Library and Information Science Professional as knowledge professional, Preparing knowledge workers and the future

1. Knowledge Professional

Unlike traditional workers, a knowledge professional operates in an intellectual domain where information, expertise, and skills are applied to solve problems, generate insights, and support decision-making. Their work revolves around knowledge, which is a primary resource and output. This unique role is widely studied in management, information science, and knowledge management literature, and it holds significant importance in today’s knowledge-driven economy.

2. Meaning

Peter Drucker first used the term “knowledge worker” in The Landmarks of Tomorrow (1959) and expanded it in The Effective Executive (1966). He argued that in future economies, the most important assets of a business will be its knowledge workers rather than its capital or labour. Knowledge professionals are those knowledge workers who operate with a profession's structure, discipline, and ethical expectations.
A knowledge professional's role is not limited to the manipulation of knowledge. They are actively involved in its creation and refinement, using their formal training, domain expertise, and intellectual skills. This distinguishes them from mere information processors, as their work involves depth, originality, and judgment. Some scholars differentiate between knowledge and information workers, viewing knowledge professionals as those who engage in exploration, innovation, or new knowledge creation, rather than only exploiting existing information.

3. Key Functions of a Knowledge Professional

A knowledge professional performs multiple interconnected functions. These functions ensure that knowledge is captured, organised, shared, applied, and evolved within an organisation. Below is a detailed exposition of each primary function, how they interrelate, and the challenges in practice.

• Knowledge Acquisition / Capture: The first function is acquiring or capturing relevant knowledge from internal and external sources. This includes scanning literature, observing practices, interviewing experts, reviewing reports, mining data, and recognising implicit knowledge in undocumented routines. A knowledge professional must translate tacit knowledge (a person’s experience and insight) into explicit knowledge (documents, models, checklists). In many organisations, experts may not openly share their tacit knowledge; so capturing it requires skill in elicitation techniques (e.g. storytelling, think-aloud sessions, shadowing). Successful capture lays the foundation for all downstream functions.
• Knowledge Organisation / Structuring: Once captured, knowledge must be organised in a logical, usable structure. This function involves classifying, indexing, designing taxonomies, ontologies, metadata schemes, and categorisation. The purpose is to make knowledge discoverable. A knowledge professional must ensure consistency in categorisation, define relationships (e.g. hierarchical, associative), manage keywords, and deal with multiple domain vocabularies. Without a good structure, users cannot retrieve the needed knowledge effectively.
• Knowledge Storage / Maintenance: Storing knowledge means placing it into suitable repositories or systems (knowledge bases, content management systems, wikis, databases). But storage is not static. Maintenance is required: version control, cleansing (removing duplications or obsolete content), updating, archiving, backup, and ensuring data integrity. A knowledge professional must monitor repository quality, provide consistent formats, maintain reliability, and ensure stored knowledge remains relevant and accessible over time.
• Knowledge Retrieval / Access: This function ensures that users can find and access knowledge when needed. It includes designing search functionality, user interfaces, linking related content, enabling navigation, implementing filters, recommending related material, and managing access permissions. The goal is to deliver the “right knowledge to the right user at the right time.” Retrieval is facilitated when knowledge is well organised and indexed, but a knowledge professional must also understand user behaviour and needs, so the retrieval mechanisms match users’ mental models.
• Knowledge Sharing / Dissemination: Knowledge is valuable only if shared. In this function, the knowledge professional distributes or promotes knowledge across the organisation. Methods include workshops, communities of practice, training sessions, newsletters, knowledge fairs, internal social networks, mentoring, and collaborative platforms. They must design incentives, encourage culture change, overcome resistance to sharing, and make knowledge more visible and usable. Dissemination also includes translating knowledge into digestible formats for different audiences (executives, practitioners, novices).
• Knowledge Application / Reuse: This function ensures that the knowledge is put into action. Knowledge professionals facilitate using stored knowledge in decision making, problem solving, innovation, process improvements, and new product development. They help adapt knowledge to local contexts, support pilot implementations, and provide guidance or templates to assist users in applying knowledge. Monitoring how people reuse and adapt knowledge is part of this function.
• Evaluation / Feedback / Performance Measurement: A knowledge professional must continuously evaluate whether the knowledge system and practices are effective. They define key performance indicators (KPIs) — such as usage statistics, time saved, error reduction, contribution rates, user satisfaction, and business impact. They collect feedback, conduct audits, report gaps and redundancies, and use that feedback to refine capture, organisation, storage, and sharing practices. Evaluation helps maintain relevance and justifies investment.
• Governance, Policy, and Strategy: Beyond operational functions, knowledge professionals engage in governance and strategic planning. They define knowledge activities' policies, standards, guidelines, roles, and responsibilities. They align knowledge initiatives with organisational goals, secure management support, allocate resources, define ethical rules (access, privacy, intellectual property), and ensure compliance. They also plan the evolution of knowledge systems in response to technology or business changes.
• Change Management / Culture Development: Knowledge professionals are crucial in managing organisational change because knowledge practices often require changes in people's work. Their work includes overcoming resistance, promoting trust, motivating experts to share knowledge, communicating benefits, offering training, and embedding knowledge practices into work routines. Without their cultural support, even the best systems may remain unused.
• Knowledge Innovation / Creation: Beyond handling existing knowledge, knowledge professionals may generate new insights, integrate disparate knowledge, stimulate innovation, and contribute to new domain theory or practice. They actively expand the organisation's knowledge base using collaborative inquiry, research, experimentation, or synthesis methods. Many models (e.g., the SECI model) regard innovation and knowledge conversion as integral.

