Building a corporate taxonomy: benefits and challenges

The preliminaries
Roles and responsibilities

Identifying who should ‘own’ the corporate taxonomy can be a difficult task for organisations that are new to such projects. In many large enterprises there will already be a corporate librarian, and their ‘information science’ experience will make them the natural candidate for this role.

Alternatively, an existing knowledge manager – or knowledge management team – will take on the responsibility of ownership.

If neither of these options already exists, the organisation will need to create a new role – and ensure that the appointee gets the training and, equally important, management support that they will need to be effective in what can be a politically sensitiveposition.

in Building a corporate taxonomy: benefits and challenges [Pdf format]

[ABSTRACT: Taxonomies are a fundamental part of any modern information architecture.
Any organisation that needs to make significant volumes of information
available in an efficient and consistent way to its customers, partners or
employees needs to understand the value of a serious approach to taxonomy
design and management.

However, many organisations are unfamiliar with taxonomy development and
management. At its simplest, a taxonomy is a hierarchical organisation of
categories used for classification purposes. Such a simple definition hides the
many challenges to be faced in building and maintaining an effective and
usable taxonomy for your organisation.

This report explains why taxonomies are a key issue for many organisations,
and looks at the benefits they bring and the challenges to be faced in
developing and maintaining a corporate taxonomy. It also examines the role of
categorisation tools in taxonomy design and maintenance, and looks at future
technology trends.]

See also my previous post

Taxonomy of Faiths: A semantic journey

Knowledge Capture - Librarians' Role

The librarians at each institution who work with the databases and with onsite and remote users collect unsolicited comments, most often via e-mail sent to the staff. They share these comments with library administrators who can use them to communicate to campus administration. For the most part these comments are positive, saying things like “you have saved me many hours” or “your service is invaluable to all researchers.” But front-line librarians also collect and share the negative comments that are occasionally received, since they not only provide opportunities for process improvements but can, in themselves, be powerful testimonials. For example, an angry editor recently sent an e-mail demanding that we “please correct your misspelling in my book title immediately—everyone is copying your mistake, as a Google search on my name will show. . . .” Even negative comments can sometimes reveal how central a service is to a community.
Continue reading:
PARTNERSHIPS & CONNECTIONS.
Librarians as knowledge builders: Strategic partnering for service and advocacy, by Patricia A. Kreitz. C&RL News, January 2004, Vol. 65, No. 1

Knowledge management and reference services, Smiti Gandhi, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Volume 30, Issue 5 , September 2004, Pages 368-381
Abstract: Many corporations are embracing knowledge management (KM) to capture the intellectual capital of their employees. This article focuses on KM applications for reference work in libraries. It defines key concepts of KM, establishes a need for KM for reference services, and reviews various KM initiatives for reference services.

Extract:
Reference librarians continue to employ the basic reference process that has the following steps:....

KM initiatives have the potential to assist libraries in capturing, collecting, organizing, and disseminating the collective memory and wisdom of reference librarians and helping them become more productive, effective, and customer service oriented. KM can also help libraries streamline their day-to-day operations, improve their visibility and involvement in the larger organization, and assume a leadership role in helping to capture the institutional memory. However, successful KM initiatives require a clear understanding of the information continuum; the four key components of KM; the distinction between data management, information management, and KM; and the KM process. KM initiatives are most likely to be introduced and succeed at libraries that function as learning communities, have strategic goals, a knowledge sharing culture, the versatility to accept new challenges and try different approaches, and the ability to harness the power of IT...

Reference librarians will have to “shift (their mental models) from custodians of a document collection to managers of the corporate memory.”116

Information literacy and personal knowledge management, by Trine Schreiber and Karen Harbo
The aim of the paper is to discuss a new subject called personal knowledge management and to compare it with the better-known concept information literacy

PUNCHLINE:
Writing the Book on Knowledge Management/Christina Stoll. Association Management. Washington: Apr 2004.Vol.56, Iss. 4; pg. 56, 6 pgs

Confirming anecdotal information from staff members, the report indicated that 50 percent of NSLS members seek advice or expertise from the organization, and 56 percent of members would like to share knowledge via communities of like-minded experts...

Communities of practice. Three member networking groups (electronic subscription managers, genealogy, and youth services) have developed their design teams, which will identify the topics of interest to be discussed among these groups and facilitate the discussion. Since launching the communities-of-practice pilot, we've had one additional networking group-public library directors-join, and other groups have shown an interest in developing communities.

KM and Internal Communications

A KM practitioner brought to my attention the link between KM and Internal Communications. Thanks to her creative spirit. I could find an intersting quote from the Web, An extract from the article, follows:

Watson Helsby’s report identifies additional roles for internal communicators, such as employee branding, leadership communication, intranet development and knowledge sharing. This final element is of growing importance: “For some members of our sample, [knowledge sharing] is very much the focus of their role – trying to engineer a change from a ‘push’ to ‘pull’ communications culture, and developing the infrastructure to support this.” Lindsay Gill, communications manager in Shell’s global learning organisation, feels that internal communications has many definitions but few companies have a clear, overarching appreciation for the role. She breaks the function into four parts: management and employee alignment, marketing, stakeholder management and business development. “These can be collected under one term, ‘connectivity’, which relates to activities that reduce overlaps of work and disconnects of understanding,” she says Continue reading the article... Your say: Linking internal functions with KM

see also:

Integrated internal communications: a multidisciplinary perspective
Author(s): Hanna K. Kalla, Corporate Communications: An International Journal
(2005) Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Page: 302 - 314

PUNCHLINE:
What is the role of the Librarian in this process?
Any suggestions, comments from Librarians, information professionals, and KM gurus?