Competencies of a Knowledge Worker - A Select Webliography

A quick glance at Aa..ha! [Thinking Inside The Blog!]'s recent post: KM Competencies gave me an opportunity to think about this subject. The more you go far and deep in the WWW you will find very interesting perspectives. But, of all the most precise I found is Aa..ha!'s, which is as follows:

"I think the fundamental dependency of such a definition is on the KM vision and objectives of the organization. For example, an organization that is targeting innovation through KM needs people who are slightly different from an organization that aims to achieve learning/productivity improvements through KM. Having said that, KM, however, needs people with a versatile or eclectic background and profile/competency.

1. People skills: Networking and Organizational behaviour skills to start with. Also important would be insights into how people learn, collaborate and share/reuse/apply knowledge
2. Technology skills: Requirements gathering, products evaluation, design and testing (More skills required in the case of a KM developer)
3. Process skills: I think this is important but neglected. Understanding of business and project management processes in order to lead to improvements from the perspective of knowledge capture, sharing and utilization.... [source]"

The above is most precise, not because the KM industry lacks such a conceptual clarity, not even because I admire Aa..ha!'s simplified approach; but simply because it gives a clear overview. In fact, KM is too broad (rather some would say complex) and hence one has to have focus (by level, sector, region, background and type of work) to even understand what is the actual concern about the term competency.

The literature on this theme is growing, with a recent book:

Knowledge Management: Competencies and Professionalism (Series on Innovation and Knowledge Management) by Suliman Hawamdeh, Kimberly Stauss, and Franz Barachini (2009): Table of Contents. And, a powerpoint by the first author, IIUM - KM Competencies and Career Opportunities

About the book: This edited book contains papers from the 2008 International Conference on Knowledge Management to be held in Columbus, Ohio. The papers represent much of the best and most up-to-date work by researchers and practitioners in the field of knowledge management. It provides insights into the knowledge management practices within organization and discusses issues related to knowledge management competencies and professionalism. It is a good reference source for information and knowledge professionals and can be read by both graduate and undergraduate students.
See also:
Information Worker Competency

Human Capital Management, Talent Management: Competency Framework - Knowledge Worker based Industry

Developing customer knowledge management competencies for Superior Market Experimentation and Organisational Learning

Knowledge Management Competencies in an E-Learning Environment: An ...

KM Competencies: Is Certification the Way to Go?

KM Competencies, Kadix Developed Leadership KM Competencies.

SSRN-Understanding the Process of Building KM Competencies

Survey on How Much Organisations Invest in KM Competencies

KM Competencies [see here: Roles of a KM Practitioner; a comment by a librarian turned KM specialist...]

KM Competencies and Performance Action Group for Federal KM Initiative

CIBIT Developing KM competencies in a safe environment

Google for more: here and here

The Battle of Building Library's Digital Collection

PS. Need feedback to improve this webliography relating to recent developments in this field:

Students, It’s 2010! So Let’s Go Back to Stone Age!

Google – Goodfather and/or Gravedigger?

Library ruling limits the rights of the TU Darmstadt

The right of prints out of digitalised medias

The 6th civil chamber at the regional court in Frankfurt decides in a summary proceeding that libraries have the right to digitalise and provide prints from their stock, no matter wether the publisher have own offers.
The publisher Eugen Ulmer filed a suit against the ULB, which offers at some selected workstations the "digital textbook collection" with 130 current textbooks.

The court confirmed the right to make prints of these files. Nevertheless digital copies are forbidden. The library was obligated to adopt precautionary measures which prevents such copies. Because of this the ULB modified their service and blocked the download on USB-stick. All other usage is as usual (please see : http://tudigilehrbuch.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de )

The court decision can be found in the law reports of the Regional Court Frankfurt with the reference number 2-06 O 172/09.
More comments :
Press release of TU Darmstadt
Press release of German Library Association(DBV)

GoogleBooks, the digital library wars, by Jack Kessler

Google Loses in French Copyright Case

"Three library associations have asked the Justice Department to oversee Google's plans to create a massive digital library to prevent an excessively high price for institutional subscriptions." New York Times

From the Chronicle of Higher Education's "Wired Campus" blog: The All-Digital Library? Not Quite Yet, By Jennifer Howard

To e-book or not to e-book, Wynken de Worde

Here today, gone tomorrow, Librarians do it Between the Covers

The Battle of the Books—Again, Barbara Fister, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN -- Library Journal, 11/19/2009

Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper by Nicholson Baker

Vandals in the Stacks?: A Response to Nicholson Baker's Assault on Libraries
~ Richard J. Cox

Library Research Service's 60-Second Survey: Future of the Book

Recently, news outlets and blogs have been busy deriding and celebrating the recent ascension of e-readers. The growing popularity of this new format has come with murmurs about the death of paper books and some even surmise that as technology advances libraries will cease to exist!

Taking notice of the chatter, the Library Research Service has decided to survey librarians on the matter. This new 60-Second Survey asks your opinions on e-readers and how you think they will transform reading. Will e-readers be the demise of the paper book? What will libraries circulate? What is the future of the book? You tell us!

See also on the same shelf:

Libraries and Readers Wade Into Digital Lending

‘As We May Digitize’ — Institutions and Documents Reconfigured, Liber Quarterly Volume 21 Issue 3/4 2012

Adams, Anne and Blandford, Ann (2002). The unseen and unacceptable face of digital libraries. International, Journal of Digital Libraries, 4(2), pp. 71–81.