education Unit (1985) Principles of Good Practice in Continuing Education: Report of the CCEU project to develop standards and criteria for good practice in continuing education, Silver Spring, MD: Council on the Continuing Education Unit. Drucker, Peter F (1994) ‘The age of social transformation’, Atlantic Monthly, 274(5). Goulding, Anne, et al. (1999) ‘Supply and demand: the workforce needs of library and information services and personal qualities of new professionals’, Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 31(4). Meister, Jeanne C (1998) Corporate Universities: Lessons in building a world-class work force, New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Morgan, Jim (2000) ‘Use of teams in classes 5/14/98’, National Training Laboratory, Bethel, ME, 8 January 2000 www.lowery.tamu.edu/ teaming/morgan1/sld023.htm. National Adult Literacy Database, Inc. 6 January 2000 www.nald.ca/ CLR/csa/appx_d.htm. Phillips, Louis (1994) The Continuing Education Guide: The CEU and other professional development criteria, Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. Rosenberg, Marc J (2001) E-learning: Strategies for delivering knowledge in the digital age, New York: McGraw-Hill. Special Libraries Association (1996) Competencies for Special Librarians of the 21st Century, Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association. Stellin, Susan (2001) ‘Employee training without the No-Doz’, New York Times, 18 April 2001. Todaro, Julie (1999) ‘The beast within’, Library Administration & Management 13(4). Van Buren, Mark E, and William Erskine (2002) State of the Industry: ASTD’s Annual Review of Trends in Employer-Provided Training in the United States, Alexandria, VA: American Society for Training and Development.

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1111 Western Michigan University Academic Skills Centre, 27 March 2002, 2 www.wmich.edu/asc/learningstylesexploration.htm. 3 4 5 Do This! Use this Checklist for Defining the 6 Management Approach for the Professional 7 Learning Program for the Enterprise 8 9 Begin building a justification framework for: 10111 – advocates; 1 – organizational management; 2 – knowledge services professionals; 3 – other knowledge workers in the organization. 4 5111 Determine learning styles of potential learning group. 6 7 Link e-learning with knowledge management. 8 9 Establish desired ratio of classroom learning to e-learning. 20111 1 Establish desired ratios within other learning methodologies. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 4 51111

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Chapter Eleven

KD/KS: Establishing the Program

Having accepted the findings of the learning audit, established learning goals and expectations, and established the management approach to be used, organizational management is now ready to embark on the design and early implementation of a knowledge services learning program for the organization. Recognizing that professional knowledge, both that obtained through academic education and that obtained through work experience and other prior learning and development activities, has limited value, organizational management is now ready to establish a structured knowledge services learning program that matches professional learning with organizational objectives, goals, and strategies. Indeed, the knowledge services learning program will be structured to serve as the vehicle through which all organizational learning connected with knowledge services is managed. As such, any training, continuous education, or staff development having to do with information management, knowledge management, or strategic (performance-centred) learning will be organized through the program. The program’s managers will have oversight responsibility for developing and implementing organizational learning related to knowledge services (and, of course, for measuring the success of those learning activities). Their work will take place in an administrative entity created especially for the purpose. Ideally, this entity – to be devoted specifically to the promotion of learning for knowledge services – will build upon the standards, research findings, and qualification management requirements of The Knowledge Council (described in Chapter Six). Until such an oversight and research body exists, internal management of learning activities relating to knowledge services will necessarily be based on and respond to individual requirements in the specific parent organizations. Hopefully, these requirements and the resulting learning activities created to address them will be incorporated into efforts undertaken as the creation of The Knowledge Council takes place, creating a two-way, collaborative, and mutually beneficial process. The sooner it happens, of course, the better.

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In the meantime, within the organization itself, learning relating to knowledge services cannot be delayed until such a qualification management body exists. To address the needs identified in the organization’s learning audit, and to meet learning expectations and achieve learning goals, each organization needs to create a learning entity devoted exclusively to organizational knowledge services. Just as there are individual units within organizations with responsibility for other management functions, so should there be a functional unit with responsibility for learning related to knowledge services. Such departments or functional units as human resources, accounting, benefits, public relations, and the like are already in place. So are functional units that support the provision of products, services, and consultations relating to the component elements of knowledge services. These units, too, already exist, either as individual operations or as part of other operational units. The organization’s information technology unit and/or its specialized library, for example, provide for information management services. Strategic learning efforts are currently provided, in many cases, through the organization’s human resources department. And of course many organizations operate a fully staffed knowledge centre, providing knowledge management support. At the senior management level, positions such as those of Chief Information Officer (CIO), Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO), and Chief Learning Officer (CLO) are proliferating, as organizations seek to capture corporate intellectual capital and establish a corporate community based on knowledge development and knowledge sharing. Such activities have responsibility for and considerably influence, with varying degrees of success, knowledge services provision with the organization. However, to function effectively in the new professional arena that incorporates the three components of knowledge services into the overarching, single new profession, these activities require a separate functional unit that can bring together the learning required for achieving success in these areas. With a learning entity established specifically to support knowledge services, the many desired outcomes and activities that knowledge services, as a discipline, brings to the organization are thus able to support the achievement of the organizational mission. That such a functional unit can be of service to the organization and its staff is not an issue at this point. The convergence of information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performancecentred) learning is happening, whether the professions that now provide knowledge services are ready or not. Indeed, the various professions that contribute to the successful performance of these vital activities are already attempting – as has been noted throughout this book – to identify how to raise the standards of excellence for information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning. Many in the management community are working hard to ensure that these activities are performed as well as they can be performed, and the convergence of

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these disciplines assures that standards of excellence will be established and achieved. Within organizations, though, there continues to be confusion and some concern about how to go about raising performance standards for knowledge services. Such confusion and concern is, of course, often connected with classic ‘turf battles’, long a problem in the management world in general. The confusion and concern often comes about, though, simply because senior management in the organization perceives that it has more pressing issues attracting its attention. For a variety of reasons, knowledge services professionals have not yet, in those situations, made a case that strongly enough establishes the value of and the return on investment for excellence in knowledge services. With the convergence of the individual component elements of knowledge services, this is the opportune time to address these issues, and to establish that it is through learning that knowledge services excellence will be achieved.

The Knowledge Services Learning Institute The first step in this effort is the establishment of a functional organizational unit, as described above, that will have responsibility for learning related to knowledge services. Such a unit will probably be characterized by a variety of names, and deciding what to call this function will certainly occasion a great deal of discussion, since many people will have many different ideas about how it should be designated. It is important to remember, though, that the function the unit is created to perform is simply expressed: it exists to provide organizational learning in knowledge services. The preferred designation would be something no more complex than ‘knowledge services learning’ or ‘knowledge services training’, and one or another of these descriptors, more than likely, will eventually be used. However, in thinking about naming the function, it seems wise to establish its considerable organizational importance immediately. One way to do that is to formalize the activity, and to invite organizations moving in this direction to connect initially with the desired goals of The Knowledge Council. That organization will exist to provide qualification management for those who aspire to achieve or retain the designation of certified knowledge services professional. Within individual organizations, the creation of a direct link to this effort will benefit all concerned, and it is not inappropriate that a proper name be given to the functional unit that has oversight responsibility for knowledge services learning. In fact, if all organizations call it the same thing, a certain level of shared, collaborative experience can be immediately established. For this reason, it is suggested here (and for ease of discussion as the design of this unit is developed) that each organization establish a functional unit to be known as its ‘knowledge services learning institute’.

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As each organization develops its own knowledge services learning institute, it will obviously develop this activity within its own culture and according to cultural guidelines already in place. Nevertheless, all of these institutes begin with a single idea: that learning is the key to achieving performance excellence in the delivery of knowledge services products and services, and that a structured learning framework will permit the highest standards of excellence in the learning that is undertaken. To achieve these standards, the development of the knowledge services learning institute in any organization will begin with the learning audit, followed by the establishment of learning goals and expectations. After these fundamental actions have been taken, the development of the knowledge services learning institute can proceed. Before any steps toward the realization of the institute can be taken, though, determining the feasibility of the concept is crucial. The first question the planning team will be asked will be something along the lines of ‘Can we do this here?’ Usually such queries have to do with resource allocation, and a clear understanding of the parent organization’s financial picture will be required. If the economic situation is strong, it is easier to persuade those with resource allocation authority that a new program, changed focus, or cultural change is feasible. When the organization’s finances are weak, instituting a program as inclusive as an organizational knowledge services learning institute will require considerable advocacy efforts, from all stakeholders, and the benefits of the institute will have to be laid out in considerable detail. Yet other feasibility concerns are important as well, including (as has been noted frequently in these pages) the organizational culture. Not only is it important to have identified, during the learning audit, the position of the unit or units providing knowledge services within the overall organizational structure, the role of knowledge development and knowledge sharing in the larger organization must be established as well. It makes no sense to embark on a plan for creating a structured learning program, such as that which would be provided by an organizational knowledge services learning institute, if such a program has no place in the larger organizational framework. Much discussion will be required, and considerable attention will be given to developing advocates and supporters, if the findings of the learning audit describe a picture of disinterest or minimal interest in the role of learning in the parent organization. Or, alternatively, the idea might be dropped altogether, and the concept abandoned. If this happens, the organization is assured future failure in knowledge services delivery, since accepting the status quo only means that in a very short time indeed, the organization will fall behind in knowledge services delivery and the organizational mission will be difficult to achieve, if it can be achieved at all. Related to this discussion, of course, there must be an interest in and a recognition of the value of learning for knowledge services employees

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in the organization’s knowledge services functional unit – or in any of the other units that provide information management, knowledge management, or strategic learning for the organization. To be sure, considering the work their employees do and the products, services, and consultations they provide, it is pretty unlikely that employees would not be interested in learning more about knowledge services and how knowledge services delivery might be improved. One of their roles is to provide strategic learning activities related to knowledge services to identified organizational learners, and that work is going to position them to want to enhance their own skills. Nevertheless, it is important that a certain level of receptivity to the idea of a larger, overarching knowledge services learning institute be in place before planning gets too far along. And if, for some reason, there is yet further need for motivation, another quotation from the esteemed Peter Drucker will stimulate the thinking of those who still have doubts. Speaking of librarians, and particularly to specialist librarians (surely an excellent example of the knowledge services professionals who provide knowledge services for their parent organizations), Drucker writes that one of the major trends in the larger management community that librarians must embrace is to be found ‘in managing employees and in managing people’. ‘The two are splitting. In respect to employees, the focus is increasingly shifting for rules, regulations, and on avoidance of trouble. In respect to people, it is increasingly shifting to the development of individuals and their strengths.’ (Drucker, 2002, p. 11)

In the same journal, just 11 pages later, Stephen Abram continues the theme: ‘. . . now the challenge will be to converge the content and technology into our [specialist librarians’] context. Moving library services to where they need it, not just when. ‘I call this new environment a ‘collaboratory’. I mean this to be envisioned as a blended and overlapping thinking, decision-making, and learning environment. Adding librarian tricks to the bricks and clicks will be the goal. We have lots of terms that show us that this trend is emerging. Terms like virtual teams, collaborative digital reference, virtual reference libraries, and shared portals. This goes beyond chat rooms and videoconferences. It’s about communities of interest, communities of practice, and e-neighbourhoods. We’re moving to a world where sharing and integrated cooperative partnerships will be the norm. Libraries have been on the edge of some of these trends as we have developed state and province-wide consortial licensing and services. We have seen the trends towards applying practices in knowledge management, content management systems, and managing the information supply chain as key to the infrastructure for an information and knowledge based economy.’ (Abram, 2002, pp. 22–5)

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Within the parent organization, it will be knowledge services that will frame the development of the infrastructure, and it will be the knowledge services learning institute that will provide the foundation for successful knowledge services delivery. Collaboration Yet there is another consideration that must be made as the knowledge infrastructure is built, and it contributes directly to the success or failure of the knowledge development and knowledge sharing that is such an essential and critical element of knowledge services as a professional practice or discipline. And in fact, it is in determining the feasibility of the knowledge services learning institute that those planning its development and implementation will do well to consider the subject, for it builds on ideas being put forward by many management experts. The reference here is to collaboration and the role of collaboration in modern organizational management, the role of collaboration in the workplace. Nowhere is the collaborative effort more connected to the success of service delivery than in the various component elements that make up what is now referred to as knowledge services. Information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning are all disciplines in which the highest levels of success, resulting in enterprise-wide knowledge development and knowledge sharing, are the direct result of the collaborative effort. As the knowledge services learning institute is built, there is a splendid opportunity to heed the words of Edward M Marshall, one of the ‘collaboration leaders’ who actively promotes the role of collaboration in the workplace and its assimilation into management practice. The direction Marshall provides will foster success not only for the development of the knowledge services learning institute, but for its management, implementation, and success as well. Marshall identifies seven ‘core values’ as the basis for effective work relationships, and they are, naturally enough, exactly what those developing an organizational learning institute want to see inculcated into its design and implementation. Marshall lists these core values as: ●

Respect for people;

●

Honour and integrity;

●

Ownership and alignment;

●

Consensus;

●

Full responsibility and accountability;

●

Trust-based relationships;

●

Recognition and growth. (Marshall, 1995, pp. 4–5)

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It is Marshall’s contention that these core values represent a ‘cultural framework’ for the twenty-first-century organization, and it certainly makes sense to look to these values as a knowledge services learning institute is created for an organization or business. In fact, Marshall feels so strongly about collaboration that he posits a declaration that seems almost destined to be the leading principle for the success of the new profession that supports the successful management of knowledge services. ‘Collaboration’, Marshall writes, ‘is the premier candidate to replace hierarchy as the organizing principle for leading and managing the twenty-first-century workplace’. He describes collaboration as a ‘way of life’, a way of looking at work and, for our purposes here, at learning for knowledge services, that ‘enables us to meet our fundamental needs for self-esteem and mutual respect in the workplace.’ Collaboration is, as Marshall puts it, ‘a principle-based process of working together which produces trust, integrity, and breakthrough results by building true consensus, ownership, and alignment in all aspects of the organization. Put another way, collaboration is the way people naturally want to work’ (Ibid.). What could be more natural as a guiding principle for a learning institute, specifically envisioned to support knowledge services, as it is being developed? For those with responsibility for the creation, organization, and management of the knowledge services learning institute, Marshall offers clear support for building the institute around the collaborative framework, and the institute’s planners can expect success if they match these ideas to their operational concept, thinking about what Marshall calls ‘this critical process’ in terms that lend themselves to the institute’s establishment: ●

A total shift. Collaboration is not a program, a technique, or a partial solution. It is a total shift in the way we work together, think about our customers, and behave toward one another in the workplace;

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A new work ethic. Collaboration provides long-term stability for the workplace because it is a work ethic that recognizes that work gets done through people; that people want and need to be valued; that any change must be owned by those implementing it if it is to be successful;

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A common denominator for relationships. Collaboration provides the common denominator for engaging all members of the workforce, since its core values and beliefs are the foundation for building trust-based relationships;

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A decision-making framework. Collaboration provides an approach to basing business and organizational decisions on principle rather than power or personality – whether those decisions are about strategy, customers, people, or systems. Collaboration helps us decide when and how to use any particular program or technique to improve performance and how to engage the workforce in its implementation; it is just as concerned with relationships and the company’s reputation as it is with bottom-line results;

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A set of methods and tools. Collaboration also provides a set of methods and tools that help the workforce become aligned, take ownership of and responsibility for the success of the enterprise, and build an organizational system that produces sustained high performance. (Ibid., pp. 5–6)

Emphasizing the development of individuals and their strengths, leading the organization in building the knowledge infrastructure, and framing that infrastructure in a collaborative environment are critical for the successful establishment of a knowledge services learning institute for an organization. Deciding on the first steps for the establishment of the institute is, of course, a daunting undertaking, but surely one of the best ways to get started is simply to set up the unit. Structure Models for establishing operational functions abound, thankfully, since in the general management community growing organizations frequently require guidance as they add staff and as new functions become necessary, often with a structure that has already been in place being revisited. With respect to education and learning in the management community, training has, of course, long been recognized as a critical element in an organization’s structure. Here, too, models exist, and while some of these will not specifically address the structure that the planners for the organizational knowledge services learning institute might have in mind, they can be usefully studied. At the beginning, some discussion will ensue as to whether what is to be pursued through the efforts of the knowledge services learning institute is ‘training’ or ‘learning’. In recent years, much attention has been given to the distinction between the two, and while much of this emphasis is merely semantic and not necessarily relevant here, some of this thinking can affect how a planning group will move forward in designing an organizational knowledge services learning institute. For example, towards the end of the 1990s, one review of organizational training identified trends that directly impact how the development of a knowledge services learning institute might be structured: ‘As we enter the next millennium, the most fundamental shift will reflect a redefinition of training itself. To retain key talent, remain competitive, and ensure long-term profitability, organizations are making dramatic changes in the way they develop the knowledge and skills of their workforce. Training as something provided for employees will be replaced by learning that employees initiate themselves. Training, when available, will be replaced by learning when needed. Training for the masses will be replaced by highly customized just-for-one learning . . .’ (Garger, 1999, p.35)

