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CILIP in the Knowledge Economy

ISABEL HOOD

The Report

CILIP has recently published the above document which is the report of the Competitiveness and the Knowledge Based Economy Executive Advisory Group to CILIP.  All of which sounds a bit of a mouthful to start with, so why should it be of interest to us?

Let’s look at two quotes from it:

“Library and information management roles have suffered in the past from being viewed by the management of many organisations, and by some sectors of society, as support functions largely divorced from the main business of organisations and communities’

‘CILIP members have already been by-passed in many organisations as professionals from the related disciplines have taken the higher ground’

Now the above quotes are not news to us.  What is interesting is that this document acknowledges it and seeks to outline a CILIP strategy to combat this.

General Assumptions

The Report is based  on the idea of a commodity that it calls ‘UK plc’ – Britain as a knowledge based economy where the concept of ‘information’ has become far broader and far more cross-sectoral than in the past and where information strategies are themselves subservient to broader knowledge strategies.  In the knowledge-based economy LIS workers are but one player in the broader information management marketplace and LIS professionals, and other professions with a stake in information, will move in and out of information roles in a far more fluid manner than currently available.

So the message is that CILIP must become a hospitable environment that serves not just information specialists but is also an organisation and forum for members of other allied professions with an information interest, CILIP must become a wider organisation or it will be marginalized. 

Information is not the automatic preserve of the LIS profession alone but of relevance to everyone and therefore other professions and groups, as a result, will all be stakeholders with an information role to play within their own spheres of interest e.g. those in ICT and HR functions. 

We have to become an integral part of our organisations and communities and work with other functions and seek out opportunities to innovate and collaborate, and these might well be information roles that are not categorised by a job description title that would equate to a more traditional age.

The Recommendations

As a means of achieving an integral place in the knowledge-based economy for CILIP and its members the Report outlines various recommendations under the headings of Good Practice and Standards; Research and Development; People and Skills; Partnership and Marketing and Promotion. 

Many of these recommendations are to do with area’s of further work by CILIP which have been identified by the Advisory Group e.g. under People and Skills recommendations include for CILIP to:

develop a skills framework to reflect the information skills continuum, the context of those skills, and the skills which enable their effective application and to map the professions and disciplines involved in managing information;

define generic job descriptions for those employed within and without specific library and information areas.

Why is this Report important?

Well for a start it views the provision of knowledge as being fundamental to everyone – this immediately brings the profession out of that old ‘support function’ definition.  If knowledge is seen to be key then creating and streaming that knowledge from all available information sources also becomes a key function; it just might also be a multi-layered one created by interactions of a number of different people and functions out with the traditional LIS practitioner alone.  And it’s not going to be given to us if we don’t prove we can and want to do it. 

It views the knowledge-based economy as an inclusive place that affects all potential players – this is helpful as there is an inclination to equate knowledge management with certain sectors only with the implication that it’s not relevant outside of these and doesn’t affect them.

It portrays CILIP as a far more hospitable outward-looking organisation with a much wider diversity of members who fulfil far wider types of information roles than at present.

Why should it  be important to you?

One of the new Knowledge Management Postgraduate distance learning courses in it’s first year intake only included one person from the LIS field. The rest were from a diverse range of other professions, but who saw the relevance of the subject to their own job / organisation / career plan.

This is either a threat or an opportunity.  How often do other people see a main subject component of our profession as an opportunity?  How often do we ourselves see exciting new opportunities in our profession?  If CILIP expands it’s membership to all information personnel whether inside or outside of traditional LIS practice this could open up far more job variety and challenges for all of us and allow us to demonstrate to other interested people what it is we do and how this inter-relates to their own skills and projects.  We could even transfer our skills into other arena’s e.g. personnel; project management if we so wish by demonstrating the transferable skills-base.  In the end opening up the profession will make us more employable not less.

Conclusion

Most of all the Report looks to the near future and how it would like that future to be for the profession and identifies solid strategies to work on to enable that to happen. As such it’s a Report that’s actually worth reading and thinking about the implications within it for all of us.

Reference:

CILIP in the knowledge economy: A Leadership strategy.  The Report of the Competitiveness and the Knowledge Based Economy Executive Advisory Group to CILIP. 

Report:

URL: http://www.cilip.org.uk/advocacy/eags/keagreport.html

Isabel Hood
Legal Librarian
Semple Fraser W.S.
E-mail: Isabel.Hood@semplefraser.co.uk