The latest issue of Information Outlook, the publication of the Special Libraries Association (SLA), includes a profile of Nerisa Kamar, who is with UN-HABITAT, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme. She works with UN-HABITAT’s Knowledge Management Unit as Assistant Librarian for the Sergio Vieira de Mello United Nations Library at Nairobi . In his introduction to the interview, author Stuart Hales writes: “Books, journals, and other media are the lifeblood of libraries and information centers, and many librarians have their hands full organizing their collections of these resources and making them available to clients when and where they are…
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A recent conversation with a colleague got me to thinking about our work in KM, knowledge services, and knowledge strategy development. A group of us were in conversation with a lady who is not among our usual group of acquaintances. She’s a professional person, well-established in a career (not in management), and she was curious about our work in the M.S. Information and Knowledge Strategy Program at Columbia University, with which I’m affiliated. So I launched into my usual explanation about the value of knowledge development and knowledge sharing in the larger organization, how there are many companies and…
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We speak a lot about KD/KS. If you’re curious about how knowledge development and knowledge sharing link together in ways we might not usually think about, take a look at Jonah Lehrer’s “GroupThink: The brainstorming myth” in the current (January 30) issue of The New Yorker. While I’m not sure I agree with Lehrer’s basic premise that brainstorming doesn’t work (isn’t brainstorming a pretty basic tool in the KD/KS toolbox?), I do agree with his ideas about the value of chance encounters in knowledge sharing. His examples are terrific, and he makes it clear that when a space/building/environment is…
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