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The point is reinforced by people interviewed as the review was developed. One executive, Nancy Prendergast, in charge of the corporate university at MMI Companies Inc. in Deerfield, IL, described how she understood the differences between training and learning: ‘When I used to think of training, I thought of a reactive, skills-based activity – something created in response to market need. This approach simply isn’t enough to keep pace in today’s knowledge-based economy. We need learners. [We] can meet the needs of learners by repositioning the whole approach to acquiring and applying learning’(Ibid., p. 37). When the goals of organizational learning come into play, as opposed to general training efforts, the model that Jeanne C Meister and her colleagues at Corporate University Xchange, Inc. have developed provides many of the critical elements that will be considered. Obviously an organization’s knowledge services learning institute is not, of course, a corporate university, but it will certainly bring together many of the same – or similar – concepts as it is built, and the work that Meister and her colleagues has done can have strong relevance in the creation of a knowledge services learning institute. Indeed, in a large corporation, the knowledge services learning institute will be, almost by definition, part of the corporate university, so there is definitely a connection. For those organizations that have not built a corporate university, though, or organizations in which the model of the corporate university is not appropriate (for whatever reason), the knowledge services learning institute provides, for knowledge services, an organizational entity for essential training and learning. Advocates and Champions Once agreement has been reached that it is feasible to move forward with planning for the learning institute, those who have been involved in early discussions will need to not only coordinate their own thinking on the matter, they will also, at this point, move toward identifying and cultivating advocates and champions who will aid them in their effort. Certainly much attention will be given later to the development of a governing authority or an oversight, policy-making group. At this stage, though, attention must be given to another group. These are people, certainly within the parent organization but perhaps including external stakeholders and observers as well, who are interested and committed observers of the development effort. These people understand the thinking that has gone into pursuing the idea of the learning institute and they are people who will be willing to use their influence to see that the concept of the learning institute comes to fruition. In the development of any new function, knowing who has power in the organization and establishing relationships that benefit from that power is basic. This is a much-misunderstood but elementary first step,

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and it is the one which not taken can undermine the success of the initiative from the outset.1 Of course all of society, we optimists like to believe, functions for the better good, and all our efforts, including such efforts as bringing lifelong learning and professional learning into the workplace, are undertaken because we can do some good. In fact, scratch even the most hardened knowledge services employee and you’ll discover that the reason he or she is in this industry is because, as a knowledge services professional, he or she can make a difference. Without question, that is what drives most people – especially most professional workers – to do the work they do. But such lofty aspirations are often offset by less charming realities: there are cultural barriers, there are professional (or personal or private) agendas that inhibit collaboration, and there are, undoubtedly, organizational and structural barriers, including financial restraints. The list can go on and on, and every organization or business has its own culture that contributes to the list of reasons why this or that activity cannot be undertaken. Regardless of the reasons they exist, barriers are there, and as an organization seeks to establish something as unusual or unique as a new learning facility, even one specifically linked to knowledge services management, there will be resistance and there will be limitations. That the limitations are there can’t be changed. What can be done about those limitations is fairly straightforward: the planning team for the knowledge services learning institute must find advocates and champions to aid them in achieving their objective. Who are these people, and how do we gain their support? In the mid1980s, Gifford Pinchot became something of a celebrity in the popular management community when he put forward his concept of ‘intrapreneuring’. The word was his term for internal entrepreneurs who, while employed within an organizational structure, are given the freedom and incentive by the organization’s managers to create and market their own ideas for their own profit and for the enterprise. Certainly the concept of the intrapreneur has relevance here, but it is Pinchot’s parallel concept, that internal entrepreneurs are successful only when they have sponsors, that speaks to our immediate subject. Pinchot identified the characteristics of a good sponsor and these same characteristics can assuredly be sought by those with responsibility for promoting the organization’s move toward a knowledge services learning institute, as they seek advocates and champions for their work. Here is Pinchot’s ‘checklist for choosing a sponsor’: ●

Has he or she stood up, been challenged, and proceeded anyway?

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Is he or she willing to be in the centre of controversy?

1 The author’s exploration of these issues, Power and Influence: Enhancing information services within the organization is another title in this series.

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Does he or she have a deep personal commitment to innovation and innovative people?

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Can you gain his or her respect?

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Does standing behind new things mean more to him or her than another step up the corporate ladder?

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Does he or she know when to fight and when to lose gracefully when it doesn’t really matter?

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Does he or she know how decisions are really made in the corporation?

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Does he or she have the respect of other important decision-makers and have access to them? (Pinchot, 1985, p. 160–2)

Identifying advocates and champions is an essential and critical step in the development of any new initiative, and it is not a developmental step to be taken lightly. In fact, in the present situation, identifying advocates and champions to support the institute is probably as important as the original concept itself. Rosabeth Moss Kanter is a management leader who makes a strong case for enlisting backers and supporters. At the same time, she recognizes that buy-in and coalition building are key to the success of any change effort, including the development of an organizational entity such as a knowledge services learning institute, and she recognizes that advocates and champions are essential to achieving that buy-in and coalition building: ‘As every entrepreneur knows, a great idea is not enough. Even a great mandate from a powerful sponsor to ‘just do it’ isn’t enough. Potential changemasters must sell the idea more widely: attract the right backers and supporters, entice investors and defenders, get buy-in from stakeholders in a position to help or harm the venture at later stages. The newer the idea, the more critical this coalition building.’ (Kanter, 2001, pp. 267–72)

Advocates and champions to support the development of the knowledge services learning institute must, in Kanter’s terms, be adept in understanding the politics of change and in practising the skills of a political organizer. She agrees with original thinkers who are successful with their ideas when they proclaim that a personal network is essential, and that time and energy must be spend in nurturing and ‘working’ that network. So it will be with the development of advocates and champions who will put their energies to work (and their reputations on the line) in helping those planning the success of the knowledge services learning institute. These will be people who are committed to organizational learning and who understand that change will be required (and that some established opinions and functions will be tested). They are also people

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who recognize that the foundation of a learning entity that results in a clearly established and well-functioning knowledge development and knowledge sharing environment is essential to the success of the organization. Selecting these people, and building a coalition that will support the knowledge services learning institute as a concept, will require three specific actions, which Kanter describes: 1.

Preselling – speaking to many people, gathering intelligence, planting seeds;

2.

Making deals – identifying the people who possess resources, information, and credibility that can be invested in the learning institute and take some responsibility for the success of the initiative;

3.

Getting a sanity check – listening to the people with experience, accepting their wisdom, and, as Kanter puts it, ‘confirming or adjusting the idea in light of reactions from backers and potential backers.’ (Ibid.)

When it comes time to look for advocates and champions, they will, in many cases, already be in place and more than willing to support activities which they have already been supporting, either directly or indirectly. Obviously, the people who work in knowledge services, the information/knowledge services staff in the units of the organization that provide knowledge services delivery, are going to be useful advocates and champions. Their participation is a given (or, if it is not, there is something seriously wrong in the unit where they are employed!). Other staff in the organization as well can be counted on, especially those who benefit directly from knowledge service delivery. The researchers who come to the specialized library for research materials, the public relations staff who are required to delve regularly into the corporate archives, the financial planners who need to identify prior investment strategies and go to the company’s records management unit, middle managers who have attribute their success to information gleaned from training programs offered through the organization’s human resources department, all of these are prime candidate who will, in most cases, be more than willing to support the development of the knowledge services learning institute. The list continues, of course, and certainly includes management leaders and others who are recognized (as well as those unacknowledged) as having some power in the organization. Certainly, those involved in the current initiative, committee members, task force members and others will be natural advocates and champions and probably can be the best source for identify others to be asked. Finally, of course, it might be wise for the organizers to look outside the organization, to see if they can identify external stakeholders (suppliers, vendors, professional colleagues, etc.) who have had some experience in the establishment of learning programs, and who, with their – presumably – more objective

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understanding of the culture in the organization, might be in a position to offer wise advice. A Governing Authority There is no doubt that the support and the enthusiastic participation of advocates and champions is essential to the success of the knowledge services learning institute, particularly as the initiative is begun and in the early stages of development. Beyond that, though, there is yet another influential and powerful group that must be determined, and that is, of course, the governing body that is going to have policy development and oversight responsibility for the learning institute once it is operational. These people, too, must be open with their support and will be, hopefully, enthusiastic participants in the development of the institute as well. Meister, of course, in describing how corporate universities come into being, makes the formation of a governing body one of her ‘10 steps to creating a corporate university’. In fact, in Meister’s 10 steps, forming the governing body is the first step taken as the university is established: ‘Strong visible support from the top is a critical factor in the overall success of a corporate university, and a coalition of senior line managers is also needed in the early stages. It’s necessary to have a governance system, in which the top executives and senior line business managers come together to develop a shared vision for the corporate university. They should recommend the roles and responsibility of the governing body and how they will differ from the roles and responsibilities of a training department in a business unit.’ (Meister, 1998, pp. 38–43)

Identifying those who can assume oversight and policy formulation for the organization’s knowledge services learning institute will depend greatly on who in the organization understands the role of knowledge services and, particularly, the value of excellence in knowledge services delivery to the successful achievement of the organizational mission. Strictly speaking, those chosen for or appointed to the governing body of the learning institute should come from both senior organizational management (especially, of course, from among those who actually participate in learning and training as they applied to knowledge services) and middle- or line-managers. Certainly the group will include people chosen from those with responsibility for managing and providing knowledge services delivery from any of the organizational functions that might be so categorized. Departments such as information technology units, specialized libraries, knowledge centres, training units, and similar functional departments will be represented (and certainly, if there is a single knowledge services unit, that unit’s senior manager will be appointed to the governing body for the knowledge services learning institute).

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As for what the group should be, that will, of course, depend on the organization and the size and influence of the functions that are to be served. In a large corporation, the knowledge services learning institute might very well be, as mentioned, a division of the corporate university with an appropriate board of directors. In a smaller organization, the oversight and governing role might fall to a management committee, or even, in very informal (and of course necessarily small) organizations, a working group. The specifics of the group will also be dictated by the culture of the organization. If a rigid management hierarchy is in place, certainly a formal board with specifically defined roles will be required. In flatter organizations, of course, a less formal structure will be expected to provide the same level of management, but careful oversight will be required on the part of all participants, to ensure that informality doesn’t interfere with the accomplishment of the group’s mission. With respect to the appointment of people to the governing body or oversight group, again Meister can provide some general guidelines. Adapted from her recommendations for the governing body of a corporate university, each participant must, quite frankly, have the time and the interest (perhaps in reverse order!) to contribute. He or she must have, to use Meister’s phrase, ‘a broad perspective on the future needs’ of the knowledge services learning institute. He or she must have the ability to attend regularly scheduled meetings and, between meetings, to carry out his or her responsibilities, especially through being informed through email, threaded discussion groups, and the like. Finally, persons serving in this role must have the respect of not only the larger organizational community, but of the knowledge services community as well, including a clear understanding and an acceptance of the value of knowledge services to the parent organization. Before the group is assembled, however, care must be taken to guarantee that in the assembling, wrong decisions aren’t made. That seems to be a potentially negative way of describing the gathering of organizational leaders who will oversee the functioning of the learning institute, but it is merely a word of caution. As with any group being established, the planners or the people putting forward the concept must not assume that all participants will automatically support all elements of the development, and a great deal of political skill will be required to prevent inappropriate posturing or the putting forward of inappropriate agendas. Financial Support As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, any new initiative is going to be looked at first in terms of what the costs are going to be, and the availability of resources to support the new activity, so determining financial support and providing a funding strategy is going to be essential. Obviously many other considerations come into play as the proposed

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knowledge services learning institute for the organization is discussed, but the ‘make-or-break’ decision will be the one that determines whether the institute is worth supporting and, if so, where that support will come from.2 In most cases, some compromise will be required, as the more idealistic and all-encompassing concepts of the planning team come up against the realities of what support is available. Not surprisingly, the selection of participants, both for the governing authority for the institute and as advocates and champions (whether they have official roles or not) is critical. As financial support becomes a subject for discussion, the support of advocates and champions and the abilities of the members of the governing body to understand the role of the institute within the larger organizational framework become the defining characteristics of the planning effort. Without this key support and understanding, the learning initiative becomes an empty gesture. On a positive note, however, if those people have been chosen because they support – or are expected to support – the concept of a knowledge services learning institute, the prospects of success for the institute are good. Generally speaking, there are two ways to fund a learning initiative. At the beginning, as the institute is being developed, total organizational support will be required, and – just as happens with many operational initiatives – the organization will contribute the total costs, ‘seed money’, as it were, for the development and initial operation of the learning institute. Thus the planners must be prepared to describe not only the organizational motivation for the development of the institute, but a specific operational budget must be devised. But total organizational support is only attractive in the beginning. Equally important – and not long after the initiative has been put in place – is an acceptance of the idea that income should be realized from those who benefit from the learning institute’s services. Depending on the organizational framework within which the institute is structured, providing services to other organizational units and departments on a charge-back basis will provide stimulus to the effort and will, of course, place tangible value on the services. And certainly the ‘sharing’ of learning products, services, and consultations relating to knowledge services is no barrier in this particular discipline. Eventually, of course, and again depending on the culture of the parent organization, another page can be taken from Pinchot, and the intrapreneuring effort can become an organizational entrepreneuring effort as the institute goes public. And 2 These comments and those related to budget processes in Chapter 12 are based, in part, on content published in ‘Knowledge Services: Financial Strategies and Budgeting’, by Guy St. Clair and Martina J Reich, published in Information Outlook 6(6), June, 2002.

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since entrepreneurial thinking is, by definition, an essential characteristic of those who have been given, or assumed, responsibility for the development of the learning institute, it follows that at some point along the way the possibility of providing the institute’s products for a profit will be discussed. When the time comes, the development of an external market for the institute will make a certain amount of sense to all involved and, in fact, in many situations in which a training or learning facility has been developed, taking its work ‘public’ has ultimately provided the required financing as the facility has grown. The Scope With so many and such varied issues being considered, determining the scope of the organizational knowledge services learning institute will be required in the early stages of development. As the idea for the knowledge services learning institute is put forward, the planners will be in for something of a shock. Suddenly everyone in the organization will have a training or learning need, and ‘knowledge services’ will undergo something of a radical transformation as a concept, simply because people from all over the organization will begin to put all sorts of learning needs under the knowledge services ‘umbrella’. This is not necessarily a bad thing, for discussion of the learning initiative throughout the organization can only be good for the prospects of its development (after all, there aren’t many people who think that ‘learning’ is a bad thing!). Nevertheless, depending on the size of the organization, its culture, and, particularly, the willingness of its leaders to invest in such a venture, what starts out as a learning activity can quickly evolve, indeed, into a mega-project or even, perhaps, into a corporate university, and that, of course, is not the learning entity being proposed here. So the planners must, without falling into the trap of publicly making such statements as, ‘we can’t be all things to all people’, give serious thought to what the institute’s role in the organization is to be, and what products, services, and consultations it is to provide to the organization. First of all, consideration will indeed be given to that ‘knowledge services umbrella’ mentioned above. The knowledge services learning institute is being created to provide training and learning opportunities to the organization’s employees whose responsibilities include information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performancecentred) learning. This means that employees working in the organization’s information centre or specialized library would be typical participants, as would employees in records management, archives management, research and development, competitive intelligence, marketing, or any other department or unit of the organization for which the organization of information and the development of and sharing of knowledge from that information is part of their work.

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The primary impetus for the creation of the institute is to be, as has been described, the development of a structured professional learning program that relates to or anticipates qualification management for professional knowledge services employees who are or who desire to be certified knowledge services professionals. At the same time, the institute will provide training and learning for non-professional employees of the organization, if they are employed in the departments of the organization that provide knowledge services or are interested in continuing their training and personal development in order to become eligible for certification as knowledge services professionals. Thus programs will be offered at all employee levels, but, as noted, the emphasis will be (certainly at the beginning of the effort) on providing learning opportunities for professional staff employed in the knowledge services unit (if there is a single department providing knowledge services) or, if not, in those various departments and units that provide information management, knowledge management, and strategic training and learning for the organization. The content of learning activities and programs provided by the knowledge services learning institute will be dependent on the learners’ needs, of course. Generally speaking, though, content can be expected to include, at the professional level, programs in such broad areas as information management, knowledge management, strategic learning, organizational management, administrative management/supervisory skills, knowledge specialization (that is, for specific subjects/disciplines), and organizational-specific issues (e.g., mission-specific learning activities). For employees within the knowledge services department or unit (if there is a single such unit) or in the various departments that provide information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning, learning activities in knowledge services will include such programs as technology competencies, information delivery, knowledge development/knowledge sharing, training skills, organizational knowledge services skills, customer service/CRM for knowledge services, and similar learning activities. For general staff level within the organization at large, training programs in subjects relating to knowledge services will include a wide variety of such subjects as technology training, records management, customer services, etc. In very real terms, the offerings of the knowledge services learning institute will be limited to those subjects and disciplines that are specifically related to knowledge services. How broadly these subjects and disciplines are interpreted, of course, will depend on the culture of the organization or the needs of the learners, but a useful list of ‘course types’ has been provided by the American Society for Training and Development. When specific knowledge services content is connect to these broader types, a good foundation curriculum can be developed:

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Basic skills;

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Executive development;

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Quality, competition, and business practices;

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Interpersonal communication;

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Sales;

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Customer relations;

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New employee orientation;

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Product knowledge;

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Occupational safety;

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Professional skills;

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Managerial/supervisory skills;

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Information technology skills;

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Technical processes and procedures. (Van Buren & Erskine, 2002, p. 15)

Thus, preparing a ‘scope note’ (as such statements are sometimes called) for the knowledge services learning institute would probably result in something along these lines: The organizational knowledge services learning institute has been created to provide: 1. A framework and learning activities for knowledge services professional employees who are either: ●

Candidates for qualification as knowledge services professionals;

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Qualified knowledge services professionals seeking to maintain their qualification;

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Other organizational staff who are seeking to become eligible for qualification;

2. Training to organizational employees in information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning. Vision and Mission Statements Pulling all of this together will be the knowledge services learning institute’s vision and mission statements. It has now become almost standard, in most organizational environments, to establish a guiding framework for the organization through their use and in fact, the many

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other subsidiary units and departments that are part of the organizational structure also probably employ these techniques. So it is, naturally enough, common practice for the planners for a new activity, such as the knowledge services learning institute proposed here, to put forward a vision statement and a mission statement that publish their expectations. Many authorities in the management community have commented on the value of the vision statement and the mission statement and there are, as would be expected, a variety of opinions about what information is included in these statements. For the development of a knowledge services learning institute, one of the best guides is that of Karl Albrecht, quoted earlier in another context, who in 1994 wrote an impressive book about organizational direction and purpose. Albrecht’s definition of a vision statement is simple: it is literally a vision for the enterprise, ‘an image of what the people of the enterprise aspire for it to be or become’ (Albrecht, 1994, p. 150). In devising a vision statement for the learning institute, we can follow Albrecht’s three components that he suggests help make a vision statement valid and useful for people: 1.

