Tacit knowledge, knowledge management, library science: No bridge between?

Abstract

In the wide-spanned circle of disciplines and scholars participating in the preparation of Graduate Studies on Knowledge Management at the Humboldt-University in 2002, there was also a prominent professor for mechanical engineering science. When we as representatives of library science began to explain our raison d'etre in one of our first meetings, with a little smile, the colleague threw into the debate that the share of documented or published knowledge of the knowledge used in the everyday practice of business and engineering be below 5 per cent, possibly only 1 per cent. Although this figure was almost certainly based on intuition only and not on any kind of measurement, I think that it was in a credible range. So, with such a modest dowry, could libraries and library science find a husband in knowledge management? Is it legitimate in such a situation to christen libraries or documentation departments centres of knowledge organisation or even centres of knowledge management as happens now more and more? And is it sensible if two computer scientists, A. Endres and D. W. Fellner, find it suitable and possible for librarians and libraries at least in firms to even jump to the head of knowledge management movements (Endres/Fellner 2000, p. 426) - in a situation where libraries or information services are not even mentioned in most of the literature on knowledge management?