LAPORAN PERSIDANGAN/CONFERENCE REPORTS

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International Training Course on Knowledge Management and Metadata(18-20 June 2001: Manila)

Molly Chuah. Librarian

University of Malaya Library

The International Training Course onKnowledge Management and Metadatawas organized by the PhilippineAssociation of Academic and ResearchLibraries (PAARL) in cooperationwith the University of the PhilippinesDiliman Libraries and the De La SalleUniversity System Libraries. Theobjective of the course was to acquaintlibrary and information professionalswith the various aspects of knowledgemanagement; and the current state ofmetadata and its expected long-termdevelopment. Conducted by Mr. ErikJuls, Executive Director, OCLCInstitute and Dr. Hwa-Wei Lee, OCLCDistinguished Visiting Scholar, thethree-day course received tremendousresponse with participation by 148Filipino librarians and 2 foreignparticipants - I from Malaysia andanother from Indonesia.

An introduction to knowledgemanagement was given by Mr. Juls.Knowledge management has becomeincreasingly important because offactors, such as the "shift fromindustrial to information basedeconomies, the rise in occupations thatcreate and use knowledge, theconvergence of information andcommunication technologies and theemergence of new tools such asgroupware and intranets". The goal ofknowledge management in a corporateenvironment is "to deliver theintellectual capacity of the firm to the

Kekal Abadi 20(1) 2001

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individual knowledge workers who makethe day-to-day decisions that in aggregatedetermine the success or failure of abusiness" (Microsoft KnowledgeManagement White Paper,www.microsoft.com/dns/km/Kmpract.htm), while the goal of library knowledgemanagement is "to deliver everything aknowledge worker needs to achieve his orher objective and where, when and howthe user wishes" and at a cost he or she canafford".

The key knowledge areas in the libraryworld are as follows:

i) knowledge about knowledgeusers, i.e. their informationneeds, use of resources,OpInIOnS of resources orservices;

ii) knowledge about knowledgeresources, i.e. their existence,availability, cost, collection anduse;

iii) knowledge about efficientorganization 'and access, i.e.subject analysis, classificationand cataloguing; and

iv) knowledge about the library'scollections and services.

Bearing in mind that sharing and usingknowledge often do not come naturallyand KM is expensive, libraries will need tounderstand the foundations of KM. Theseare "Stuff', which refers to knowledgethings, such as text, pictures, videos,

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recordings; "Technology" such asapplied computing, networking,telecommunications and storagetechnologies; "People", such as thosewho create, maintain and useknowledge; and "Processes" of howknowledge is created, stored, accessedor used. These four factors have to bedealt for the key knowledgeapplication areas that relate tocustomers, best practices; corecompetencies; and products andservices, to develop knowledgemanagement systems. Careful planningis essential for a knowledgemanagement system to work well.

The sections on knowledgemanagement applications, started withMr. Jules highlighting examples fromthe corporate world knowledge, suchas the identification of an enterprise'sknowledge assets, i.e. its products,people, imtianves, facilities andconcerns; creation and maintenance ofpersonnel files with details of staffskills and competencies, projects,research areas, interests, personalcontacts, and international experience;and Teltech's Knowledge Scopeconsisting of a thesaurus of over30,000 technical terms and a list ofexperts associated with them. As anexample of knowledge management inacademia, Tuft University HealthSciences School with a repository ofteaching and learning materials wascited. With the advent of technologies,such as personalization, search enginesand directories, gateways and portals,intelligent agents, filtering systems,and push technologies, it is nowpossible and affordable for libraries toassume knowledge management roles.For example, libraries could provideintegrated systems that link consumers,suppliers and producers of knowledgesources; and assume responsibilitiesfor knowledge management of localsources, such as creation of databasesof experts and ongoing research within

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one's organization. Why should librariansassume knowledge management role?Librarians have the knowledge, training,tradition of service and identity, in dealingwith knowledge sources. No othersremotely qualify yet. Librarians shouldhave a changed relationship with thecreators of knowledge In theirorganization. They should take theopportunity to provide knowledgemanagement assistance to these creators ofknowledge by selecting and organi~ng anorganization's knowledge resources' andtraining users to access them. If librariansdo not assume KM role, others will inrespond to human being's need forinformation. In any case, if librarians donot assume KM role, what will librariesdo?