‘A focused concept – something beyond platitudes; a value creation premise that people can actually picture as existing;

2.

‘A sense of noble purpose – something that is really worth doing; something that can create value, make a contribution, make the world a better place in some way, and win people’s commitment;

3.

‘A plausible chance of success – something people can realistically believe to be possible and, if not perfectly attainable, at least plausible to strive for.’ (Ibid.)

With respect to developing a vision statement for an organization’s knowledge services learning institute, the effort begins with open and frank discussions about what the knowledge services learning institute is envisioned to be. Obviously it is to be an operational function within the organization, with responsibility for providing structured learning activities for knowledge services professionals. As a point of departure, it is not inappropriate in this connection to look at Meister’s definition of the corporate university and to think about how some of these concepts might be incorporated into the vision statement for the institute: ‘A corporate university is a centralized in-house training and education facility to address the shortened shelf life of knowledge and to align training and development with business strategies’ (Meister, 1998, p. 38). As the vision statement is developed, the offerings of the institute are of course to be closely linked to the organization’s strategic mission, and the vision for the institute also, in all likelihood, includes some recognition of the value of lifelong learning, and expectations that the institute

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will permit the creation of a culture of lifelong learning within the organization. As plans for the institute begin to take shape, it will be seen as a provider of professional learning for knowledge services, but attention will also be directed to providing learning in knowledge services for other, non-professional knowledge workers. The organization’s leaders will certainly want to ensure that professional staff are given the ability to meet qualifications established (or to be established) by The Knowledge Council. Additionally, to ensure that a culture of knowledge development and knowledge sharing is firmly fixed as part of the organizational framework (and in fairness to all staff members), the entity envisioned will have this broader role of incorporating training and learning for all knowledge services employees and for all other employees who have responsibility for performing any work relating to knowledge services. Finally, however, some consideration must be given to what the knowledge service learning institute is not envisioned to be, for its purpose is not to perpetuate the institution or to create some sort of ‘institute’ bureaucracy. As part of the vision statement for the institute, planners will also want to give attention to how organizational management perceives (and is perceived) with respect to the development and functioning of the knowledge services learning institute as an organizational entity. As with any other organizational initiative, the institute must have the enthusiastic support and active participation of senior management. As these people learn to recognize the role of learning and training in their lives, the culture of the organization begins to take on a ‘flavour’, so to speak, that values learning and training. Edwin Booth, the CEO of Job Boss Software in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was quoted speaking enthusiastically about how learning – and he could have been speaking specifically about learning in knowledge services – are part of his organization: ‘My job is to make sure we have an environment in which people are genuinely convinced that they have the best opportunity to grow and develop, to increase their personal skills, to practice leadership, to be a member of a community, to be a part of something bigger and more important than themselves, and to make a positive contribution. When you do that, your people are totally focused on doing what’s best for the business and for the customer. In turn, our customers become raving fans, and our reputation spreads in the marketplace. Twenty-five per cent of our new customers come from referrals. They call us because of a customer of ours that they trust. So I spend a tremendous amount of my time building the environment and the culture and the work attitudes. . . . what we’re doing is trying to create a community that is constantly learning and improving. I train and get trained. Everyone in the organization trains and gets trained. And we do it most of the day, all day long.’ (Williams, 1999, p. 54)

Booth could almost have been providing the formula for a successful

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vision statement for an organization knowledge services learning institute, for the elements he lists are required, and they, or some version of these concepts, will be incorporated into the formal vision statement. The institute will enable organizational staff to: ●

Grow and develop;

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Increase personal skills;

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Practise leadership;

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Make a positive contribution.

It isn’t altruism, of course, because what follows in Booth’s description matches exactly what the knowledge services learning institute is being created to do. When the vision is to enable employees to do ‘what’s best for the business and for the customer’, ensuring that people understand how to take those actions that will lead to the successful achievement of the organizational mission, the vision of the institute and its work is clear. Pulling all of this into one short statement is not an easy task, but whatever effort goes into completing the task is eminently worthwhile, as learning stakeholders throughout the organization will come to recognize the value of learning elements in the working lives and, if the effort is successful, will have a long-lasting and beneficial effect on all employees. With respect to a mission statement for the knowledge services learning institute, in its simplest terms, the institute is ‘a system to train employees, track the learning, and reward the effort’ (Jones, 1999, p. 26). That is the description one training organization used to describe its mission when it was established in a corporate environment. Albrecht, in his comments about the role of the vision statement and the mission statement in organizational success, provides a useful distinction: ‘In contrast to the vision statement, which presents an image of what we aspire to be or become, the mission statement tells how we are going to do business in order to fulfil the vision. The vision is the place we want to go to or the journey we want to take; the mission is the means for travelling. In order to achieve the state of affairs projects by the vision, the enterprise must create value in its chosen way, thereby succeeding in its environment. . . . an effective mission statement . . . should define at least the following three things: 1.

‘The customer – defined not in terms of some market segment or statistical category, but in terms of a basic defining need premise that leads that person (or entity) to consider doing business with your enterprise;

2.

‘The value promise – defined not in terms of what your organization does, makes, sells, or delivers, but in terms of the fundamental value it represents in matching the customer’s need premise;

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3.

‘What makes you special – your special means for creating value, in order to win and keep the customer’s business.’ (Albrecht, pp. 152–3)

Designing the organization’s knowledge services learning institute will be, certainly, one of the most important contributions its planners can make in the workplace. For many of the people who will be involved, this work is likely to assume such a position of recognition, and of pride, in their personal and professional lives. Much will be learned, and there will be many starts and stops, many occasions when going ‘one step forward’ will push the process ‘two steps back’, as that gloomy aphorism puts it. Undeterred, those who persevere will undoubtedly be glad they did, for the organization at large, to say nothing about the individual employees of the organization and the benefits that they reap, will move forward in achieving its organizational mission with confidence and a greater assurance of success.

References (1996) ‘Corporations grow their own best employees at corporate universities’, Journal of Career Planning & Employment, 56(2). Abram, Stephen (2002) ‘Let’s talk about it: the emerging technology future for special librarians’, Information Outlook, 5(2). Albrecht, Karl (1994) The Northbound Train: Finding the purpose, setting the direction, shaping the destiny of your organization, New York: American Management Association. Drucker, Peter F (2002) ‘The icon speaks: an interview with Peter Drucker’, Information Outlook, 5(2). Garger, Eileen M (1999) ‘Goodbye training, hello learning’, Workforce, November 1999. Jones, Kathie (1999) ‘Give employees their own university’, Credit Union Magazine, March 1999. Kanter, Rosabeth Moss (2001) Evolve! Succeeding in the digital culture of tomorrow. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Marshall, Edward M (1995) Transforming the Way we Work: The power of the collaborative workplace, New York: American Management Association. Meister, Jeanne C (1998) ‘Ten steps to creating a corporate university’, Training & Development, 52(11), pp. 38–43.

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Pinchot, Gifford (1985) Intrapreneuring: Why you don’t have to leave the corporation to become an entrepreneur, New York: Harper & Row. St. Clair, Guy, and Martina J Reich. ‘Knowledge services: financial strategies and budgeting’. Information Outlook 6(6). Van Buren, Mark E, and William Erskine (2002) State of the Industry: ASTD’s Annual Review of Trends in Employer-Provided Training in the United States, Alexandria, VA: American Society for Training and Development. Wick, Calhoun W and Lu Stanton León (1993) The Learning Edge: How smart managers and smart companies stay ahead, New York: McGraw-Hill. Williams, Caitlin P (1999) ‘The end of the job as we know it’, Training & Development. 53(1).

Do This! Use this Checklist for Establishing the Program for the Knowledge Services Learning Institute Determine the feasibility of creating a knowledge services learning institute. Identify and cultivate advocates and champions. Establish a governing authority. Determine financial support and establish a funding strategy. Determine the scope of the institute’s work. Prepare a vision statement. Prepare a mission statement.

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Chapter Twelve

KD/KS: Managing the Program

As the knowledge services learning institute for the enterprise comes in to existence, plans will be made to ensure the success of the operation in meeting its own strategic objectives. The four commonly accepted constituent elements of the management effort role (conceptualizing and planning, organizing, directing and motivating, and evaluating and measuring) will be implemented, and as they are implemented, the institute’s strategic plan for the institute begins to fall into place. The steps described in the previous chapter for planning the organizational knowledge services learning institute do, indeed, fulfil the first two of these: if done within the organizational management framework, the conceptualization and planning effort and organizing the effort will lead to its establishment. When that work is done (or, perhaps, while some of it is being done), the focus moves on to ‘real work’ of managing, that is, directing and motivating the people involved in the institute’s operations (and, of course, providing direction for the overall activities of the institute), and evaluating and measuring the results of the institute’s efforts, so that the institute can accomplish its mission and achieve its vision.

Identify the Learners The first step, of course, is to identify the learners who will benefit from the products and services provided by the institute. The focus of the institute, regardless of the organization with which it is affiliated and of which it is a part, will be the people who will benefit from its existence, and identifying learners is an important step in the institute’s development, one of the earliest of the institute’s operational activities. As described in the scope note for the institute, at one level, all employees of the organization will benefit, for the institute will have responsibility for insuring that all employees understand the basics of any work that has to do with any of the component elements of knowledge services, and employees

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who have need for understanding how to utilize certain information delivery tools, for example, will be supported in their training by the institute. Employees working within specifically defined knowledge services units will also benefit from the offerings of the institute, and, as noted, professional employees seeking to attain or maintain their certification will be served by the knowledge services learning institute. Two approaches will probably be used to identify the employees who will use the knowledge services learning institute. Initially, employee participation will be driven by the desired results described in each employee’s knowledge services learning plan, a learning profile and activity plan that each employee would be encouraged (and probably in some organizations required) to arrange. Each employee, as soon as feasible after employment, or through an organizational effort for staff already employed, would be asked to think about what training or learning he or she would require (or desire) in knowledge services, and how he or she would like to proceed in acquiring that training or learning. The goal would be to establish a plan which could be reviewed periodically, and which would be use to codify and guide the employee’s development as a knowledge services practitioner, or, if appropriate, to move toward a professional role in knowledge services. According to Calhoun W Wick and Lu Stanton León, among the specifics of the individual learning plan might be the following: ●

The establishment of learning goals;

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Specific actions to be taken (with completion dates, when appropriate);

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An evaluation of resources required to take these actions;

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A list and an analysis of enablers that can be expected to aid the employee in the pursuit of the learning goals;

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Equally important, a list and an analysis of the barriers that might impede the employee’s progress in the attainment of the learning goals;

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A plan for monitoring progress and measuring results;

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A description of benefits that will accrue to the department or unit in which the employee works;

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A description of benefits to the employee himself or herself. (Wick and Leon, 1993, p. 58)

Lest the employee’s motivation be compromised, such an effort as that described here must be seriously linked to the employee’s own interests and self-selection. In fact, with so much attention to the role that selfselection plays in professional learning, it is becoming clear that training and learning in the modern workplace is going to be a collaborative effort between employees and the people they work for. Such is certainly the case in successful organizations, and self-selection must be (unless there

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is truly some organizational or cultural reason for management to act otherwise) the primary driver in the utilization of the knowledge services learning institute by organizational staff. Michael O’Brien, who has written extensively on learning and who is the author of Profit from the Experience: How to make the most of your learning and your life, is a proponent of what he refers to as living one’s life in a ‘continuous learning mode’. Quoted in an article describing how companies develop their own learning programs for the benefit of their staff, O’Brien expresses the opinion that, in companies that have the best employees, competencies for different jobs are well defined, and on-the-job development opportunities are in place. People can look at a job and think that the company or organization is a good place to work, and there is an emphasis on people managing their own jobs. Career development becomes a integral part of the work. In these situations, O’Brien is quoted as saying, ‘you are in charge of your own learning’ (‘Corporations . . .’. 1996, p. 26). The same article quotes Mark Leyda, the Ford Motor Company’s manager for North American Education and Training, who, like O’Brien, recognizes the reality (and motivational value) of self-selection: ‘People today are very much interested in their own professional proficiencies’, Leyda said to the article’s anonymous author. ‘Employability is an issue, and the people we recruit are very interested in what sorts of programs, practices, and policies we offer [that] enable employees to learn new skills, new knowledge, and new proficiences’ (Ibid., p. 26).

Create an Operations Structure The critical next step in the development of the knowledge services learning institute for the enterprise is to create an operations structure. The framework for operations for the learning institute will build on several essential elements, depending, naturally, on what is already in place in the parent organization. These are: staffing for the institute, budget development and preparation, and scheduling activities relating to program offerings. Operations also will include ongoing attention and implementation of the marketing plan for the institute, as well as undertaking any staff relations or promotional activity for the institute. Finally, monitoring learning activities and implementing measurement and performance evaluation, as well as record keeping, will constitute a major operational effort. Once the vision and mission statements have been agreed upon by the leaders of the planning effort, in conjunction with the institute’s governing body, and incorporating the advice and support of the institute’s advocates and champions, someone must be hired to do the work and to manage the day-to-day functions.

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In some organizations, staff may be already in place for managing this function (for example, there may be personnel in the organization’s human resources department with training and learning responsibilities, and the skills and services of these employees can transfer into the knowledge services learning institute). In other organizations, particularly depending on the culture of the organization and the willingness of organizational management to establish a new function for the express purpose of providing knowledge services learning as a unique function, the operation of the institute may start at a very minimal level. As the programs, services, and consultations of the institute are grown, however, and as participation becomes more and more linked to employees’ success in the workplace, there will be pressure to increase the institute’s offerings, and additional staff will be required. To undertake such an initiative as creating a new learning entity where one did not exist before, particularly one with a specific-subject or -discipline focus, it will be wise to begin with at least two full-time staff members. The work will generally fall into professional and support categories, although, as in most small organizations, there will be considerable overlap and the employees chosen for these jobs must be willing to move away from ‘not-my-job’ thinking and see their work as a collaborative effort. Nevertheless, a senior staff member will be required for professional tasks, and a support staff member will work with that person to ensure that the tasks flow smoothly and that the work is completed according to the measures put in place. Generally speaking, the initial staff members will have the following, or similar, responsibilities. The professional staff member will: ●

Organize training and learning activities: ●

Professional learning for professional knowledge services staff seeking to meet or maintain qualification standards;

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Training and development activities for workers employed in knowledge services delivery;

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Training and development activities (relating to knowledge services) for all organizational employees;

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External offerings for non-organizational clients (when appropriate).

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Conduct marketing, promotion, and staff relations for the institute’s offerings;

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Develop curriculum and identify and engage faculty (both internal and external);

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Establish relationships with learning partners;

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Maintain vendor and external trainer relationships, including contract negotiations;

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Provide instruction, if appropriate.

Support staff for the knowledge services learning institute can be expected to have responsibility for: ●

Organizing scheduling activities for the institute;

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Maintaining editorial and production fulfilment responsibility for materials preparation (when required);

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Maintaining editorial and production fulfilment responsibility for marketing efforts, both internal and external (when required);

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Maintaining or establishing procedures and identifying products for records maintenance (e.g., course attendees, in-house trainers, internal mailing lists, etc.), including the development of a learning management system that is appropriate for the particular organization.

