Knowledge services is the operational function that brings together information management (including specialized librarianship), knowledge management, and strategic, performance-centered training and learning. Now recognized in the larger management community for its role in ensuring organizational success, knowledge services enables evidence-based research support, contextual decision making, and innovation.

The benefits of successful knowledge services management far outweigh anything that has gone before. When the discipline’s constituent elements are managed separately, boundaries impede the product flow, and much time and energy are wasted in moving across boundaries and overcoming barriers. As an enterprise-wide management methodology, knowledge services provides exactly the connections that remove the impediments.

But knowledge services requires leadership. For the organization’s information professionals—specialist librarians and others who deliver information, knowledge, and learning on an ongoing basis—providing leadership for knowledge services is a natural fit. Nobody else in the organization has the skills, talent, and motivation to lead the company into knowledge services. All these knowledge workers need is a push in the right direction to master the two critical techniques that will put them in a leadership position—managing change and identifying advocates and champions.

In this Click U Live! Seminar, you will learn the basics of knowledge services as a management methodology, the role (and value) of skillful change management in the modern organization, and keys for identifying and recruiting advocates and champions to support the knowledge services function.

Targeted Learners

This Click U Live! Seminar is designed for information professionals, specialist librarians, knowledge managers, and content professionals; CIOs, CKOs, and CLOs; and any other information/knowledge/learning professionals who need to understand how knowledge services impacts corporate competitiveness and organizational success, and how their leadership role can enhance knowledge services delivery. The focus is mission-critical knowledge services delivery, managing change as the organization moves to knowledge services, and the role of advocates and champions in ensuring the success of the effort.

Critical Learning Questions

• What is knowledge services?
• How does change management impact the move to knowledge services in the organization or company?
• Why do I need to enlist the support of advocates and champions?
• Does managing knowledge services prevent me from doing my "real" job?
• What’s the payoff if I master change management and learn to identify advocates and champions?

Additional Reading

Before the presentation, attendees should familiarize themselves with "Toward World-Class Knowledge Services: Emerging Trends in Specialized Research Libraries," by Guy St. Clair, Victoria Harriston, and Thomas A. Pellizzi. "Part One: The Management Perspective" and "Part Two: The Customer Perspective." Information Outlook, June–July, 2003.

Also of interest:

Guy St. Clair. Beyond Degrees: Professional Learning for Knowledge Services (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2003)

Guy St. Clair. Change Management in Action: Industry leaders Describe How They Manage Change in Information Services (Washington, D.C.: SLA, 1999)

Guy St. Clair. Power and Influence: Enhancing Information Services within the Organization (London and New York: Bowker-Saur, 1994)

SMR International e-Profiles (www.smr-knowledge.com/eProfile.htm) December, 2005