In his session on "Role of libraries inknowledge management", Dr. Hwa-WeiLee, reiterated that libraries do have a rolein KM and KM is needed all the more nowbecause of the exponential growth inhuman knowledge as a result ofadvancement of technology and theInternet; the realization of the importanceof explicit and tacit knowledge to anorganization; and the changing conceptfrom "knowledge is power' to "knowledgesharing is power". As a learningorganization, libraries should provide aleadership role in KM and unlike businessorganizations, whose KM goal iscompetitive advantage, a library's KMgoal should be to expand access ofknowledge to users and facilitate thecreation of new knowledge. Dr Lee thensuggested several achievable KM activitiesin libraries. Firstly in knowledge resourcesmanagement, libraries could developresource access strategies from printed toelectronic and digital resources; changefrom ownership to access and from just incase to just in time, survey and analyzeuser needs; develop cooperativeacquisition plans through networkedconsortium; create online catalogues toinclude both internal and external sources;develop means to capture tacit knowledge;

use web sites to serve as a portal for allsources of selective and relevant >

knowledge and information, whetherexplicit or tacit, whether on site orremote, and in all format, a goodexample of which is Arthur Andersen'sKnowledgeSpace(http://www.KnowledgeSpace.com/splash); make available to all staffmembers through a library's intranet, avariety of internal documents, reports,minutes.. statistical analyses, policies,manuals, best practices, lessonslearned, news, etc; and inventory andmake available expert knowledge ofstaff members. As for human resourcemanagement, an organizational cultureof sharing knowledge and expertiseshould be cultivated by recognizingsuch efforts with appropriate rewardsand incentives. Experienced staffshould be encouraged to transferknowledge to junior staff and thiscould be done by a mentoring system,having informal seminars, sharinglessons learned and maintainingintranet special interest groups andchatrooms. Resource sharing andnetworking is another area where KMapplication possibilities have beengreatly enhanced with rapiddevelopments m computer,telecommunication and networkingtechnologies, as shown by two verygood examples - Ohio Link (OhioLibrary and Information Network) inresource sharing and the OCLC(Online Computer Library Center) inshared cataloguing. As for informationtechnology, the latest technologyshould be used as an enabler to createwell designed and operationalknowledge management systems.Intranet or groupware technologies,such as Lotus Notes, could be used tosupport KM efforts in sharing internalknowledge. In the area of services,libraries must know their user first andinformation on this can be gatheredfrom statistical analysis of user

registration data, circulation andinterlibrary loan records, most frequentlyasked and reference questions, telephoneand email queries, data of usage of.electronic . and digital resources andperiodic user surveys. All user servicesshould be tailored to suit individual userneeds, such as selective dissemination ofinformation and new publications alerts.Both information "push" and "pull"strategies must be used to providepersonalized service. As for administrationand organization, to facilitate theimplementation 'of KM, the traditionalmode of hierarchical' and highlycompartmented. organizational structureshould be reviewed and revised. Tofacilitate communication within anorganization, more team-based workinggroups should be formed. Dr Leeconcluded that KM should not be viewedas a way to control the process ofknowledge creation. Rather, librariesshould strive to be an enabler andfacilitator by mobilizing efforts andresources.

An essential factor in knowledgemanagement is to increase efficiency inknowledge use. With the vast amount ofdigital information becoming increasinglyavailable as knowledge sources,bibliographic control of these resources tofacilitate retrieval is of utmost important.Description of these web resources doneconsistently with metadata will facilitateresource discovery. Metadata has beendefined as "data about data", "structureddata about data", or "information aboutinformation". It serves two main functions:

resource discovery and resourcedescription. It refers to either the taggingsystem that defines the set of fields and itscontents or the contents of certain fieldsthat act as descriptors for other resources.There are several tagging or mark upsystems used to define structural propertiesof "documents" for later processing.SGML (Standardized General MarkupLanguage) is used to control documentformatting for publication, while HTML

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(Hypertext Markup Language), anapplication of SGML, is used tocontrol the display of Web pages.XML (Extensible Markup Language)is a next generation SGML. We werethen introduced to ResourceDescription Framework model, whichis an infrastructure that enables theencoding, exchange and reuse ofmetadata. The RDF model consists ofthree elements: -

i) resource, which is the itemdescribed, only one at atime;

ii) property type, that is, thecharacteristics or attributeswhich can be of anynumber; and

iii) value, the literal characterstring related to theattributes.