With these employees undertaking initial operational activities, the institute’s work can begin and, of course, attention will be given to what kind of funding is required and the development of an operational budget. Obviously, financial responsibility and the development of a support program will have been developed in cooperation with the governing body, and now professional staff in the institute will have responsibility for utilizing the funds for such expenditures as personnel costs, general operational expenditures, and any other expenditures that are required. Personnel expenditures will support institute staff, external trainers and learning providers, course development and similar background work prior to program presentations, external training program for staff trainers, and human resources expenditures. General operations expenditures will support office operations, staff travel, production costs for materials for courses and learning activities, the learning management system, specific e-learning applications, and other technology costs. Other costs might include, depending on the operational goals established for the knowledge services learning institute, expenditures for consultants engaged in evaluation research, program dissemination, and the like.

Technology and E-learning Technology and the role of technology in facilitating e-learning is naturally an important consideration in the knowledge services learning institute, as learning activities are developed. That e-learning will play an important part in strategic (performance-centred) learning in the future is

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no longer in question, and the same can be said as an organization embarks on incorporating professional learning in knowledge services for its employees. In late 1991, Online Learning published its first annual state-of-the-art industry report on e-learning, to look at ‘where e-learning has been – and where it’s going’ (Kiser, 2001, p. 16). The report verifies an organization’s interest in incorporating e-learning into the offerings of the knowledge services learning institute, as described in Chapter 10: ‘E-learning is taking root in organizations of all sizes – and, so far, the people responsible for its implementation are pleased with the results . . . Of the 612 readers [surveyed], more than 80 per cent said they are using some form of e-leaning, most often online courses. That number will climb in the near future, as more than 40 per cent of the respondents whose employers haven’t adopted e-learning plan to do so within the next two years. ‘Just as important as the large percentage of readers using e-learning is the fact the 82 per cent of respondents were satisfied with their companies’ initiatives. About two-thirds saw it as a way to help organizations solve business problems.’ (Ibid.)

The report continues by exploring what it is that readers like about e-learning, in particular its versatility, its usefulness in effectively teaching a variety of topics, and the convenience for employees, and the results obtained are also valuable: ‘Along with convenience, readers are also interested in results. Although . . . 77 per cent of respondents used course completion as a measure of effectiveness [many] were using other metrics such as a comparison of pre-test and posttest scores (55 per cent), improved job performance (44 per cent), and business results (42 per cent). Also, the longer organizations have been using e-learning, the more likely they are to measure results beyond course completion.’ (Ibid.)

A Learning Management System Much of this comes together as senior management in the organization and senior staff in the knowledge services learning institute investigate the advantages of a learning management system. But, as noted in the report, understanding the advantages of using new technologies in the learning operation is not universally accepted, at least not yet. ‘Despite the percentage of respondents using e-learning, less than half said their organizations have a learning management system (LMS). . . . Of the 271 respondents who said their organization doesn’t have an LMS (or who don’t know whether it has one), nearly 40 per cent said they plan to buy

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one within the next two years, while 27 per cent said they have no plans whatsoever to purchase one. (The number who had or were considering buying a learning content management system – an even newer type of technology that tracts and manages course content – was considerably smaller.)’ (Ibid.)

While there are many different definitions for the learning management system, in most cases an organizational learning management system will have a number of specific attributes that will be used to determine how successful the knowledge services learning institute is in providing the services it was created to provide. Generally speaking, a learning management system is pretty much concerned with the ‘mechanics’ of managing a learning program, such as scheduling, describing learning activities being offered, registering participants, and the like. Or, as Darlene Fichter described it, the LMS, is ‘used to administer and monitor learning across your organization, including e-learning, classroom instruction, and other types of instruction. It provides learner administration functions and a catalogue of courses. Many LMSs will offer skill assessment tools and recommend courses for learners’ (Fichter, 2002, p. 68). A light-hearted discussion of the learning management system was put together by Clive Shepherd, who created a scenario to demonstrate how an LMS can support the full range of everyday functions in a training department. Shepherd’s article described a metaphorical day in the life of a learning management system. ‘. . . no self-respecting aspiring e-business can consider itself worthy of the name without the support of a enterprise-wide, web-enabled, learning management system (LMS). We’re not quite sure what it is, but we know we’re going to be left behind if we don’t own one pretty damn soon. . . . We also know that ‘managing learning’ is what training managers are paid to do and that a learning management system should therefore be of more than passing interest. ‘Every training manager thinks they know what a learning management system is. The problem is that they’re all thinking different things. It’s the same thing as a learning portal. No it’s not, it’s an authoring system. It’s another name for a training records system. No, no, no, it’s a way of managing skills and competencies. Way off – it’s a virtual classroom. ‘OK, so what is it then? The answer is that it could be all of these things, but rarely is. The term ‘learning management system’ embraces just about any use of web technology to plan, organize, implement, and control aspects of the learning process. Hardly any system supports all these processes and hardly any organization needs them to. Matching your needs to what’s available is incredibly complex and confusing, because you’re usually comparing apples with pears.’ (Shepherd, 2002)

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Shepherd than goes on to define how the LMS can provide a framework for 12 tasks that must be performed within the training operation or, in this case, the organization’s knowledge services learning institute: ●

Assessing the job;

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Assessing the student;

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Measuring the gap;

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Creating learning resources;

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Cataloguing resources;

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Filtering resources;

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Building the plan;

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Offline delivery;

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Online delivery;

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Monitoring progress;

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Assessing results. (Ibid.)

On the other hand, the learning content management system (LCMS) mentioned in the e-learning state-of-the-art report described by Kiser, is more concerned with, as the title suggests, delivering the content of the learning activities. Fichter defines the LCMS as well: ‘The Learning Content Management System combines the strength of a traditional content management system (tracking learning objects, such as PowerPoint slides, audio, video, and quizzes) with the tools to organize them and deliver them as a course. These systems are powerful. Multiple content providers and subject matter experts can share learning objects to speed development. For learners, these systems can create dynamic courses on-thefly form the collection of learning objects and package modules together based on skills assessment.’ (Fichter, op.cit.)

Certainly, then, the utilization of both the LMS and the LCMS must be considered as a knowledge services leaning institute is put in place for the enterprise. The advantages are clear, and these were described by Douglas Reed in a panel discussion about how in almost all organizations, management is ‘looking at streamlining and improving their overall training delivery and functionality for their companies and are seeking out information for learning management systems’. When asked what management should be aware of when looking at an LMS or an LCMS, Reed provided a useful list. A comprehensive solution should:

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Facilitate the transfer of knowledge;

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Enable global collaboration – internally or with third-party vendors;

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Align corporate strategy and learning objectives;

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Integrate with existing software platforms;

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Reduce overall training costs, since (as Reed put it) ‘the use of improved mechanisms for accessing information, such as online portals, will yield measurable corporate benefits, including less time away from work and, ultimately, greater job satisfaction.’ (‘HR Software . . .’, 2001)

Faculty and Curriculum Development The next step in the management process is the development of curriculum for the institute, and the selection of learning providers and facilitators. This activity is the part of the operational function that organizes the offerings the knowledge services learning institute will provide, and contracts with or otherwise identifies learning facilitators. In the organization’s overall management scheme, providing learning for employees is not just an option. ‘Employee development programs must be updated constantly to share the knowledge and information brought by technological advances. The programs should deal with specific situations and then move from working with knowledge to working with wisdom to determine how to make a difference. Training may be conducted to enhance skills, teach procedures, or ensure security, all of which should benefit both the individual employee and the organization. If a company wants training programs to be productive, there must be a serious commitment to developing a strong training function to stimulate desired strong needs.’ (Shah, et al., 2001, p. 25)

In moving toward staff development in knowledge services delivery, the learning institute will, probably sooner rather than later, seek to identify and select commercial and academic partners to work with the institute in providing learning activities. Outsourced learning and training programs make up the larger percentage of learning activities offered to employees in most organizations, with, according to one source, most companies (82.2 per cent) using private training and consulting firms for training and learning activities. 76.7 per cent of the companies use independent consultants or contractors, and 71.3 per cent of the companies use product suppliers. Other external training providers used by these companies and organizations included four-year colleges and universities (70.5 per cent), community and junior colleges (58.9 per cent), technical and vocational institutions (45 per cent), unions, trade, or professionals associations (30.2 per cent),

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and government organizations (25.6 per cent) (Van Buren & Erskine, 2002, p. 13). Likewise, faculty and curriculum development will also rely strongly on internal resources, and identifying and selecting internal learning facilitators from within the workplace will require special attention but in fact will not present a major challenge. The biggest problem with recruiting faculty from current staff is that many people, hard-pressed to meet the standard productivity requirements of their work, will shy away from volunteering. They can be wooed into participating, though, and all of the knowledge services learning institute’s advocates and champions can be recruited for this task, as well as volunteering themselves.

The Marketing Plan With the organization’s new knowledge services learning institute, as with any new product or activity, marketing the products, services, and consultations to be offered is an essential element in assuring the success of the effort. A first step is the recognition, by institute staff and all in positions of authority and influence with the institute, that communication is the key to selling anything. A well-structured marketing and promotional plan for informing organizational staff that the learning institute is available for their use will require solid communications efforts before all else. An open communications program can be the most productive attribute of the marketing process. Particularly in an organization in which all learning stakeholders are (or are presumed to be) interested in doing what they can to enhance work activities so that they are performing better and working smarter, establishing an ambience of openness and participation will have positive benefits for everyone concerned. Once the learning institute has moved from the conceptual stage to reality, as the governing body is being formed, champions and advocates are promoting its value, staff is being recruited, and learning programs are being organized, both formal and informal marketing efforts will be undertaken. Yet even before marketing efforts are described, it is useful to think about some of the specific approaches that can be implemented. For example, marketing, promotion, and organizational relations can begin, without too much effort, with leadership that is already in place. With the governing body having been established and with advocates and champions already identified and put to work, a ‘captive audience’ is already in place. The planning team for the learning institute can build brand recognition and a strong awareness within the organization simply by sharing information materials, schedules of up-coming learning (or awareness-raising) events, and similar information pieces with the organization’s management and leadership. Of course these management leaders and advocates are invited to participate whenever it is appropriate

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for them to do so, and most of them will be flattered when they realize that these invitations recognize their leadership role in the organization. The knowledge services learning institute will build even stronger advocacy relationships as they are invited to take part. They are the people others in the organization turn to for advice, and while there is no way of predicting when they might be in a position to convey information about the learning institute’s activities (even in unplanned conversations), the benefits of their doing so cannot be measured. Similarly, the creation of branded communications and marketing tools for the knowledge services learning institute will pay off. Despite its high purpose (after all, ‘learning’ is often thought of as something noble and admirable, not your usual run-of-the-mill, day-to-day activity), the learning institute must be thought of – and marketed as – any other consumer product, albeit one of high standards and value, of course. Institute staff will create catch-phrases and tag lines and the like, and these will be used in the institute’s initial documentation and awareness-raising activities. As these become known throughout the organization, this activity can be built upon and further refined to attract attention to the knowledge services learning institute and its offerings. Efforts should be made to ensure that all organizational staff recognize that what is being done is unique to the organization, and that putting forward the learning institute is an unusual opportunity and a splendid opportunity for providing valuable benefits to organizational staff (and to external customers, if the governing body has determined that marketing the institute’s offerings beyond the organization part of the institute’s work). As far as the tone or style of the marketing activity is concerned, care must be taken not to be too stodgy or stuffy, since for many lay people who are not connected in any real way with the learning environment, learning (as a concept) tends to be a little academic and research-oriented in the first place. This is not to suggest that marketing and promotional activities for the institute should be silly or insultingly anti-intellectual, but a happy medium must be struck so that pompousness does not creep into the efforts to inform the organization’s workers about what the learning institute is offering them. If the marketing does get pompous, people will, naturally, refuse to participate simply because they won’t want to be considered pompous themselves. Another marketing and promotion methodology that should be embraced by the learning institute builds on the success that the institute’s programs will engender. It is a proven fact that excitement, enthusiasm, and the aura of success catch the attention of an organization’s population faster than anything else. If the planning team creating the institute wants to ensure its success with the organization’s staff, an ongoing message that highlights success and implies (if not stating in so many words) similar success to future participants in the learning institute’s programs, organizational staff will want to participate. One way to

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do this is for each program or learning activity to have a structured followup public relations/marketing campaign attached to it, for example, the text of a memorandum to all staff in the organization announcing the success of a product – a satellite videoconference with high attendance, say – might also be reworked to be sent to each registered participant, together with a registration form for the next such program, so that they are not only made aware of the participation in the success of the program they attended but will react to that enthusiastic report to register for the next one. Such efforts will go a long way in setting the tone of the institute’s role in the organization. Another technique that has been proven to be successful is the repetition of message with (sometimes almost bothersome, for some people!) frequency. The message must be repeated over and over again, and there is no way to overstate the value of repetition in the learning institute’s marketing and promotion efforts. The institute’s staff and advisors must never forget that their target market – the employees of the organization – are busy people, and it’s been proven time and time again that an advertisement for a program or other learning event will simply be moved to the bottom of the employee’s to-do list and then, just as casually, forgotten about. When a reminder comes the next day (and of course much of this is now delivered electronically, since every effort is made to reduce the amount of paper that goes into and out of the employee’s workplace), of course the employee will say something like, ‘Oh, yes, I’ve got to talk to my boss about that’, or ‘Oh, yes, I’ve got to send in my reservation’. But just as often, sadly, he or she won’t take that action, and more and more reminders are needed. These activities can be built into the learning institute’s standard marketing information system (suggested below) with much reward, but the basic idea has to be the same for all products and learning opportunities put forward by the institute: there’s never enough marketing, as far as the institute’s target audience is concerned. With respect to the knowledge services learning institute’s marketing and promotion within the organization (and with external participants as well, if that direction is taken), a standard technique is the identifying paragraph or other branding effort that is included on all documentation that comes out of the institute, telling what the institute is and providing contact information. Whenever possible, this informational message should answer the following types of questions, to ensure that no recipient of the marketing piece or document can help but be apprised of what the institute is (and of course much of this can be put in the FAQ format that is always available at the institute’s Website): ●

What is the organizational knowledge services learning institute?

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Why is learning about knowledge services important to organization staff?

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When do knowledge services learning opportunities take place?

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What types of knowledge services learning activities are available?

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Why is the knowledge services learning institute’s program different from other programs available to organizational staff?

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What kinds of costs are involved? What resources are required? (And free, low-cost, or experimental programs – such as beta test sites, etc. – are pointed out as such.)

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Who’s in charge of the knowledge services learning institute? What’s the contact information?

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How do potential participants enrol?

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How do programs and learning activities relate to education/learning already attained by organizational staff?

Within the knowledge services learning institute, it will be appropriate at the beginning of its operation to give attention to the development of a marketing information system (MkIS). Despite the costs involved, there can be true advantages in thinking about the process and seeking those elements that might work for the learning activities provided by the institute. Initially, the process is labour intensive, but it can be established in a smaller, more limited framework to determine if it can be useful (and it can be predicted that the use of any marketing information system, however informal, will be useful). The MkIS has been defined many times, and one of the most useful definitions is an early one (although the development of the MkIS, as a marketing management concept, has continued to develop strongly into the present day, and continues to develop). It is ‘a structural interacting complex of persons, machines, and procedures designed to generate an orderly flow of pertinent information, collected from both intra- and extrafirm sources, for use as the basis for decision-making in specified responsibility areas of marketing management’ (Smith, Brien, and Stafford, 1968, p. 7). In information services terms (that also lend themselves to applying the MkIS to the organizational knowledge services learning institute), the MkIS has been described in another book in this series.1 While MkIS benefits are too many to describe here, they lend themselves to the learning institute’s programs, and some of them can be highlighted. For example, by utilizing an MkIS, learning institute staff can track program demand, target market segments separately (or in any combination that is necessary), and, important in this context, measure the effectiveness of 1 St. Clair, Guy. Customer Service in the Information Services Environment. London: Bowker-Saur, 1993.

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learning products and activities and use complaints data (as well as, of course, information about activities that were satisfactory to participants). Formal procedures for handling follow-ups on learning activities can be established and implemented, and expert lists and source files can be compiled and generated as required.

The Evaluation System Discussing the advantages and the potential utility of the MkIS application for the knowledge services learning institute leads appropriately into a discussion of the monitoring, measuring, and evaluation system that will be required for the institute’s operation. With respect to measurement and evaluation, both quantitative measures and effectiveness measures will be expected as the knowledge services learning institute evolves from concept to implementation. Generally speaking, this means that, in the first instance, one can measure by describing quantitative values: things, people, events, etc. (we simply count what is being measured). But to measure can also mean to attempt to determine the value of the thing being measured. In organizations in which management has made a commitment to supporting a knowledge services learning institute, it is this measure that assumes importance. The institute’s governing body and organizational management need to know the effect of offering specific training and professional development programs to the organization’s staff. They – and the supervisors who send staff to the learning activities emanating from the institute – need to know how the programs affect the performance of staff members who participate. The organizational plan for the knowledge services learning institute includes attention to both quantitative measures and effectiveness measures, and specific effort will be made to assure that the work of the learning institute incorporates into its general operational design the functional elements necessary for providing (and reporting, where appropriate) evaluative measures. This matches the admonition of Alice K Waagen, who has written about the ‘fundamental secret’ to evaluating training: ‘The evaluation process and procedure must be incorporated at the start; it must be an integral part of any program development process. If program development follows the classic steps of assessing needs and generating objectives, the evaluation criteria that follow are then based on measuring how well the program components – students, instructors, and materials – have met these objectives and answered the needs.’ (Waagen, 1997)

The standard quantitative measures employed in the work of the knowledge services learning institute include input cost measures, output measures, time measures, and domain measures. These can be

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described, in applications that might be fairly typically applied in this particular situation. Input cost measures, for example, include: ●

Amount of resources applied to operational functions (costs of staff, equipment, copying, etc.);

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Relevant attributes of resources applied to services (costs of professional staff, for example, or cost of contracted training);

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Amount of money applied to providing the service.

