Great comprehensive piece by John Tropea on making the clear distinction between informal information management and knowledge management. It is a call to push current knowledge management practices further.

My thinking is that just the sharing aspect of informal stuff is “know-what”, this is what KM has been about, but we need to go further to the “know-how” ie. to learn and to be able to have the skills to come up with your own “know-what”. We can do this via conversations. We can now converse with people who shared their informal information, and not only know “what” but also “how”…the ultimate example is apprenticeship and mentoring.

Connect, Context, Engage, Interactions

So let’s get it right. Knowledge doesn’t exist independent from a person.

Reference:

• Informal information management and knowledge management are not the same | Library Clips | John Tropea | 16 February 2010