Still Very Much Relevant

My old friend dropped by in my office today for a chat and as usual we talked about old times and the latest development in the library, information and knowledge management world in Malaysia. Finally we are going to have our own union catalog, along time coming and long years of waiting. But what more interesting is that the development of this union catalog would have a KM flavor. Components of directory of experts, taxonomy and I ma hoping they will throw in other collaborative tools as well so that librarians in Malaysia could interact electronically better. The other interesting thing that came out in our discussion is that more and more librarians taking a step into KM roles and it is not surprising to me as I realize years before we are equip with the basic skills and tools. Now a lot of people are talking about managing content, building taxonomy, and diffusing as well as disseminating knowledge. The jargon may be a bit different but the concept of the basic requirement of KM are still the same. So guys keep those skills and tools sharp and handy.

Building Local Content

In a meeting, where else, today it was brought up again the need to create databases of local content. I think we have been talking about this since the day I join the library school and yet we have not progress at the rate that we want. Oh yes, we have certain successes here and there on certain content but there are a lot more out there. The problem is, most of the time, is not whether we do not have the content of capability but the will to do it is missing. We loose steam a long the way quite often and just like the rain in Malaysia, suddenly it pours cats and dogs and suddenly it stop without warning.

An Escaped Librarian

The name Escaped Librarian came from a post by a friend in a mailing list. He made this remark, 'Another escaped librarian' when a person he has been hotly debating with declared that he is a librarian. Obviously I thought that is a neat name to use. I hope my friend do not mind.