Output measures are quantity measures such as: ●

Quantities of output (numbers of learning activities offered under the auspices of the institute, for example, or services provided to staff through the institute’s programs, programs provided, etc.);

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Quality of the training/development activity, the grade or ‘goodness’ of the activity (usually expressed on a scale of 1–4, 1–5, 1–7, etc.), as determined through quantitative analysis of participants’ evaluations – e.g., how the attendees rank a course or activity;

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Timeliness (relevance of activity to performance, specifically in terms of how soon the material learned in a training/development activity can be applied in the workplace);

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Availability (how often services are offered, etc.);

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Accessibility (distance to go to participate).

Time measures, of course, relate to how much time is required for planning courses, for participation by attendees, for study, etc. Domain measures are measures built around the environment with which the learning institute is affiliated. ●

Total number of persons in service population (in this case, this number equals the total number of employees at the organization of which the learning institute is a part);

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Total number of persons in user population (the number of organizational employees who participate in training/development activities);

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Attributes of persons in target/user populations (field of speciality, employee classification, work roles, age, years of experience, educational level, etc.);

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Training/development behaviour (amount of participation in training/ development activities; number of persons participating);

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Training/development need (number of persons having need by type of training/development needed: course subjects, types, etc.).

On the other hand, effectiveness measures establish, as the name states, the effect of training and development activities provided by the knowledge services learning institute, and these will, of course, be emphasized in the work of the institute. Particular effort will be made to see that the results of organizational staff participation in the institute’s programs are identified and, where possible, built upon. For the organization’s knowledge services learning institute, effectiveness measures will generally fall into the following categories: ●

Participants’ perceptions and expectations about training and development programs;

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Participants’ evaluations (that is, their expressed satisfaction with the activity they’ve just experienced);

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Importance of training/development as related to work;

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Survey of action/use (and consequences of use);

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Changed behaviour/performance improvement;

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Observation (by supervisors, managers, patrons, etc.), both formal and informal.

The knowledge services learning institute, as a functioning operation of the larger organization, will be responsible for providing a wide variety of learning activities to the employees of the larger organization, as well as to a larger market if decisions are made to move in that entrepreneurial direction. Therefore, measuring and evaluating the institute’s success in these efforts will assume a perhaps larger-than-to-be-expected role in the organization. To meet these expectations, attempts to formulate specific measurement methodologies combining both quantitative measures and effectiveness measures will probably be made. The following measures can usefully form the basis for evaluative activities in the knowledge services learning institute2: 1. Reaction. This methodology, which measures participants’ satisfaction with course and how well they liked the course, is also referred to 2 These suggestions are based on and adapted from Donald Kirkpatrick’s ‘foursteps’ model of 1958/59, and adding suggested return-on-investment emphasis – devised by Jack J Phillips in 1996 – as a fifth ‘level’ or step. These are described in ‘Measuring ROI: the fifth level of evaluation’, by Jack Phillips, pubished in Technical & Skills Training, April, 1996, and Evaluating Training Programs, by Donald L Kirkpatrick (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koeler, 1996), updating his earlier work in this area.

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as ‘reaction and planned action’. It measures the participants’ reactions to the learning activities and asks what they plan to do with the material they learned in the activity. 2. Learning. This methodology measures participants’ skill level and acquisition, asking what skills, knowledge, or attitudes have changed as a result of participating in the learning activity, and by how much, as well as determining what principles, facts, and techniques were learned. 3. Behaviour. This methodology measures participants’ behaviour and change in performance by asking participants if they apply on the job what they learn in the training activity. 4. Results. This methodology measures the impact of learning on organizational results, seeking to identify tangible results of the learning activity in terms of reduced cost, improved quality, improved quantity, etc. 5. ROI. This methodology, now well known of course, measures the return – in financial terms, organizational culture terms, and ‘service’ terms – against training/development expenditures, specifically asking if the value of the learning activity – particularly the monetary value – exceeds the cost of the activity. Therefore, depending on the level of cooperation that can be obtained from organization managers and supervisors who encourage their staff members to participate in the learning activities arranged by the knowledge services learning institute, evaluation methods and tools used to measure the quality and effectiveness of the institute’s training and development activities will include (but probably will not be limited to) the following: ●

End-of-activity evaluations (by participants);

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Direct observation (both at the learning activity and in the workplace later);

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Comparisons of tests taken before and after the learning activity;

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Reports (written and oral);

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Staff presentations (by attendees to other staff);

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Follow-up testing, focus groups, and interviews;

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Questionnaires, other survey instruments.

Comments provided during the human resources software panel discussion, referred to earlier, offer a succinct and valuable summary of some of the issues relating to measurement and evaluation. When asked what

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advice the panel could provide about measuring or quantifying returnon-investment for management software strategies, a variety of responses were given. One panellist (Jeff Koven) remarked about the importance of how quickly the system can deliver since management software solutions are often ‘too complex or difficult to implement to show an ROI in a timely manner. Many areas of ROI can be measured using quantitative methods (e.g., deploying electronic pay stubs, reducing paper storage, etc.). However, higher areas of return can be more difficult to measure. A qualitative review often reveals where an organization can streamline its broader business processes’. Another panellist (Marcel Legrand) listed his ‘four facets’ of ROI, an easy-to-remember adaptation of the Kirkpatrick and Phillips model: ●

Response: a measure of satisfaction. Are the users and beneficiaries of the system pleased, and how do they specifically plan to apply the learning?

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Wisdom: a measure of learning. What attitudes, skills, and expertise have changed?

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Behaviour: a measure of behavioural change. Did the participants alter their activities, habits, and processes?

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Results: a measure of consequences. Did the change positively impact the organization, department, and individual?

A third panellist (Douglas Reed) stated: ‘Human capital is an organization’s most valuable asset in today’s economy, and it must be used effectively. Implementing employee and manager self-service provides a proven ROI. HR [Human Resources] can also use industry benchmarks to measure performance and set improvement targets for productivity. Automating re-engineering business processes can harvest the resulting savings. Also using benchmarks, organizations can set improvement targets for employee retention, absenteeism, and overtime. Resulting savings can be realized through improved analytical reporting.’ Finally, a fourth panellist (Jim Spoor) noted that ‘Selling ROI propositions to senior-level management is a vital part of the system selection process. Several vendors . . . offer help with this task. Needs, Issues, and priorities vary from organization to organization, but small percentage improvements . . . all add up to a rapid ROI’ (HR software . . . , op.cit., p. 71 ff.). Just how we sell ROI propositions with respect to the knowledge service learning institute will depend, of course, on the culture and the environment of the parent organization, but a useful example is provided in a study which connects Kirkpatrick’s four levels, as noted above, with Phillips’ ROI concept.

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In order to calculate ROI, evaluation experts such as like Jack Phillips are recommending the addition of a fifth level to Kirkpatrick’s model for some programs. This requires collecting level 4 data, converting the results to monetary values, and then comparing those results with the cost of the training program. Here is Phillips’ basic formula for calculating ROI: ●

Collect level-4 evaluation data. Ask: Did on-the-job application produce measurable results?

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Isolate the effects of training from other factors that may have contributed to the results.

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Convert the results to monetary benefits. Phillips recommends dividing training results into hard data and soft data. He says hard data are the traditional measures of organizational performance because they’re objective, easy to measure, and easy to convert to monetary values. They include output (units produced, items assembled, tasks completed); quality (scrap, waste, rework); time (equipment downtime, employee overtime, time to complete projects); and cost (overhead, accident costs, sales expenses). Conversely, soft data includes such things as work habits (tardiness, absenteeism); work climate (grievances, job satisfaction); attitudes (loyalty, perceptions); and initiative (implementation of new ideas, number of employee suggestions).

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Total the costs of training.

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Compare the monetary benefits with the costs. The non-monetary benefits can be presented as additional – though intangible – evidence of the program’s success.

‘It takes a lot of time and effort to conduct evaluations at this level, and not every program needs this much attention. But when it’s important to know the real value of a program, ROI measurement can go a long way to justify company efforts. For example, Magnavox Electronics Systems Company in Torrance, CA, maintains an 18-week literacy program covering verbal and math skills for employees. Here are the results of a five-level evaluation the company conducted: Level 1:

reaction was measured by post-course surveys.

Level 2:

learning was measured with the Test of Adult Basic Education.

Level 3:

changes in behaviour were measured by daily efficiency ratings

Level 4:

business results were measured through improvements in productivity and reductions in scrap and rework.

Level 5:

ROI was calculated by converting productivity and quality improvements to monetary values. The resulting ROI was 741 per cent. (Stone & Watson, 2002)

Whether such dramatic returns will be possible will be determined as the institute is developed, but the point must be made that measurement and

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evaluation must be built into the management of the knowledge services learning institute from the beginning, to ensure its acceptance and its continued validity within the parent organization.

The Recognition Program With the plan for managing the institute having now been given attention, staff must now give consideration to one of their most important challenges. And, as would be the case in most organizations, that plan by now will have been developed into a formal strategic plan for operating the institute. It will have been approved by and supported by senior management in the enterprise, so as implementation of the plan moves forward, establishing organizational rewards for participation in the learning activities organized through the organization’s knowledge services learning institute becomes a logical next step. That this activity is a challenge is not open to question, for it is only human nature to move cautiously with any new activity or organizational function. And certainly rewards and recognition programs will have been thought about from the first, simply because learning is not the first priority in the workplace for most knowledge workers. So as leaders and staff in the organization will have given much attention to the value of the learning institute and will have, in many cases, put those thoughts into personal terms, the familiar ‘what’s-in-it-for-me’ scenario, it is now time to look at what will be done to motivate employees to participate, and all of the institute’s stakeholders will want to think about the value of the institute to the organization, in order to determine how they can contribute to its success. Departmental meetings, enterprise-wide information campaigns, and events like ‘brownbag’ lunches and similar discussion groups will be organized, all with the purpose of establishing a knowledge development/knowledge sharing ambience in the organization. Efforts will centre on not only identifying and listing the benefits to the organization, but on establishing the value to the individual as well. As time develops, of course, a formal rewards and recognition system will be put in place, further involving knowledge services stakeholders and driving their participation. This is a subject that has been given attention in other environments. In their study of the ‘boundaryless organization’, Ron Ashkenas, Dave Ulrich, Todd Jick, and Steve Kerr, noted that, ‘In traditional hierarchies, rewards to people are carefully based on their vertical positions. In essence, such organizations pay jobs rather than people, typically using some sort of evaluation plan to assign point to jobs and giving positive weight to such factors as span of control, budgetary authority, and scope of responsibility’ (Ashkenas, et al., 1995, p. 48). Certainly the traditional hierarchy Ashkenas and his group are speaking about is not what will be in place in the knowledge services

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management institute (and hopefully not even in the parent organization, but that concern is beyond the purview of this book). What is needed in the parent organization is a plan that will provide rewards and incentives for employees, particularly knowledge workers, so that they will take advantage of the offerings of the institute, and Ashkenas and his colleagues have a suggestion: ‘In the boundaryless organization, rewards have two organizational objectives: to equitably recognize past performance (that is, to say thank you) and to stimulate and motivate people to perform competently or differently in the future. These objectives change the logic. Rather than paying jobs, so that people will be motivated to get the next job up, boundaryless organizations pay people for expanding their capabilities so as to make the maximum contribution to the organization. When people make a good contribution and add to their skills, they are rewarded; when they do not make a sufficient contribution and do not advance in competence, they are either not rewarded or rewarded to a much lesser degree than others. ‘With their pay systems that reward people for adding to their skills base and tie pay closely to performance, healthy hierarchies have more than superficial distinctions between high- and low-performing individuals. In addition, healthy hierarchies continue to reward people who remain in certain job categories as long as they continue to grow and contribute. They do not need to become supervisors or managers or to take on any other role for which they may have little inclination or ability simply for more pay.’ (Ibid., p.50)

But linking rewards for participating in such learning activities to pay is not the only avenue for management to consider. In fact, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, quoted earlier, worked with John Kao and Fred Wiersema to edit a book on innovation in which several companies were studied for their ‘breakthrough ideas’ about how innovation is encouraged. As the editors shared their own thoughts on the subject, Kanter had this to say about rewards and recognition programs: ‘If a consultant is working on one function – a new training program or compensation system, for example – then there can be frustration at the rest of the organization. It’s as if you’re using computers and they’re still typing away on a Selectric. Today, no function is an island. ‘The first essential, to borrow from Socrates, is to know thyself. Companies should start with a brutally honest self-assessment. Systematically scrutinize every function and ask: ‘Do our practices in this area encourage or discourage innovation?’ Once you finish this inventory, you can compare yourself to companies that are successful innovators. That doesn’t mean you should rush out and copy them, but you can certainly avail yourself of tools that work for them – refitted to the specifics of your company, of course. ‘Your rewards and recognition practices are crucial aspects of this selfexamination. Most companies discover that they’re underrecognizing

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achievements in innovation. When I research a company, I like to read several years of employee newsletters – undertake a informal study of what it takes to be mentioned. Often, basically you get your name in for years of services. For doing time. But in highly innovative companies, the newsletters are full of examples of best practices, of heroes, of people and teams who have come up with good ideas. A very simple, immediate step a company can take is to set up some awards. Search for innovation heroes and make sure they’re recognized. This allows you to take advantage of the innovators you’ve already got, to use them as role models.’ (Kanter, et. al., 1997, pp. 31–2)

The message here is clear. If we substitute ‘professional learning’ for innovation, and ‘organizational management’ or ‘knowledge services learning institute management’ for references to the management hierarchy, it seems clear that a successful program will combine compensation (financial and such other benefits as release time for study, shared teaching experiences, etc.) and a specifically established recognition system. With the latter, the more formal the better, since employees who are recognized through references to their success in corporate newsletters, given tangible gifts (plaques, gift certificates, etc.), and honoured with awards will be more inclined to attempt to repeat their success and, as Kanter notes, will through their actions encourage others to participate in the institute’s activities as well.

Implementing the Program Implementing the plan for the knowledge services learning institute throughout the enterprise will require responding to a number of challenges, the first of which is to ensure that the marketing and promotion efforts are taken seriously. Advocates and champions will be called upon, now that the initiative is underway, to ‘fan out’, as it were, throughout the organization to establish support and enthusiasm for the work of the institute. The establishment of an explicit implementation plan, built on the strategic plan for the knowledge services learning institute and complete with goals and objectives and the listing of specific actions to be taken, together with expected completion dates, will of course greatly support the process. Devising a strategic plan for the organization’s proposed knowledge services learning institute – and then building an operations plan on that structure – does not have to be as intimidating activity. It is, certainly, one for which any number of examples exist, and of course every corporation, organization, or enterprise has its own methodology for bringing new functions into the large operational structure. The key is to remember that with an operational entity whose products, services, and consultations will be as far-reaching as those of the knowledge services learning

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institute, its influence in and its contribution to the success of the larger organization is going to be remarkable. Surely its design and management will be nothing less.

References (1996) ‘Corporations grow their own best employees at corporate universities’, Journal of Career Planning & Employment, 56(2). (2001) ‘HR software trends: new frontiers, human resources [panel discussion]’, Workforce, 10(80). Ashkenas, Ron, David Ulrich, Todd Jick, Steve Kerr (1995) The Boundaryless Organization: Breaking the chains of organizational structure, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Fichter, Darlene (2002) ‘Intranets and e-learning’, Online, 1(26). Kanter, Rosabeth Moss, John Kao, Fred Wiersema, eds. (1997) Innovation: Breakthrough ideas at 3M, DuPont, GE, Pfizer, and Rubbermaid, New York: HarperBusiness. Kirkpatrick, Donald L (1996) Evaluating Training Programs: The four levels. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler. Kiser, Kim (2001) ‘The road ahead’, Online Learning, 5(9). Phillips, Jack (1996) ‘Measuring ROI: the fifth level of evaluation’, Training & Skills Training, April 1996. Shah, Amit; Sterrett, Charles; Chesser, Jerry; Wilmore, Jessica (2001) ‘Meeting the need for employees development in the 21st century’, SAM Advanced Management Journal, 66(2). Shepherd, Clive (2002) ‘A day in the life of a learning management system’, 3 March 2002, www.fastrak-consulting.co.uk/tactix/features/ lms/lms.htm. Smith, Samuel U, Brien, Richard H, Stafford, James, eds. (1968) Readings in Marketing Information Systems, Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Company. Stone, Jennifer, and Virginia Watson (2002) ‘Measuring Training ROI and Impact’, 27 March 2002, 216.219.224.241/measuring_training_roi_and_ impac.htm. Van Buren, Mark E, and William Erskine (2002) State of the Industry: ASTD’s Annual Review of Trends in Employer-Provided Training in the United States, Alexandria, VA: American Society for Training and Development.

