Knowledge Dissemination in Portals

Background

Traditionally, the dissemination of corporate knowledge has taken a number of different forms. First, there are the methods of classic library science often as implemented by a formal corporate library staffed by trained librarians (Taylor, 2000). This is used for things that are well established: e.g. textbooks, established how-to knowledge on a subject, published papers on a subject, and so on. Second, it has long been necessary to disseminate official policy and procedure through “Command and Control” processes and associated media. In addition, certain industries also require configuration control processes for special classes of information such as product data, drawings, and manufacturing rejection and acceptance documentation. These are all subject to an authentication process, flowing top-down to intended users. A third, extremely important, approach to knowledge maintenance and dissemination has been through mentoring and establishment of departments aligned to technical specialties and communities of interest. This last type of approach is particularly well suited for tacit knowledge. A fourth category of knowledge sharing applies to the communication of explicit knowledge among peers but also includes dissemination to management and other reference groups. This method applies to information that is less formal and frequently ephemeral. See Table 1.