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Knowledge Services: Will a Glossary Help?

July 7, 2014 By Guy St. Clair

There continues to be a great deal of discussion about the language we use when we speak about our work (especially to people who are not familiar with what we do as knowledge managers, knowledge services professionals, and knowledge strategists).

We’ve thought about this before, even recently. See  How We Talk about Knowledge Services (Dec. 2, 2013) or, more generally, 14 Thoughts for 2014 (Jan. 1, 2013).

As it happens, in response to an exercise for developing a glossary for a discussion group with which I’m affiliated, I thought it might be useful to describe some of these ways of speaking about knowledge services as we use these terms with SMR International clients, colleagues, members with whom we interact in professional associations, and others with whom we come in contact. Although the focus for the discussion group is on knowledge strategy, this preliminary glossary is offered in the interest of opening the conversation in knowledge services terms and perhaps finding common language for describing our work.

We’ve published it as an SMR International Briefing at SMRShare, our company’s content-sharing site. Or you can connect directly at A Knowledge Services Glossary: A Guide for Conversation.

In the Introduction to the briefing, I make this point:

This SMR Briefing is expected to be a fluid document, with the date/version changing as new concepts and terms are added or current ones revised. Here at SMR International we welcome input about these terms, and we look forward to broader discourse after this briefing is reviewed.

Please note that unattributed definitions are those we have developed over the years at SMR International. We apologize if some definitions and/or descriptions are not attributed (or worse, misattributed). Just let us know and we’ll try to correct these errors or add specific attributions in a later version of this glossary.

 As you can tell, here at SMR International and among our professional colleagues and clients, we’re very interested in your response to this effort.

Please send along suggestions, thoughts, ideas, clarification, and such. As I say in the document, “The last several years have seen an amazing growth of interest in knowledge management (KM), knowledge services, and knowledge strategy,” I’m wondering if this isn’t the time to think about the language we use.

Many thanks for you attention and your interest.

About Guy St. Clair

Guy St. Clair is the Series Editor for Knowledge Services, from Verlag Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin, the scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. The series subject is knowledge services, the approach to managing intellectual capital that merges information management, knowledge management (KM), and strategic learning, presenting and discussing new and innovative approaches to knowledge sharing in all fields of work.

With Barrie Levy, Guy  is the author of The Knowledge Services Handbook: A Guide for the Knowledge Strategist (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020). He is also the author of Knowledge Services: A Strategic Framework for the 21st Century Organization (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016). [Note: Go here for the free PDF version of this book: https://bit.ly/3msI27V. ]

Guy is also the author of Knowledge Services: Five Free Webinars from Guy St. Clair, available to anyone who wants to learn more about knowledge services. The webinars are offered at no charge.

Guy’s other professional writings are listed in SMR International’s corporate website, at SMRShare. 

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