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Waagen, Alice K (1997) ‘Essentials for evaluation: a brief overview’, American Society for Training and Development, Info-Lines, May 1997.

Do This! Use this Checklist for Managing the Knowledge Services Learning Institute Identify learners. Create an operations structure. Decide on a learning management system and establish the role of technology and e-learning for the institute. Establish curriculum and begin faculty development process. Develop a marketing and promotion plan. Develop a monitoring, measuring, and evaluation system. Establish an enterprise-wide rewards and recognition program related to professional learning. Implement the program throughout the enterprise.

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Part III

Epilogue, Final Thoughts and Bibliography

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Epilogue

KD/KS: The Future of Knowledge Services

This book has been written for two purposes, to recommend the establishment of a new knowledge services profession and to provide guidelines for establishing and developing the organizational knowledge services learning function. A knowledge services profession will provide an overarching and comprehensive structure for connecting the several professions, disciplines, and types of work that now provide information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning. These include (but of course are not limited to) information science, information technology, librarianship and information management, records and archive management, organization development, staff training and development, continuous learning, and life-long learning. All knowledge workers, whether ‘professional’ or not, stand to benefit from the establishment of a knowledge services profession. The new profession is needed because these different professions, disciplines, and types of work are all seeking to provide excellence in the delivery of services relating to their core activity. But the different routes that knowledge workers must take to become qualified within these areas vary widely, in content, in requirements, in the management of their qualifications after they have been qualified, and, especially, in the methodologies and concepts that should be in place to ensure excellence in service delivery. The end result is that the recipients of these services – the knowledge services stakeholders, or customers – must deal with widely varying results. A broadly inclusive knowledge services profession will change this state of affairs. But that statement makes it sound as if the book has been written from a negative point of view, which is not the case. In fact, there is much good work being done within the various professions, disciplines, and types of work that make up knowledge services. It would be a great waste for these efforts to continue uncoordinated and happenstance. With the convergence of information management, knowledge management,

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and strategic (performance-centred) learning into the profession I am calling knowledge services, we have the opportunity to coordinate the good work that is being done in these areas, and to ensure that this good work continues. And in fact, it is happening anyway, as organizations and companies recognize that these three areas overlap in many ways. By keeping them separate – instead of converging them – these organizations run the risk of massive duplication of effort. So it is only a matter of time before the convergence becomes formalized, and it will be better for all concerned – and for society at large – if we can undertake the move to a single knowledge services profession sooner rather than later. And it makes sense. With so many professions, disciplines, and types of work attempting to keep track of what their knowledge workers need to know, certainly another reason for establishing a new profession is to bring some order out of chaos. The potpourri of courses, programs, seminars, academic degrees, institutes, staff training and development programs, and other learning activities being offered for knowledge workers (whether professional or otherwise) is literally overwhelming. For anyone who is employed in these areas, the very fact that there is no way of organizing and tracking what is required and completed and learned, except through some personal or organizational catch-as-catch-can system, is disheartening at best. One goal of the new knowledge services profession is to organize these many disparate elements. Yet there is another reason for the establishment of the new knowledge services profession, and that is to manage the qualifications of those who would aspire to be recognized as certified knowledge services professionals. Certainly those employed as knowledge workers will not stop being the information managers, knowledge managers, specialist librarians, records managers, archivists, and information scientists that they are. To attain a higher qualification in the new profession, though, they will be required to meet standards that will be devised by an organization established specifically to establish those standards. The organization – an independent body, not a professional association – will have two responsibilities. Its first will be to establish qualification criteria, publish standards, and to certify successful candidates who apply to become knowledge services professionals. Its second responsibility will be to create and disseminate information and knowledge about knowledge services as a profession, and to sponsor research in the field. The knowledge services profession will be achieved through the practice of knowledge services delivery within organizations, enterprises, and companies in which excellence of delivery is required. Therefore, it is necessary that these organizations establish, as an operational function, a

Epilogue

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structured learning program in knowledge services, for the benefit of knowledge workers in the organization. The second part of this book provides guidelines for the establishment of this function, which I am referring to as the organization’s knowledge services institute. Critical to the success of the effort, of course, is a review and a clear understanding of the knowledge development/knowledge sharing culture within the parent organization. As those with management authority attempt to connect their interest and vision, and that of other managers, leaders, and knowledge stakeholders in the enterprise, to knowledge services as practised in the larger profession, they will be offering learning activities that reflect that connection. By combining the guidelines presented here with what is already available in the learning and development field at large, and by focusing on learning specifically connected with knowledge services delivery and excellence in that delivery, high-quality learning activities can be provided. These will benefit the enterprise, of course, but they will also give knowledge workers the opportunity to learn within an environment that connects to and contributes to the larger knowledge services profession, a classic ‘win-win’ situation. Certainly management will engage in a reality check as these learning activities are undertaken, for it will naturally be necessary to narrow some of their goals and, perhaps, be prepared to make some compromises. There will be many organizations in which it won’t be possible to begin with a major effort (although that, of course, would be preferable). In those cases, those with the vision and the authority to establish the knowledge services learning institute will begin with the ideal and then, where necessary, prioritize the organization’s particular and specific needs. In the process, it will be their goal to identify what can really work within the organization. As the process unfolds, however, and if it is undertaken with the purpose of matching the enterprise’s learning in knowledge management with qualification management standards established by the profession, again we have a learning scenario that benefits all knowledge services stakeholders. As for the future of knowledge services, let’s be sure that we understand what we are about. We are seeking to establish standards of knowledge services delivery based on the needs of the recipients (or customers) and on the requirements that management of these organizations and enterprises determine define these customers’ needs. Obviously within the organizations, the effort must be mission critical, and great effort will be made to ensure that extraneous or ‘fringe’ information/ knowledge services delivery is not included in the effort. Professional learning for knowledge services will be specifically defined in such terms, and as one of my colleagues has noted, one of the most positive effects of moving to the new profession is that the term ‘services’ is specifically used. The construct is not theoretical or high-flown; it is based on what

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is required, in practical terms, in the workplace. Indeed, as another colleague as commented (in a sentiment noted in the text), one of the best things about knowledge services as a management practice that converges information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning is that it is less ambitious than knowledge management alone. Thus knowledge services is more readily accepted by leaders with resource allocation authority (and others) who do not necessarily have an intellectual understanding of information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning. Which is all to the good, of course, for with the establishment of knowledge services as a profession – even one based on the inclusion of a variety of professions, disciplines, and types of work, as it is – the connection back to the value of business as a positive force in society is made. The decades-long aversion of many information workers to business and management practices is put aside as knowledge services leads to higher value information management. In fact, there have long been connections between the development of information management techniques and methodologies and the business world. As Malcolm Gladwell has pointed out, even the development and market value of the filing cabinet (distributed successfully by, of all people, Melvil Dewey through his company, the Library Bureau) and the invention of the phonograph (as ‘a dictation device that a businessman could pass around the office in place of a paper memo’) were undertaken for the support of business (Gladwell, 2002, pp. 94–5). Surely the move to a knowledge services profession is no less significant. And as far as connecting information management theory with application, those of us working in information management now recognize – but have often been reluctant to admit – that (Drucker again!) ‘the first practical application of management theory did not take place in business but in nonprofits and government agencies’. So it makes sense for knowledge services to be part of the transition back to the, it might be said, ‘respectability’ of business as a societal factor. In the early days of management theory, as Drucker has pointed out, those who were involved in its development did not discriminate between business management and non-business management. For them, they talked of the management of organizations, to all of which the same principles applied. It was not until the Great Depression, ‘with its hostility to business and its contempt for business executives’ that an affiliation with ‘business’ and ‘management’ became a negative attribute, and of course much of that carried on into the later twentieth century (Drucker, 1999, pp. 6–7). Now, in society at large, those attitudes have largely changed. With the development of the profession of knowledge services the move toward what might be called the ‘positivization’ of the linkage between business and the management of information will go forward, with beneficial results for all knowledge stakeholders.

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As these connections are made, one major benefit is, of course, the ‘elevation’ (if that is the right word) of training and learning – which I call ‘strategic (performance-centred) learning’ – to the essential and critical role that it should have had in organizations all along. When learning is linked to information management and knowledge management within knowledge services (as a larger management construct), the whole effort becomes results focused. Enterprise-wide benefits accrue at levels that are simply not possible if training and learning are operated as ‘stand-alone’ activities. But information management and knowledge management are elevated as well, in the organizational perspective, simply because by being included within the more holistic knowledge services framework, they are not relegated to (particularly with respect to knowledge management) a temporary status along the lines of what many assert happened with total quality management (TQM) and re-engineering. The visibility of those methodologies and techniques – within the organizational framework at large – has slowed down as their basic elements have been absorbed into management practice in general, and it is predicted that this will happen with knowledge management as well. Knowledge services is different. As knowledge services becomes identified as an essential element in the achievement of the enterprise mission, the success of knowledge services as a profession will define its contribution to that organizational achievement. Thus it can be predicted, with some assurance, that knowledge services will become firmly established within the general management framework. Is there a downside to the establishment of the knowledge services profession? Probably. For one thing, the constituent disciplines that support information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning will be required to change, to ‘raise the bar’, as it were, so that their practitioners – if they and their managers want them to – can meet the standards of the new profession. Becoming a qualified knowledge services practitioner will not be easy, but it will permit individual knowledge workers to practise at a level that they cannot support within the confines of these fields as now established. So the individual fields themselves will be pushed to improve, and at those levels, better service delivery will result. Within the organizational framework, there will probably be some resistance to creating and funding yet another operational function, such as the knowledge services learning institute is recommended to be. These efforts will, in many organizations, be pulled together as decisions are made to provide higher-level service delivery, and many compromises and different approaches will be attempted. And certainly those with resource allocation authority will have some trouble coming up with the

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funding for such an extreme effort, but, as has been noted, if the successful management of the knowledge services learning institute is linked to an enterprise-wide return on investment from the very beginning, and if the management of learning is approached as a required operation, just like financial management, legal services, human resources, and similar activities within the organization, it can be successfully initiated. So there may be some downsides and some difficulties. Why not? The achievements and accomplishments of the new profession of knowledge services will – and, I predict, within a very short time – position organizations for strength in their competitive environments. I am certain of this, and I am not afraid to assert this certainty as this book comes to its close. Of course there will be some downsides, and there will be some occasions when the result of this or that particular step in the process will be uncertain, but that nothing to fear. As Adam Gopnik has pointed out in his discussion of the life and work of the philosopher Karl Popper, ‘The growth of knowledge begins in uncertainty, and increases it: it opens more questions than it answers, and is possible only through the institutionalization of doubt. Anxiety is fruitful’ (Gopnik, 2002, p. 90). Of course there is doubt when we speak about the new profession of knowledge services. There is anxiety. And there is much work to be done. I would be less than honest if I were to state that my goal in this book has been to say everything that can be said about information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning. Obviously this could not have been the case, for even if I had wanted to do so (or been equipped to do so – which I am not), that would not have been an appropriate purpose for the book. What I hope I have done, though, is set up a framework for discussion about where these critical disciplines meet. I have attempted to offer suggestions and guidelines about how this convergence benefits information and knowledge stakeholders in the organizations where knowledge services professionals are employed and, indeed, in our larger society as well. It is only through understanding these critical connections that our information customers will be provided with the service excellence that they expect and deserve. We have the equipment, skills, and expertise to provide the very highest standards of excellence in knowledge services delivery. Now all we have to do is structure the professional framework that will ensure that excellence. We inhabit a world in which the growth of knowledge is part of our lives, the very foundation on which our society is built. We who work in information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning are privileged to be able to participate in the growth of knowledge at a professional level. The new profession of knowledge services will ensure that our participation continues.

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References Drucker, Peter F (1999) Management challenges for the 21st century, New York: Harper Business. Gladwell, Malcolm (2002) ‘The social life of paper: looking for method in the mess’, The New Yorker, 78(5). Gopnik, Adam (2002) ‘The porcupine: a pilgrimage to Popper’, The New Yorker, 78(6).

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KD/KS: Further Thoughts on Knowledge Services Four Essays by Guy St. Clair

During 2001/2002, Guy St. Clair contributed four columns on the subject of knowledge services for New York Chapter News, the membership publication of the New York Chapter of the Special Libraries Association. These are reprinted here, with permission.

KD/KS = Collaboration + Learning (of course) + Teaching) In any organization, the knowledge services focus builds on Knowledge Development/Knowledge Sharing (which I generally describe with the acronym, ‘KD/KS’). When information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning are linked, you have a win-win situation, and it’s one I’m describing often these days. When I talk to people about information delivery, I strongly advocate the convergence of these three disciplines simply because, when they are converged, all information stakeholders benefit. Let me tell you what I mean. First of all, information management is a given. As I’m often saying, we’ve been successful – we librarians and the scientists who work on these things – in setting up information management platforms that (for the most part) work to our and our customers’ satisfaction. Oh, we’re tweaking here and there, and yes, the scientists will continually be improving on what we’ve got, but for the most part, we have a pretty good handle on how to manage the information itself. And we’re learning knowledge management by the bushel baskets full. If you don’t believe me, take a look at any of the conference invitations you’ve been deluged with over the past couple of months. Everywhere we turn, someone (including me, I’ll admit) is talking about the value of KM. Obviously (and I’m serious about this – this is not a joke), the successful mastery of KM as a management practice positions us specialist

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librarians for leadership roles in our organizations. For most of us, KM is here to stay and we welcome the more collaborative environment that provides the framework for successful KM. Such a combination is bound to result in better service delivery for our customers. But there’s more, isn’t there? Information management and knowledge management are important elements in the organizational information delivery scheme, but we’re missing something when we relegate them to stand-alone functions. They really go to work for us when we combine them with strategic learning. When that happens, the organization takes on a new spirit, a new way of doing things (and, not coincidentally, a new approach to accomplishing the organizational mission). Strategic, performance-centred learning – when linked with information management and knowledge management – provides service delivery that goes beyond anything any one of these functions can provide alone. For most specialist librarians, what we want to achieve in our organizations is some level of service delivery in which our customers are more-or-less transformed through their interactions with us (if you’ll excuse the almost pompous phraseology). Of course we want them to get the information they’ve come to us for (that’s why we’re good at information management), and we want them to be able to use it to accomplish whatever they’ve set out to accomplish (and that’s where our knowledge management skills come into play). But we want them to go further with it. We want them to take the knowledge they develop from that information and, when appropriate, share it so that others will use it as well, so that the organization can benefit from its being used to accomplish its first use and, at the same time, use it to create new knowledge. And that’s where collaboration, learning, and teaching come in. They’re the tools that enable us to arrive at KD/KS. I like to think of KD/KS as a framework for professional learning, a framework that leads to excellence in knowledge services delivery and one that embodies the highest objectives of knowledge management, organizational learning, and organizational teaching. KD/KS builds on the assumption that all stakeholders in the information/knowledge services delivery process accept their leadership responsibility to develop, to learn, and to share tacit, explicit, and cultural knowledge within the enterprise. Of course KD/KS exists for the benefit of the organizational enterprise with which the stakeholders are affiliated, and which provides support for their knowledge development and knowledge sharing endeavours, and for their continued growth and development. But it also exists to bring a new, holistic focus to information and knowledge transfer. The new knowledge services profession is being built on KD/DS. We get to knowledge development and knowledge sharing through collaboration, learning and teaching. Collaboration as a management

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approach has not been particularly popular – at least until the last few years – probably because those in leadership positions found it difficult to give up their authority for more collaborative arrangements. Of course there have been plenty of attempts to move into a less ‘structured’ management focus but by and large, moving to a collaborative management plan has not met with great success in many enterprises, particularly those in which specialist librarians are employed. That picture is changing now, thanks to the work of people like Edward Marshall, whose prediction of just seven years ago is meeting with noticeable success. In 1995, Marshall wrote that ‘Collaboration is the premier candidate to replace hierarchy as the organizing principle for leading and managing the twenty-first-century workplace’. I would contend that the growth of the collaborative workplace is a direct result of such influences as the learning organization and, little noticed, the teaching organization. The three of them, taken together, provide a useful way to approach knowledge development and knowledge sharing. Obviously we don’t have to say much here about the learning organization. Peter Senge says it best, and certainly we specialist librarians have taken to his ideas with great enthusiasm. Senge’s ‘component technologies’ (systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared visions, and team learning) resonate strongly among specialist librarians and, I dare say, will continue to do so long after we’ve lost all the other descriptors and are known simply as ‘knowledge services professionals’. These ‘dimensions’ are too key, too critical to our concepts of service delivery, and if we are going to continue to be successful as information/knowledge practitioners, we’ll continue to use – and develop – Senge’s five disciplines. Our organizations can learn, and we with them. For successful specialist librarians, though, it doesn’t stop with learning. We’ve known this all along, but not too many years ago, Noel Tichy and Eli Cohen came forward with their concept of ‘the teaching organization’, arguing that while learning is a necessary competency, it’s not sufficient to assure success. And the establishment of teaching organizations is a natural next step since, as they put it, ‘Teaching organizations share with learning organizations the goal that everyone continually acquire new knowledge and skills’. To that Tichy and Cohen add the more critical goal that everyone pass their learning on to others. Well of course. We specialist librarians could have told them that. And now that our earlier attention to both learning and teaching, combined with our own natural willingness for collaboration, is being mainstreamed, it is only a matter of time (probably very little time) before the work we do as knowledge services professionals will play an even larger role in successful information and knowledge transfer in the organizations where we work. It is an ambition to be eagerly realized.

