Knowledge Management and the Academy

© 2008 Timothy J. Cain, Joseph J. Branin, and W. Michael Sherman Universities and colleges generate extraordinary quantities of knowledge and innovation, but in many ways the academy struggles to keep pace with the digital revolution. Growing pressures are reshaping how universities must do business—students expecting enhanced access and support, administrators eager to make data-driven strategic decisions, researchers working in virtual global collaboratories, faculty looking for ways to assess learning outcomes, and computer hackers probing networks for vulnerabilities. Many universities seek creative and innovative ways to enhance their nimbleness in knowledge translation, access, and usability.1 Successful universities embrace these challenges creatively, including revisiting and repurposing the roles of their academic libraries and IT organizations.2 As information transitions away from printed works, universities are enhancing their digital collections and repositories, creating “commons” to synergize support for technology and information access and forging partnerships between library, information, and technology professionals.3 The need to manage and assimilate a constantly growing pool of information, technology, and human expertise creates unique challenges for faculty, staff, administrators, and students in the modern university. To meet the needs of these diverse user communities on The Ohio State University (OSU) campus, the Center for Knowledge Management (CKM) was created in 2003 as a unit within the John A. Prior Health Sciences Library. The center’s goal is to leverage the strengths of people, processes, data, and technology to foster the creation, analysis, and dissemination of new knowledge. As previously chronicled, our teaming of technology professionals (programmers, media designers, and so forth) with information stewards (librarKnowledge Management and the Academy