Apr

War of the Worlds: Librarians and Knowledge Managers Fight It Out

By admin

Above and Beyond KM has an intriguing post up about the conflicts between knowledge management (”KM“) managers and librarians at law firms. The author muses that some of the conflict might be due to the caste system in the legal world, where lawyer KM managers look down their noses at “non-lawyer” librarians, and perhaps this struggle amounts to little more than the death throes of an obsolete system.

I think the caste system point is well taken. Interestingly, the caste system affects lawyer KM managers, too, as they usually have less status than many associates at a firm. The unspoken ideology seems to be that either you generate fees, or you do not, and, if not, then you have less status. Ultimately, the “death throes” issue really is at the fore here. Most of the issues I’ve found that librarians care passionately about in managing a collection simply do not overlap well with the daily knowledge acquisition and management needs of the firm. Consider:

How often does a librarian spend extensive time cataloging material that is almost never used?
To what degree are acquisitions focused on filling out a typical catalog versus aligning with KM needs?
How strongly do librarians negotiate vendor contracts (in my experience, hardly at all)?

However, I will grant that KM managers may have blind spots as to certain important library needs. Ultimately, we need a more advanced system that takes into account all of these concerns.