The White Paper touches on many issues. As the title suggests, they are all connected by the way in which they reflect the change to a knowledge economy, a networked economy. While larger companies in the UK are already moving into the next phase of knowledge management, characterised by a new focus on culture change and human-, not technology-based, information architectures, the same cannot be said for small to medium-sized enterprises. The task at hand must be to find ways in which the successful methods of exploiting intensely information-driven processes like innovation and product development can be re-engineered for smaller businesses. New communications technologies provide not only new means of sharing and delivering information, they also provide new models for organisational structures which are more agile, more customer-focused and accommodate both competition and collaboration when appropriate. The Web itself suggests new ways of working.

"...the Net is not a digital library. But if it is to continue to grow and thrive as a new means of communication, something very much like traditional library services will be needed to organize, access and preserve networked information. Even then, the Net will not resemble a traditional library, because its contents are more widely dispersed than a standard collection. Consequently, the librarian's classification and selection skills must be complemented by the computer scientist's ability to automate the task of indexing and storing information. Only a synthesis of the differing perspectives brought by both professions will allow this new medium to remain viable." Clifford Lynch, Searching the Internet; Scientific American: March 1997

"Knowledge management is not an abstract proposition for the future... it is a vital aspect of world-class management in today's business environment" KPMG, The Power of Knowledge: A Client Business Guide

"Technological developments can supply us with an increasing range of possibilities, but it is a more intractable task to define desirabilities, ...information professionals have a key role to play in the development of 'knowledge management' - a discipline and profession geared to increasing our understanding of, and ability to control, knowledge resources available to us.' Nigel Ford, Expert systems and artificial intelligence The Library Association 1991

It is axiomatic that we are a nation of innovators. Britain is a world leader in leading edge science-based industries like biotechnology, computer nanotechnology and the development of innovative service industries like direct banking and call-centres.

Libraries support innovation. The quality of the innovation process is not a given: a challenging commercial environment, a challenging intellectual environment, and access to funds are critical. The degree of challenge must be stimulating without being impenetrable, but the ability to respond to these conditions is determined by the resources available - and access to intellectual funds can be as important as access to cash. Libraries have long been seen as the intellectual deposit accounts in the nation’s knowledge bank, but they are also the intellectual trading accounts, where different information resources are combined to find new knowledge products.

Libraries do more than support the innovation process, they also contain many of the resources needed to turn innovation into competitive action - to scope the commercial feasibility of ideas, investigate the size and conditions of potential markets. For example, a central public library, concerned by the limited use of its centre-of-excellence business information resources provides free catered training days for the members of the region's Import-Export Clubs where small businesses are taken through worked examples of identifying new European markets, researching local legislation, market conditions and competitor intelligence.

Knowledge, and our understanding of what knowledge is, has come under new scrutiny in recent years. A new crop of knowledge management programmes are being created which have taken a critical view of the initiatives which were produced in the knowledge management explosion of the mid-1990s. These early initiatives tended to be large, corporate-wide and with complex justifications; some achieved a degree of productive change in the organisation's exploitation of information, many failed with massive costs, and some fell short of huge expectations by small margins but were closed because they had not changed the organisational knowledge 'culture'.

The most promising new programmes have one thing in common: a central role for the information professional. A central role in mapping organisational knowledge resources and encouraging a culture shift in knowledge-sharing practise in business centres. The resultant knowledge management systems are derived from a common competitive imperative and the organisation's own culture, rather than default acceptance of bought-in solutions.

Law is almost a pure knowledge business: the firm that has the best means of understanding, exploiting and packaging its knowledge resources will have an immediate competitive advantage; it is also internally highly competitive, with a long cultural history of fiercely-guarded individual knowledge 'power bases', and anxiety about opening oneself to criticism by contributing to the general domain. The information officers of Linklater Alliance's Legal Information Department have had to deal with a daunting combination of fear and apathy to create a culture of trust: a culture which increases the degree of attachment of the information officers to the practice teams - an association which reduces the legal professionals' information-processing overhead, freeing them to use their more valuable insight and analysis on transactions, and also increases the application of the most appropriate information to those transactions.

Like many large law firms, Linklaters provides information units for each practice area - a 'library' of all relevant standard sources, research and casenotes for that area of the business. The system of information units is enhanced by a central resource for wider business research and cross-enterprise services like intranet content management. Information professionals have always been enterprising in their methods for capturing practice knowledge (including champagne prizes). New conditions, like the prospect of disintermediation (the shrinking of the information supply-chain in the provision of legal advice) need a new response.

Linklaters information professionals have upped their knowledge game by getting deeper 'into' the knowledge communities that the practice teams represent, increasing their attendance at meetings, joining trainees in lectures, and socialising with the team. By visibly ramping up their commitment to these special knowledge communities, the information officers can now engage with legal professionals from an early stage of transactions in order to assess current work in relation to established know-how.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's Business Information Centre (BIC) is the UK-based library and research service for all of the bank's staff. Having surveyed the short history of corporate knowledge management, the BIC knowledge management team decided on an approach based on achievable steps that would demonstrate tangible change and suggest logical further development.