The need to improve resourcediscovery on the Web led to theconsensus that there has to be core setof data elements to describe electronicresources. Resulting from a workshopconvened by OCLC's Office ofResearch and the National Center forSupercomputing Applications, inDublin, Ohio in March 1995 was theDublin Core. The Core was intended tobe a basic collection of 15 to a metadaelements in three groups: -

i) Content: Title, Subject,Description, Source,Language, Relation (toanother resource),Coverage;

ii) Intellectual Property:Creator, Publisher,Contributor, Rights;

iii) Instantiation: Date, Type,Format, Identifier.

In addition, an element can be refinedor elaborated upon by qualifiers, whicheither refine the meaning of an elementor identify an encoding code to be

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used. For example, the DC Format elementhas the refinement qualifiers of extent andmedium and an encoding scheme formedium, IMT. All the elements of theDublin Core are optional and repeatable.All elements are displayable in any order.Although originally developed in English,versions are being created in many otherlanguages, including NorwegianandJapanese.

An issue relating to metadata applial;.tiov[swho will create metadata - librarians,metadata specialists, subject-matterspecialists or the resource creators. It wassuggested that participants could try tocreate metadata for web resources thathave been created by their organization. Atleast they would be in a position to contactthe resource creator of any requiredinformation. When will metadata becreated? There are two possibilities -when the resource is created, by theresource creator, or anytime after metadatathe resource is created. Metadata could becreated by using file editors or editingtools, such as OCLC's CORE(Cooperative Online Resource Catalog).Metadata created may be embedded in theresource, in a searchable database/index orboth. When embedded in the resource,metadata can be in HTML, XML, RDF orother encoding standards. When metadatais stored in a searchable index or database,it will be in the manner as required by thespecific database application, such asOracle. Various architectures for metadataapplications were also suggested. Inplanning metadata creation, one has to takeinto consideration resources available, userfunctionality, system components andintegration, workflow, staffing, trainingand maintenance.

Having dealt with the elements of DublinCore, Mr. Juls then explained howresource description for web resourcescould be created using OCLC's CORE,which provides web-based form for entryof metadata, based on the Dublin Core.

Related to resource description of web.resource, is the issue of buildingsubject bibliographies of theseresources. Using OCLC's CORE suchbibliographies or Pathfinders could becreated and customized forinstitutional use to include reviewedand selected web resources, referencesto library materials, and non-electronicresources. Updating of resources inPathfinders is quicker and easier asURLs can be maintained easily.

A hands-on session on resourcedescription and pathfinder creationusing OCLC's CORE was held on themorning of the third day at the CyberNook of the De La Salle UniversityLibrary at Taft Avenue. This wasfollowed by a question and answersession, during which participants wereadvised to start on small project onresource description to gain practicalexperience. Access to OCLC's COREwas given to participants for a ninety-day period. There are several availablemetadata creation softwares, other thanCORE and participants were referredto the homepage of the World WideWeb Consortium (W3C)(http://www/w3.org). The problem ofchanging URLs was raised and it wasexplained that OCLC's persistent URLsoftware allows the creation of PURLsover time by creating an association ofPURL and the changed URL. Thissoftware is free software availablefrom (http://purl.org/dc). A participantsuggested that some form of consortia

agreement should be negotiated forPhilippines libraries to participate mOCLC's CORE at a reasonable fee.

The course was certainly eye opening. Notonly were we enlightened on the severalpossibilities of knowledge managementapplications in the academic librarycontext, but also it was "stressed thatlibrarians, with the training and tradition inorganizing knowledge, ought to assumeknowledge management role in theirorganization. Librarians should manageknowledge- about their organizations justas they have managed their otherresources. they should utilizeorganizational knowledge to improveservices. Academic libraries should alsoemploy knowledge management to expandthe library's role in the universitycommunity by working with the academiawho are the knowledge creators incollaborative efforts. The sessions onmetadata were useful especially for manyof us who need to learn how to describethe increasing number of web resources.

In addition, the lunch and tea breaks gaveparticipants the opportunity to beacquainted with each other and thefacilitators. The Filipino librarians wereindeed very hospitable. We were welltaken care during the evenings and thevisits to the libraries of the Ateneo DeManila University Professional School,University of the Philippines Diliman, DeLa Salle University Dasmarinas, and theCentro Escolar University

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