Knowledge Management Survey

A survey of knowledge management systems and tools created for the Knowledge Management in Organizations course, a part of the Rutgers MLIS curriculum.

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This is an informative and relatable video demonstrating what modern-day KM systems seek to accomplish in today's organizations: storing organizational knowledge and information in a centralized place where it can be easily accessed and shared by the members of the organization, and connecting the members of organizations with one another so that they are able to tap into each other's tacit knowledge more easily.

The video specifically discusses Microsoft's KM solution, Sharepoint, but the ideas behind Sharepoint discussed in this video can be applied generally to most current KM solutions that seek to integrate technology and organizational knowledge. 

Some of Sharepoint's biggest selling points are the ways in which they seek to make accessible the tacit knowledge belonging to the people within an organization, as well as its documents and explicit data.  -JZ

Connect with employees across the enterprise - use SharePoint to engage with people, share ideas and reinvent the way you work together.

SharePoint makes it easy to find answers, discover insights and connect with experts.

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Xerox found a way to cut costs and share institutional knowledge with a knowledge management system that gives engineers credit for their contributions. Find out how Xerox moved KM from theory to reality.

This article provides an insightful overview into effective knowledge management solutions by examining how one company implemented a technology-based knowledge management system and then refined it to make it truly successful by taking its own organizational cuture into account.  The lesson learned is that knowledge management is not only about technological solutions but perhaps more importantly, it is about employing a flexible, creative, innovative management style that suits the needs and culture of each individual organization. -JZ

  "Management is a blend of technology and process change through culture change."  - Dan Holtshouse, Xerox’s former director of corporate strategies

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Intranets 101, a page authored by the social intranet provider Thought Farmer, provides a good overview of what the social intranet is and how it can help organizations manage their collective knowledge collaboratively and effectively. -JZ

What is a social intranet?

An intranet where all employees can author content and connect easily.

Traditional intranets have very narrow authorship, restricted to a small handful with official “editor” permission. Traditional intranets also lack connections. Content is basically anonymous and shows no social context, no connection between pages and specific people.

A social intranet allows all employees to author rich content, connects every piece of content to a specific, living and breathing person, and helps people connect with each other. On a social intranet the “people layer” permeates the entire site and makes every page more personal and more human.

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Bloomfire is a software company that creates web-based software applications that aim to increase virtual knowledge-and-information-sharing in the workplace. Bloomfire develops software that allows companies to share information on a web-based application platform. The software allows users to create team communities where people can post questions and answers, and add or create new content. Any of the content can be uploaded in a multimedia format such as: videos, photos or text documents. The program also accepts every file type. The social platform allows users to “follow”, “share”, and “like” other users’ content; it also has screen-recording capabilities. The application can be accessed from a device connected to the Internet, such as a PC, laptop, tablet computer, or smartphone. The program has a monthly fee. A short video about it can be found here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob_oEuTYsLo. -ST

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Google offers a variety of products that can be utilized for knowledge management. There is: Gmail which is an email engine, Google Drive which allows people to create, share and keep all their files in one place, and Google Docs which allows people to Open, edit, and create documents, just to name a few. There is a spreadsheet and a power point program that is available as well. They also have Google Sites which allows people to custom build sites and wikis. All of these products are free, and include free storage space- up to 15 gigabytes. All that is needed is a Gmail account. -ST

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Evernote is software that is designed for note taking and archiving. A “note” can be anything: a piece of formatted text, a full webpage or webpage excerpt, a photograph, a voice memo, or a handwritten note. File attachments can be added to supplement the notes or as a note itself. Notes can be sorted by a variety of ways: folders, tagged, annotated, edited, and by comments. The notes can be searched and exported as part of a notebook. Evernote supports a number of different operating system platforms, including OS X, iOS, Chrome OS, Android, Microsoft Windows, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry, to name a few. Evernote offers online synchronization and backup services in order to protect the information that is stored there. There is a free version and a paid version. -ST

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Basecamp is a popular cloud-based project management application that allows organizations to create calendars, memos, and to-do lists to manage projects as a team. The program allows people to communicate ideas to one another in a fast and efficient manner. Basecamp allows all group members to view a group calendar by compiling all the information from each individual's calendar into one central calendar. Then Basecamp will send out emails or text messages to group members alerting them to changes in a given project, or notifying members if an issue goes unresolved for a certain period of time. This is a valuable tool for team members looking to coordinate project-specific knowledge with one another.  -JZ