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References Marshall, Edward M (1995) Transforming the Way we Work: The power of the collaborative workplace, New York: American Management Association. Senge, Peter (1990) The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization, New York: Currency Doubleday. Tichy, Noel M, and Eli Cohen (1998) ‘The Teaching Organization’, Training and Development 52(7).

Specialist Librarians in the New Profession The new knowledge services profession is going to be made up of many different knowledge workers, coming from many different professions, disciplines, and types of work. It will be a profession that comes from the convergence of information management, knowledge management, and strategic (performance-centred) learning. And it will be the new knowledge services profession that will provide the practitioners who enable Knowledge Development/Knowledge Sharing (KD/KS) in the organizations where they work. What a splendid opportunity for specialist librarians! Specialized libraries – and the people who work in them – have always been on the cutting edge in information and knowledge delivery. And certainly when we think about some of the advances in information management that have been led by specialist librarians, their transition into the realm of knowledge services is going to be, indeed, a smooth one. For those who want to embark on this splendid journey, it will be an almost seamless and certainly an almost painless transition. Knowledge services calls for professional workers who understand (and know how to implement, for their customers’ benefit) information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning. Specialist librarians, building on models and guidelines that their community has developed over the past 93 years, are uniquely qualified to be knowledge services professionals. Starting with John Cotton Dana’s recognition that a new kind of librarianship geared to meet the needs of specialized institutions and users was required, on through the 1993 recommendations of SLA’s ground-breaking PREPS Commission, to the 1996 competencies document and its enthusiastic acceptance in the international information management community, to the current recognition of specialist librarians as knowledge professionals providing focused information and services, these knowledge workers have demonstrated – and continue to demonstrate – that they are the experts in what will be a new profession. It is an evolution – this move from specialist librarianship

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to knowledge services – that is so truly relevant it is almost natural in its development. The fit is perfect. Of course the evolution has not – and will not – be accomplished without some bumps and some resistance. For example, as specialist librarians move toward their role as knowledge services practitioners, the distinctions between what they do and what other librarians do will become even more pronounced, more striking. Specifically, the affiliations between specialist librarians and typical librarianship of the later twentieth century – already tenuous at best – will definitely be broken. As the new knowledge services profession takes hold, bringing with it information specialists, knowledge managers, and learning providers from many different professions, disciplines, and types of work, that connection will be lost. Most of these people will have nothing in common with (and perhaps have not even heard of) the approaches to information delivery that so typically characterize American librarianship, and there will be little – if any – need for traditional librarianship and knowledge services to be affiliated. Not so with specialized librarianship, of course. Here is how Marion Paris described the situation in the December 1999 issue of Information Outlook, previewing for us some of what the new knowledge services profession is going to be like: ‘In searching for the technical, the obscure, the undocumented fugitive report, or the one final detail that will win a new client, special librarians have always been indifferent [to] walls and boundaries. Special librarians networked long before the noun underwent linguistic conversion into a verb . . . . Whether the context is a corporation or a museum or a military installation or a specialized academic collection or a research and development laboratory, the ethos of special librarianship veers sharply away [from that of other types of libraries]. . . . ‘According to the [American Library Association’s] Library Bill of Rights special librarians are heretics. You practice censorship; you do not as a rule educate your customers; you do your clients’ work for them, you acknowledge and admit that all customers of your libraries are not created equal. Summoning the totality of who you are (in possession of intelligence, education, experience, discernment and no small amount of cultivated prescience), you anticipate needs and cater to your customers. Moreover, it is essential to your credibility and to the continuing prosperity of your libraries that you make judgements about information sources and means of locating them. Means, by the way, that may be unconventional, but invariably their ends justify them. You create new information on demand. Knowledge management is merely a fresh take on your expertise.’ (Paris, 1999, pp. 34–9)

Let’s recognize, though, that knowledge services is more than knowledge management. In fact, as I’m saying over and over, knowledge services is the convergence of information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning. Its great value is in this convergence, and, as one

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colleague has pointed out, for many organizations the concept of knowledge services makes more sense than knowledge management, per se. KM has not always (even yet!) been readily accepted into the management mainstream. There are probably many reasons for this, but one seems fairly straightforward. For many business leaders, KM – as a concept – has been difficult to understand, mainly because KM as a cultural construct has been around for as long as human beings have been communicating with one another. The only new ‘piece’ is technology. So knowledge services, as a concept, makes more sense. It is less ambitious and more focused than KM. It is also – not to push this idea too hard! – more in line with the capabilities of specialist librarians and other information professionals whose roles have expanded and now include the very attributes of information work that are required for success in knowledge services delivery. Have I convinced you? Do you now see yourself as a member – no, as a leader – in the new knowledge services profession? Of course you do, because, as Paris as noted, it’s what we’ve been doing all the time. Once you begin to think of the work that you and your colleagues do, and the roles that you play in your organization, in terms that build on knowledge development and knowledge sharing, you’re on the road to great success as a knowledge services professional. In this new capacity, you will be laying the foundations for a new approach to information and knowledge delivery that can’t help but be valuable to the organization that employs you and which will, at the same time, establish you as the knowledge leader that you’ve always wanted to be. References Paris, Marion (1999) ‘Beyond competencies: a trendspotter’s guide to library education’, Information Outlook, 2(12).

Knowledge Services – The Message to Us: Get Started! Despite all the hype (or perhaps because of it!), knowledge management has now become a corporate buzzword. Recognizing the logical, almost ‘by-definition’ connection between KM and the work we do, we information professionals want to be part of it. There is a way for us to be involved. First of all, we have to understand what KM is, and how it fits into the scheme of things – the organizational mission – in the organizations in which we are employed. Then we have to link KM to the information management role that we information professionals have traditionally practised. Finally we must connect those actions with whatever strategic, performance-centred learning function is in place. The outcome of this three-part effort

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provides major benefits for our organizations and, not to put too fine a point on it, strokes our professional egos as well. It’s an approach I call knowledge services, and in my opinion, it’s a winning (and, I would suggest, almost foolproof) combination to embark upon in our organizations. We begin by identifying and documenting the knowledge development/knowledge sharing (KD/KS) successes in the organization. The connection is already there, according to Caroline Nolan and Kim Horwood. Quoted in The Library Association Record, Nolan and Horwood note that many people don’t like the term knowledge management because it’s not possible to ‘manage’ knowledge. ‘Perhaps a more appropriate term’, Nolan suggests, ‘is ‘knowledge sharing’ . . . ’ (Nolan, 2001, p. 540). If that’s the case, if knowledge management is really knowledge sharing (and I think it is in most places where special librarians are employed), then we’ve already hit the ground running, and we’re already part of the organizational KM effort. Perhaps we just need to let the organization’s leaders know. As an example, think about the proposal teams in a consulting firm, or an advertising agency, or in any other work environment in which a great deal of effort goes into putting together proposals for potential contracts. All the players on all the various proposal teams must gather and organize immense amounts of information, about the potential client, possible competitors, past performance, prospective management plans, and so forth. When the proposal cycle is ended (regardless of whether the contract was awarded to the firm or not), an enormous collection of information – a ‘knowledge store’ – now exists. And it is a particularly valuable body of knowledge, for not only does it contain the facts related to the proposal effort, it records the process, and it has the names, expertise, and contact information for each of the players on the different teams. It is, in effect, the corporate memory of that proposal. As such, it is much too valuable to be lost. This body of knowledge – having now been developed – is a golden opportunity for the company’s information professionals, for it can be used to jump-start a KM initiative. By now selectively organizing and analysing the information, and preparing it so that it can be disseminated and shared, the information professionals can, in effect, provide the organization with a knowledge product that will be referred to again and again. And it is a product that fits the organizational mission, for by making the proposal process – required in such a business – an easier and much less time-consuming one, the knowledge base adds yet another strength to the organization’s overall management framework. For most information professionals, knowledge development and knowledge sharing are almost routine, because they’re so much a part of what we do. To move to the next level, though, to that knowledge services I’m always preaching about, requires one more step: attaching

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the results of that KD/KS effort to a strategic, performance-centred learning experience. Unless the members of the firm are aware that the knowledge store is up and running, and available for them to access, it won’t be used. So the information professionals must now embrace the third ‘piece’ of the effort, the strategic learning. In some cases, such learning can be fairly formal and include such learning activities as presentations, hands-on training sessions, or perhaps even attendance at seminars for learning how to use particular tools or formats that make for easier access to the knowledge store. In this case, though, we’re dealing more with awareness raising than with formal learning, per se. Simply by taking particular pains to see that information about the knowledge store is broadcast so that all appropriate users will know about it, the information professionals ensure that it can be accessed. In all cases, however, this three-part approach will ultimately ensure that the knowledge that has been developed can be shared and used. That, in the long run, is what knowledge services is all about. It’s not a complicated process, this knowledge services effort (although it can be, if we want to let it, and the organization is willing to provide resources to pay for the costs that come with complicated systems). As Nolan continued in that same interview, KM is about identifying ‘who knows what, and nurturing the culture and technology that will allow this knowledge to be shared and utilized. Information professionals, with their experience of managing information, are particularly well placed to play a key role in KM initiatives, for developing simple KM initiatives on a local level within their own organizations. KM is an ongoing process and is best achieved through small initiatives’. Information professionals, by recognizing opportunities for knowledge services within the company – even small opportunities – can have an impact in the organizational knowledge ‘sphere’. All it takes is a willingness to seize those opportunities and to offer to do for the organization as a whole what they would do for any information customer walking into the information centre. References Nolan, Caroline, and Kim Horwood (2001) ‘Knowing who knows what’, The Library Association Record 103(9).

Critical Infrastructure Protection: A Post-9/11 Scenario for Special Librarians The tragic events of September 11th and the subsequent efforts of the White House in organizing the Office of Homeland Security have brought home a stark reality: as a society, we have not given enough attention

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to critical infrastructure protection. We’ve now been made aware that much more must be done to ensure that our country’s infrastructure is made less vulnerable. Whether we’re talking about the physical infrastructure of buildings and railroads and sewers and bridges, or the IT structures that support our work in information management, everything we use must now be looked at in a new light. This is not a particularly earth-shaking idea, but it is one we’re now recognizing has not been given enough attention. Of course we did some things. We’ve had our emergency preparedness programs, and practically every company has some sort of crisis management plan in place, so that when incidents do occur, everyone on the premises knows what to do. Suddenly, though, we need to do more. We’ve now realized (along with senior management in our organizations) that we must set up programs that are more sophisticated and more well-known (and wellbroadcast). And, as much as anything else, we need to ‘re-set’ our brains and those of our colleagues to accept the fact that being prepared isn’t something we do when we can ‘get around to it’. Being prepared is no longer an option. Establishing that preparation is a valuable knowledge services opportunity for special librarians and information managers. It’s the kind of work we do best, and being involved in the organization’s planning for critical infrastructure protection is a task that is made to order for those in our branch of the profession who want to make a serious (and recognized) contribution in the workplace. Popularly abbreviated as ‘CIP’ (not withstanding our own use – as librarians – of that acronym), critical infrastructure protection requires that organizations set up procedures and practices that permit knowledge development and knowledge sharing (KD/KS) at all levels of the organization. It’s done for the express purpose of ensuring that the organization is prepared for incidents such as those at the World Trade Center and The Pentagon on September 11th. Special librarians and information managers are uniquely qualified to be part of, if not to lead, this effort. Here’s how we do it. Identify CIP Leaders Find out who in the organization has responsibility for CIP, and make yourself known to them, particularly to those in leadership positions. Let them know that you and your team in the special library/information centre have the knowledge services expertise to ensure that the CIP program works. Let them know that you can make their lives easier (and you can make them look good while you’re at it!). Bring in IT and HR Ensure that leaders in these departments know about the CIP effort. And actively solicit their participation (you need IT because they support the ‘pipeline’ through which information flows, and you need HR because – in most organizations – training and development programs are controlled through HR).

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Set up the CIP Team Work with management to set up a group (‘task force’, ‘working group’, ‘committee’ – it doesn’t matter what you call it) and volunteer to lead the effort (don’t wait to be asked!). No one in the organization is better qualified than the special librarians to lead this effort but, alas, they do not always get asked. If you can take the leadership position, take it. Keep the group small, no more than one person from each of the major divisions or departments. Break the group into three ‘teams’, each of which can look at different aspects of the plan. These will generally be divided into these categories: 1. Identifying what information should be developed – if it does not already exist – and shared. This is the information management ‘piece’ of knowledge services, and special librarians are the experts in this area. For example, some organizations might want to have a basic checklist of steps employees can take in an emergency situation. Other organizations will want to have a list of ‘top 10’ or ‘must-do’ preparations for all employees to have in place, before an incident occurs. Other organizations might want to develop a glossary, lexicon, or taxonomy, and make it available, to ensure that all employees understand what’s being talked about when they undertake CIP activities. Whatever information is decided upon, specialist librarians are the ones who know how to find it, how to evaluate it, how to analyse it, and how to get it in usable form for the identified audience group. 2. Determining the broadcast methodology for sharing information, and for changing the organizational culture (if necessary) into one in which information sharing is considered mission critical, in terms of organizational success. This is the knowledge management component of knowledge services, and it is the people-to-people ‘ingredient’ that provides the foundation for successful information sharing. For example, some companies may be satisfied with having the information available on the corporate intranet; the corporate culture in others may require a less (or more) formal method for ensuring that information is shared. Perhaps a monthly ‘quiz’ for all employees is the best way to make sure awareness is raised. In some companies that would work, in others it would not. You have to decide what’s best in your specific environment, but whatever you decide, remember that it’s the specialist librarians who know what questions to ask. Don’t minimize your role in the process. 3. Establishing training/learning programs so that all employees know how to gain access to any CIP information they need. This is, obviously, the strategic learning ‘leg’ of the ‘three-legged stool’ that constitutes knowledge services, and it’s the mechanism that’s used to ensure that people are not only aware they have to be prepared, but

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are shown how to be prepared. Your organization has training programs for all sorts of other activities, so why not one for CIP? Again, this is a perfect fit for specialist librarians and information managers, because we have a broad overview of who the company’s employees are, the kinds of information they look for, the levels of information they require, and how they use it. If we fold our knowledge about the company’s employees into the company’s CIP training efforts, and if we combine that with our own knowledge of how people learn, how they use what they learn, and how they build on what they learn, our contribution to the organization’s CIP program can be pretty impressive. And there’s a final result: In terms of what’s happening in our country today, in terms of terrorism and war and all the awful emotional trauma we’re experiencing, everyone wants to be ‘doing something’. If we special librarians – as professionals – can get involved (or preferably lead) our organization’s preparedness for the next incident, we are, indeed, ‘doing something’. We’re using our professional expertise to make things better than they were, and there couldn’t be a more important job than that.