In late 1997 the BIC launched a knowledge management programme for the Office of the Chief Economist (OCE). A knowledge management audit produced a 'Knowledge Wheel' model of knowledge creation in the OCE. This was used to identify gaps in economists' understanding of the information resources available to them. As a result the BIC has been able to identify short- and long-term measures to address the risks associated with partial information and the benefits implicit in being fully informed. The 'Economists' Toolkit' is a simple but very effective guide to information resources in the BIC and quickly became a cherished part of the BIC product suite. Together the '...Toolkit' and the knowledge management audit provided grounds for establishing a budget for the further development of a BIC-led knowledge management programme

In order to establish an embedded and practice-based knowledge exploitation culture the BIC and OCE are continuing with a steady incremental implementation of two initiatives: the 'OCE Knowledge Store' and the 'Knowledge Tree'.

The 'Knowledge Tree' is being developed by the Business Information Centre in collaboration with a software developer. It is based on Lotus Notes and extends the groupware approach to offer multi-threaded discussions, supporting the construction of analyses and summaries which are then available as shared source material. By combining information technology with an information management approach to knowledge the BIC will increase the impact of its programme on the EBRD's information workers at all levels.

Case study under review

Knowledge management is not just the preserve of corporates; it's for all sizes of enterprise. The law firm edge ellison employs 650 people in 3 locations throughout the UK. As in many law firms, the library has always been a significant driver of the company's information management strategy.

The firm's Director of Information Services is a library and information science (LIS) professional and is responsible for information management. This includes the library, strategic and marketing information unit, the intranet strategy and the knowledge management programme. Central to the edge ellison strategy is the creation of a culture of greater communication and collaboration. This will improve the quality of its practice on a continuous basis.

A period of review and audit will feed in to the design of projects based on a unique edge ellison knowledge framework. The knowledge management technology and infrastructure will be developed as part of the overall information management architecture. The review and audit cycle is designed to locate and describe all existing resources: the resulting map will be used to develop and extend existing infrastructure to actively support and encourage knowledge sharing and collaboration. This will enable edge ellison to enhance every aspect of its business to gain and maintain a competitive edge.

We are at a critical juncture in this phase of knowledge management programmes: in their current state much development remains to be completed and turned into accepted practice. Even at this early stage, however, there are clear indications that the focus on communities and cultural change, as well as the recognition that knowledge management tools are not an end in themselves, will guarantee that the ensuing body of practice will become a permanent feature in competitive businesses. There are also strong indications that the recent knowledge management methodologies are scalable, particularly down-scale, and could be applied to Small-to-Medium-sized-Enterprises (SMEs). Where SMEs cannot afford to fund an information unit (even a part-time solo information professional) there are shared agency alternatives - most notably Business Links and Innovation Relay Centres, the Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) – and Public Library Business Information Services. The Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) might well be able to provide appropriate mechanisms to determine how this generation of medium-to-corporate knowledge management programmes can be adapted to smaller enterprises.

Clearly, there is still much work to be done, but whatever the form of the support regional agencies offer to their SME communities, it is essential that the knowledge teams for small enterprise include information professionals, particularly where significant funding is not available for large-scale IT-based knowledge tools.

At this stage we feel that we are only able to offer sample recommendations and we would welcome the opportunity to develop substantial recommendations with the Department.

- that the RDAs support a programme of locating, and facilitating communication between, all current providers of information to SMEs in order to create 'regional consortia for business knowledge'. (This might be done in the context of a Regional Information Plan which the Library Association has recommended elsewhere as a priority for RDAs).

- that, in addition, information professional 'commandos' should be made available to SMEs to advise on the best use of all freely available business information resources and how external information can be combined with their own internal resources to gain competitive advantage.

- that the Knowledge Management Unit should base its information strategies on next generation knowledge management models, focusing on the five 'C's: culture, content, connectivity, communication and community, rather than technology-dominated 'solutions'.

The Library Association is the professional body for library and information personnel. It has 26,000 members working in all sectors of the economy. Under the terms of our Royal Charter, awarded in 1898, The Library Association has, amongst other duties, responsibilities to:

• Promote and encourage the maintenance of adequate and appropriate provision of library and information services of various kinds throughout the UK

• Promote the better management of library and information services

• Promote the knowledge, skills, position and qualifications of librarians and information personnel

• Maintain a register of Chartered members, qualified to practise as professional librarians and information personnel

• Represent and act as the professional body for persons working in or interested in library and information services

It achieves the above by awarding professional qualifications, promoting continuing professional development, supporting a network of geographical branches and subject specialist groups, and advocating the cause of libraries and librarians to government and other bodies.

Registered Charity Number 313014

Further enquiries to: Mark Field, Professional Adviser, Special Libraries and Information Services, The Library Association.

mark.field@la-hq.org.uk