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Open Atrium is an open-source knowledge management system used by major international news outlets, educational institutions, and other large-scale companies that rely on the sharing of a variety of forms of knowledge. The open source aspect means that there are knowledge-related benefits to this system for both the organizations that use it and the developers of the system itself. Aside from the fact that organizations can use this tool to store and share knowledge across departments and locations, they can also contribute to and build upon the system's overall knowledge base, allowing other organzations who use Open Atrium to benefit from new or updated tools and features. - MHV

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Xerox DocuShare is a content management system that makes use of open standards and allows for managing content, integrating it with other business systems, and developing customized and packaged software applications. The DocuShare Content Management Platform includes four products depending on the company or person’s needs.1)DocuShare provides document management, collaboration, image capture, and Web publishing capabilities to support information sharing in an enterprise or department. Add-ons include records management, lifecycle management, team workspaces, enterprise workflow, capture, and eForms. 2)DocuShare Express delivers content management tailored to SMBs, for managing digital documents and converting paper content to digital. 3) DocuShare Enterprise meets enterprise content management (ECM) requirements for large deployments. 4) DocuShare Education is a special configuration for schools and higher education institutions. It is available on a variety of platforms, including smartphones. -ST

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Atlassian is a software company that develops products geared towards project managers. It is best known for its two main programs: JIRA and Confluence. JIRA is a tracker for teams that allows planning and building projects. JIRA allows members to capture and organize ideas, assign work, and follow the team’s activity. Confluence is an online program that has a place to share, find, and collaborate on information and projects. It has services such as file sharing, notifications, classification tags, and publishing. Since it is all done online, there is no need to email or have meetings. Atlassian also offers HipChat. It is a hosted private chat service. Teams are able to share ideas and files in chat rooms and video chats. - ST

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Why Knowledge Management Is Important To The Success Of Your Company

Managers are bombarded with an almost constant stream of data every day. Read this article to find out three key reasons why actively managing knowledge is important to a company’s success.

This article from Forbes offers an executive summary of a case study from GE, where knowledge management systems have been put in place for executive leadership and in-house professional development, as well as a brief discussion of a system used by the US Army for building knowledge based on recent events. For these organizations, knowledge-sharing is facilitated through the use of workshops, management retreats, forums, and post-event debriefings. All of these types of programs are intended to move the organizations towards further enhancing their existing knowledge bases. - MHV

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Asana · Teamwork without email

Asana puts conversations & tasks together, so you can get more done with less effort. Do Great Things with Asana.

This platform allows for real-time collaboration, task management, multiple collaborative workspaces, and virtual delegation. Not only does it allow for organizations to amass their own explicit knowledge bases "in the cloud", but it also offers its own extensive knowledge base as a guide towards more effective usage. - MHV

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Jing captures anything you see on your computer screen and lets you share it instantly. Sign up for your free account!

I became familiar with Jing when I took Info Tech during my first semester. For a person like me who finds it easier to "explain by doing", this software made it easy to illustrate how I went about completing various parts of my web development projects without having to write out explicit instructions. I would recommend this as a good alternative for those who want to offer hands-on training but are constrained by distance or scheduling conflicts. - MHV

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One major issue that comes up with project management tools and other tools that can be used in knowledge management to encourage collaboration is that software can become prohibitively expensive. However, there are few open source solutions that "do it all" in this area. One solution is to take from a list such as this of open source alternatives to major project management/team collaboration tools. In some cases, such as with ProjectPier, you can actually import existing data from other proprietary tools. -PS

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A surprisingly content rich, direct, and brief presentation on knowledge management in organizations by Intoto Knowledge with a guest appearance from Rich Uncle Pennybags, a.k.a. Mr. Monopoly.  -PS

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I was looking for an article that describes the benefit of having a "knowledge base" in the context of an organization's overall knowledge management. There are numerous other suggestions listed, including other methods of helping staff to answer common questions quickly and professionally such as creating FAQ lists and creating expert systems for the more step-by-step inquiry-based conversations we might have with patrons who need to zero in on topics or for trouble shooting. I was surprised to see that, despite this article being from 2006, it does a good job of outlining what many libraries and other organizations still have a difficult time putting in place. Our library cooperative is going in the direction of knowledge bases for all of its committees, so it's good to see how effective they are in other organizations. -PS 

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An article on the benefits of using wikis (specifically IkeWiki) for collaborative knowledge management. There is a long list of benefits included here regarding this not the least of which are: collaborative, real-time editing; the version-based "rollback" features; strong links/hyperlinks; search functions, and overall easy access to material. This is a quick read that can easily serve as justification for using wikis in your workplace. Although the subject of this particular article is "IkeWiki" all of the the major points made apply to the majority of wikis out there.  -PS