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Index Note: figures are indicated by italicized page numbers Abbott, Andrew, definition of ‘professional’ 67 Abernathy, Donna J., on learning organization concept 134 Abram, Stephen 60, 61, 63, 231 certification program 62 and knowledge management 132, 136 academic libraries 95–6, 98–9 organizational design 104–6 Academy of Health Information Professionals 74–5 academy/college of information professionals 28 accreditation 28, 37, 53, 65–89 acculturation: and learning programs 57 administrators/administration 78–80 Albert, Lauren, on professionalism 72 Albrecht, Karl on knowledge workers 148–50 on vision statements 245, 247–8 American Library Association (ALA) 46, 81 accreditation process 53 Ad Hoc Task Force 82–3 certification proposal 78, 79–81 credentialing 73 American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) 73–4, 76, 79 American Society for Information Science and Technology 81 American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) 56–7, 75, 76, 85, 126, 220, 243 Andrews, Fred, on KM 17 Anthony, Carolyn (ALA) 79, 80

archives management 9, 22, 59, 81, 93–4 and learning audits 169 ARMA International 85, 86 Ashkenas, Ron, on boundaryless organization 270–1 Ashworth, Wilfred 23 Association of Knowledgework 86 Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) 29, 46, 79, 81 Association of Research Libraries 81 Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies 78 audit concepts 169–70 seven-stage model 170–2 see also learning audit Beheshti, Jamshid, on entry-level courses 8–9 Berry, John N., on accreditation 83 Bledstein, Burton, on development of new professions 71 Boom, Dann, on KM 59 Booth, Edwin, on knowledge services 246–7 Brooks, Pamela Gallop, and staff training programs 166–8 Brown, John Seely, on knowledge and information 15–16 Browne, Maire’ad, on organizational decision-making 116–17 business management technology 131 Canada: library education and accreditation 53 Canadian Library Association 81–2

308

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Index

Cauldron, Shari, on free agent learning 216–17 certification American Library Association 79–81 development of 71, 152, 153–5 issues 84–5, 86 programs 62, 75–9, 123–6, 151 statistics 76–7 structure 28 certified knowledge services professionals 124, 152, 153, 155, 229, 243, 278 Certified Public Library Administrators 79 Chief Learning Officer Conference (1999) 18 children’s literature/services 9 CIP (contribution in the workplace) programs 293–5 client-relationship management (CRM) 33, 51, 99 Cohen, Don, on ‘social capital’ 17 Cohen, Eli, on the teaching organization 126, 137–8, 287 Columbia University, NY 92 communication skills 43, 57, 61, 99, 213 competencies and employers 86–7 librarianship 8–9 SLA definitions 44–5 SLA Survey 46–8 Competencies for Special Librarians in the Twenty-first Century (SLA 1996) 28, 46, 85 Congress on Professional Education 81–9 continuous learning institutes and seminars 85 motivation xx, 8, 9, 13, 62, 73, 79, 108, 109, 211, 252 programs 11, 28, 57, 75–9, 85–6, 106, 146–7, 210, 227, 253 corporate libraries 97–8 and information delivery 173–4 and knowledge management (KM) 100–1

organizational development and design 103–4 and professional learning 111–12 Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) 25–6 credentialing definition of 73–4 employer involvement 88 Cruess, Richard 69–70 Cruess, Sylvia R. 69–70 cultural aspects 56–7 and globalization 55–8 organizational and professional 106–18 customers/end-users 145–6 external 190–1 interactions with knowledge workers 195–7 internal 189–90 Dana, John Cotton 288 data collection 8, 170, 171, 174–7, 180–1 data workers 149, 150, 151 databases development 8, 25, 36–7, 171 management 62 use and search skills 173, 209 Davenport, Thomas, on knowledge management 131 Dearstyne, Bruce, on KM 16, 130 decision-making, organizational 116–18 Dewey, Melvil 280 Dillon, Martin, on library management 10–11 Drake, Miriam A., on ‘business information’ 142–3 Dreazen, Elizabeth, on certification 79–80 Drucker, Peter 231, 280 on innovation 122 on knowledge workers 52–3, 148–9, 221 on productivity 194–5 on professionalism 70 Duguid, Oayk, on knowledge and information 15–16

Index

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e-learning 217–18 and role of technology 155–6 Economist, The 148–9 education and training 10, 53–4 collaborative 63 degrees and qualifications 22, 53–5, 60–2, 63, 73–4, 87–8 employers’ involvement 87–9 and professionalism 71–2 programs 75–9, 85–9 Egypt: and globalization 58 employees levels of 148–51 see also staff employers and competencies 86–9 involvement in learning and training 148 enabling technology xviii, 3, 4, 15, 49, 217 see also information technology (IT) end-users 5, 168 see also customers English as the international language 175 as a second language 212 Erskine, William on course lists 244 on e-learning 220–1 on external courses 259–60 evaluation processes and procedures 264–70 Feingold, S. Norman, on careers 115 Ferguson, Elizabeth, on specialist libraries 23, 53 Fichter, Darlene, on LMS and LCMS 257, 258 Fitzsimmons, Beth, on structured learning 60–1, 62–3 fragmentation of disciplines 29–30 of knowledge services 72–3 of professions 72–3 Friedman, Thomas L., on globalization 58

Garger, Eileen M., on training trends 234 Gladwell, Malcolm, on value of business 280 globalization 55–8 Gopnik, Adam, on Karl Popper 282 health science librarians 25, 69, 77, 81 Henczel, Susan, on information audits 170–1 Hipp, Deb, on technology and selfdevelopment 110, 111–12 Horwood, Kim 291 Human Performance Improvement Certification Program 75, 86 human resource and development (HRD) 56–7 human resources (HR) 165, 268 and CIP effort 293 information 49 definition 15, 19 organization 8, 91 services xvi, 14, 55, 167, 173 sources 6, 9, 32, 289 transformation to knowledge 49 information audits: seven-stage model 170–2 information management xviii, 14–17, 51, 75, 92–5 and learning audits 169 in libraries 97–8 and organizational culture 106–7 and professional learning programs 112, 125, 161, 162, 227 and technology 110 Information Outlook 31, 289 information technology (IT) xvii, 16, 21, 27, 62, 147 and CIP effort 293 and data workers 149 see also technology information workers: component attributes 144–7

309

310

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Index

International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) 76, 123, 156, 209–10 ‘intrapreneuring’ concept 236–7 Jones, Kathie 247 Kanter, Rosabeth Moss 200–1 on obtaining support 237–8 on rewards and recognition programs 271–2 KD/KS (knowledge development/knowledge sharing) collaboration, learning and teaching 285–7 definition xxiii, 128 goals and expectations 187–207 and knowledge management (KM) 290–2 learning program establishment 227–48 post-9/11 292–5 and professional learning 126–33, 139 program management 251–73 and specialist librarians 288–90 see also learning audit Keifer, Leonard, on ALA accreditation 82 Kennedy, Mary Lee, on KM systems 131–2 Kirkpatrick, Donald L., ROI model 268–9 Kiser, Kim, on e-learning and LCMS 256–7 knowledge careers leadership qualities 138, 154 as a three-track system 148–51 Knowledge Council, The (proposed) 151–7, 248 certification process 152, 153–5, 229 functions and objectives 156–7 funding 155 membership 155–7 Qualifications Board 152, 155, 156, 246

Research Board 152 structure 152 support and affiliations 153 see also knowledge services learning institutes knowledge development/knowledge sharing see KD/KS knowledge management (KM) xviii, 128–33, 138–9, 220 as a business management technology 131 definition 15–17 in libraries 98–101 as a new profession 84 and professional learning 18, 112, 125–6, 134–9 and technology (IT) 16, 147 training programs 86, 146–7, 161, 162 Knowledge Management/ Organizational Learning Conference (2001) 18 knowledge services 51, 52, 55, 95–7 component elements 14–19, 62 concept and definition xxi, 52, 59 costs and provision 142, 145 culture of 106–18 customers/end-users 145–6, 189–91 delivery 51, 61, 66, 142–3, 147, 161, 169, 183–4, 201–2, 278–9 employers’ roles 124–5 functions and role 144–5, 151 learning programs and certification 123–6, 151 management 3, 75, 92, 163–8 as a new profession xx, 65–89, 124–5, 141–57, 277–82 stakeholders 187–92 unit diagram 188 value of 51, 144–5, 281–2 see also libraries; strategic (performance-centred) learning knowledge services learning institutes 229–48 advocates and champions 235–9, 260 checklists 249, 274 and collaboration 232–4

Index

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evaluation system 264–70 faculty and curriculum development 259–60 feasibility and motivation studies 230–2 financial support 240–2 governing bodies 239–40, 260 identifying learners 251–3 learning content management system (LCMS) 258–9 learning management systems (LMS) 256–9 management process 251–74 marketing plans 260–4 operations structure 253–5 program implementation 272–3 recognition program 270–2 scope and programs 242–4 staff responsibilities 254–5 structure and models 234–5 technology and e-learning 255–6 vision and mission statements 244–8 knowledge sharing 127–8 and workplace collaboration 142–3 see also KD/KS knowledge workers data workers/support staff 148, 150, 151 employment levels 148–51 productivity 194–5 professional staff 150, 154, 161 vocational staff 150–1 Koven, Jeff, on ROI 268 Kritzer, Herbert M. 66–8 Lamont, Judith, on e-learning 218 Landmarks of Tomorrow (Drucker) 148 Law and Society Review 66 leadership and CIP effort 293 roles and responsibilities 164–8 rules and qualities 138, 154 learning xxii, 6–7, 21, 49–64 approaches 59–60 credentialing 73–4 definitions 209–14

e-learning 217–21 environments 62–3 free agent learning 216–17 goals and declaration 63–4 and knowledge management 18 lifelong learning 211–14 methodologies and models 221–4, 234 NALD learning-style list 215 organizational (OL) 18, 19 professional growth/development 210–11 strategic learning 211 styles 214–21 see also continuous learning programs; professional learning; strategic (performance-centred) learning; training and learning programs learning audits 168–85 checklist 185 data collection, analysis, evaluation 170, 171, 174–7, 180–1 documentation 182–3 environmental scan 180, 187 essential components 168–70 external consultants 177 management involvement 176–7 needs assessment and analysis 172–81 organizational goals 197–201 overview and objectives 177–8 planning 170, 171, 178 preliminary tasks 174–83 program implementation 171–2, 187 project strategy 179–80 resource commitment and value 169–70, 177 results and recommendations 171–2, 181–4, 187 scope and rationale 177–9 staff and user perception research 174, 175 stakeholders’ expectations 191, 192–7 learning content management system (LCMS) 258–9

311

312

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Index

learning management systems (LMS) 256–9 learning organization (the) 134–49 concepts and definition 134–6 five disciplines 135–6 Legrand, Marcel, on ROI 268 Lehrich, Jonathan, on KM 18 León, Lu Stanton, on individual learning plans 252 Leyda, Mark, on individual learning plans 153 librarianship xvi-xvii, 31–3 certification and accreditation issues 84–5 and confidentiality of information 129 education and training 46–8, 53–7, 93 fragmentation of disciplines 29–30 institutes and seminars 85–6 medical 25, 26, 77 and professional culture 107–9 qualifications 78–81 roles 22–3 specialist 23–6, 54, 93–4, 127 studies 22–33 libraries 22, 30, 115–16 academic 30, 95–6, 101–2 administrators/administration 78–80 corporate 97–8, 142–3 as information centres 115–18 and information management 97–8 and knowledge management (KM) 98–101 and learning audits 169 management programs 10–11 organizational development and design 101–6 public 22, 79, 96–7, 99–100, 102–3, 105 specialist 23–4, 30, 103, 129 Library Administration and Management Association 78, 79 Library Association Record, The 291 Library and Information Association of New Zealand (LIANZA) 63

Library and Information Science Professional Certification Board 79 Library Journal (ALA) 83 McDonald, Lany, and staff training programs 166–8 MacEacham, Ruth, on knowledge services 60, 62, 63 management environment attributes and changes 144–51 client relationships 51 methodology 14 philosophy 135–6 primary considerations 148–51 and professional learning programs 225 qualifications 78 management science basic rule 4–5 methodology 168 marketing information system (MkIS) development 263–4 Marshall, Edward M., on collaboration 232–4, 287 Martin, Susan K. 26–8, 77–8, 82, 83 and career structures 148 and employer involvement in training 88–9 on professional culture of librarianship 107–8 medical librarians 15, 23, 26, 77, 85, 93 Medical Library Association (MLA) 25–6, 28, 29, 46, 74, 82, 85 Meister, Jeanne on degree programs 87 on governing bodies 239–40 on lifelong learning 212 organizational training model 235 on professional learning 118 on vision statements 245 metacognition (self-awareness) 216 Miller, J.W., on credentialing 73 Miller, Norma R., and career opportunities 115 Mills, O., on credentialing 73 MIT Centre for Organizational Learning 134

Index

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Mobley, Emily R., on specialist libraries 23, 53 Monster Under the Bed, The (Botkin and Davis) 61 Moran, Barbara, on future academic education 53 Morgan, Jim, on learning models 222 National Adult Literacy Database Inc. (NALD) 214–15 National Training Laboratory (NTL) Institute 87, 222 New York Chapter News 285 New York Time 17 New Zealand: training and qualifications 60, 63 Nolan, Caroline, on KS and KM 291 O’Brien, Michael, on continuous learning 253 Oliver, Richard W., on negativity 109 and the ‘MyGens’ 112–14 Online Learning 256 Organization Man, The (Whyte) 11–12 organizational development 91 principles and designs 101–6 social systems 101–3 organizational learning (OL) 18, 19 organizations 3, 189 boundaryless 270–2 commonalities of design 105–6 functional units for knowledge services 228–9 internal/external end-users 189–91 knowledge services learning institutes 229–48 and learning audits 169–70 learning program benefits 195–7 and professional culture 106–18 as social systems 101–3 and staff training 163–8 Orna, Elizabeth, definition of information 15, 19, 52 Oxford English Dictionary 69

Paris, Marion, on specialist librarianship 31–2, 33, 107, 129, 289 Perkins, Harold, and professionalism 67 Philips, Louis, on learning definition 209–10, 212 Phillips, Jack, ROI model 268–9 Pinchot, Gifford, on intrapreneuring 236–7 Polanyi, Michael, theory of ‘passive knowledge’ 136 Pramuk, Marc, on KM 18 Prendergast, Nancy, on training/learning differences 235 professional learning xxii, 21, 30–1 and corporate organizations 111–12 crisis and solution 121–3 integration into working lives 161 and KD/KS approach 126–33, 139 and librarianship 109–10 methodologies 126, 218 organization of 118 structure proposal/theory 123–6, 138–9, 161 professional learning programs 105, 124–5, 146–7 allocation of resources 162 benefits and changes 193–7, 203–6 checklists 207, 225 goals and expectations 197–203 implementation 197–207, 227 and knowledge workers 187–9 and leadership skills and responsibilities 164–8 management approach and commitments 163–4, 204, 227 planning and design 162–8, 227 see also learning audits professionalism 9 concept and definition 66–71 development of 71–3, 72 and knowledge workers 65–6 and qualification management 66 professions, development and fragmentation of 71–3

313

314

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Index

Profit from the Experience (O’Brien) 253 programs advanced library management 10–11 certification 62, 75–9, 123–6, 151 planning processes 172–85 see also professional learning programs; training and learning programs Prusak, Laurence on KM 131 on ‘social capital’ 17 public libraries 22, 79, 96–7 and knowledge management (KM) 99–100 organizational development and design 102–3, 105 Public Library Association 78 publishing qualifications 59 qualification management 73–4, 78–9 records and information management (RIM) 130 records management 21, 59, 81, 93–4 and learning audits 169 and technology 99, 110 see also information management Reed, Douglas on LMS and LCMS 258–9 on ROI 268 Remeikis, Lois, on knowledge management 16, 129–30 ROI (return on investment) 267–70 Rosenberg, Marc J., on e-learning 217–19, 220 Ross, Louis, on continuous learning 61 Saint-Onge, Hubert, on knowledge strategy 18 Schlesinger, Leonard and Phyllis, on organization development and design 101, 104, 105, 112

Senge, Peter, on learning organization 126, 134–5, 136–7, 287 Sevilla, Christine, on knowledge management 133 Shah, Amit, on development programs 259 Shepherd, Clive, on LMS 257–8 Sloan School of Management 134 Social Life of Information, The (Brown and Duguid) 15–16 Society of American Archivists 86 Society for Organizational Learning, The 134 Special Libraries Association (SLA) 24, 28–9, 82, 285 and competencies 44–8, 213 educational concerns 37–8 and globalization 55–6 PREPS Commission 24–5, 28, 29, 34–5, 288 professional standards 28, 35–7, 85 recruitment and membership 38–9, 54 specialist libraries/librarians 23–4, 30, 103, 129 entry-level 8–9 and KD/KS 288–90 knowledge workers 8–9, 23–6, 54, 55, 93–4, 127 post-9/11 292–5 staff qualities and skills 213–14 Spiegelman, Barbara M., and specialist librarians 28 Spoor, Jim, on ROI 268 staff changing expectations and behaviours 175 development and training 227 individual learning plans 252–3 professional 254–5 recruitment 104 support 255 and user perception research 175 see also knowledge workers stakeholders in knowledge services 187–92

Index

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Stellin, Susan, on e-learning 217, 218 Stewart, Thomas A. 11–12, 128, 130 Stone, Jennifer, on ROI 269 Strable, Edward G. 23–4 strategic (performance-centred) learning xviii, 17–19, 75, 91, 93 and e-learning 255–6 function 124 in libraries 100 organization of 118 and professional development programs 112, 125, 227 training programs 86, 89, 161, 162 Strategic Visions Steering Committee 27–8, 40–4, 88, 148 Sullivan, Peggy, on library education programs 83–4 Swist, Jeannette, on training needs assessment 172–4 teaching organization (the) 137–8 and KD/KS approach 139 technology and customer expectations 61 and knowledge management (KM) 16 and librarianship 8, 27 role in e-learning 255–6 Tichy, Noel M. 126 on learning/teaching organization 126, 137–8, 287 Todaro, Julie, on learning styles 214 Training and Development 126 training and learning programs 21, 220, 227 collecting preliminary information 174–6 formalizing 175, 176 learning audit 176 management involvement 176–7 needs assessment and analysis 174, 176

preliminary planning 174–81 trends 234 United States library education and accreditation 53–4 proposed ALA certification 79–81 training and development 56–7 University of Michigan Academic Research Centre 215–16 Van Buren, Mark E. course types list 244 on e-learning 220–1 on external courses 259–60 Vavrek, Bernard, on public libraries 96 vision and mission statements 244–8 Visionary Framework for the Future, A (SLA 1997) 29 Waagen, Alike K., on evaluation processes 264 Watson, Virginia, on ROI 269 Weingand, Darlene, on certification 80 Western Michigan University 216 Wheeler, Joseph L. on KM 18–19 on librarianship 83–4 Whyte, William H., on careers 11–12 Wick, Calhoun W., on individual learning plans 252 Williams, Caitlin P., and training 246 workplaces, changes and collaboration 3, 7–8, 16, 43, 63, 142–51 World Future Society 115 World Guide to Library Archive and Information Science Education (1995) 46

315