4. Importance and Strategic Role of the Knowledge Professional

The knowledge professional holds a strategic position in modern organisations. Their existence is not just optional but central to how organisations learn, adapt, compete, and sustain value. Below, I unpack the importance and strategic role, with multiple dimensions, evidence, and implications, to underline the significance of their role.

• Knowledge as a Strategic Asset: Knowledge is among the most valuable intangible assets in the knowledge economy. Scholars argue that organisations should treat their accumulated knowledge, expertise, and intellectual capital as strategic resources (not just operational support) that can differentiate them in the market. A knowledge professional acts as steward, translator, and activator of this asset. They help convert individual or tacit knowledge into organisational knowledge that can be leveraged. Their strategic role is to ensure that knowledge is not scattered, lost, or underutilised.
• Enabling Superior Decision Making: One of the key strategic contributions of a knowledge professional is improving decision quality across all levels of the organisation. Collecting, synthesising, structuring, and delivering relevant knowledge ensures that leaders and staff can access timely, accurate, and contextual insights when making choices. Decision makers may rely on intuition, incomplete information, or duplicated efforts without such professionals. With them, knowledge becomes a force multiplier: better decisions, fewer mistakes, and greater responsiveness to change.
• Fostering Innovation and Learning: Knowledge professionals are catalysts of innovation. Their role involves identifying patterns, synthesising cross-domain insights, and facilitating knowledge recombination to create new ideas, products, services, or processes. They support organisational learning by building feedback loops, sensing weak signals, enabling experimentation, and supporting knowledge flows that cross silos. In many organisations, innovation emerges where knowledge from multiple domains intersects. The knowledge professional strategically enables those intersections.
• Preserving and Transferring Institutional Memory: Organisations risk losing critical knowledge whenever employees retire, resign, or move roles. The knowledge professional designs systems and processes to capture and preserve this knowledge to remain accessible to future generations. This function preserves continuity, reduces repetition of past mistakes, accelerates onboarding, and stabilises performance despite personnel changes.
• Boosting Efficiency and Reducing Redundancy: A significant operational and strategic benefit is that knowledge professionals reduce waste: they prevent duplication of effort, minimise time spent searching for information, and minimise rework. When staff can access already-developed solutions, reports, best practices, or lessons learned, they use time more strategically. This efficiency gain scales with organisational size and complexity. Especially in knowledge-intensive or large enterprises, poor knowledge practices result in high transactional costs.
• Breaking Knowledge Silos and Enabling Integration: Many organisations struggle with departmental silos, where knowledge is trapped in individual divisions and not shared across the enterprise. Knowledge professionals act as integrators or brokers. They actively connect disparate knowledge domains (marketing, R&D, operations, customer service) so that knowledge flows across boundaries, supporting strategic coherence. They function as internal enablers and sometimes as knowledge brokers linking external sources (research, partners, industry) with internal needs.
• Supporting Strategic Alignment: Another strategic role is ensuring knowledge initiatives align with organisational goals. A knowledge professional helps define knowledge priorities, align knowledge strategy with business strategy, and ensure investments in knowledge systems yield strategic returns. They help shape which knowledge to cultivate, which to retire, and how to invest in knowledge infrastructure. Thus, they act as a bridge between knowledge assets and strategic planning.
• Enabling Agility and Adaptation: In volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments, organisations must adapt quickly. The knowledge professional helps sense change, scout new knowledge, and update organisational capabilities faster. They enable dynamic knowledge flows so that responses are not slow. Organisations with strong knowledge capability can pivot, reconfigure, or innovate more rapidly—giving them agility and resilience.
• Supporting Competitive Advantage and Value Creation: By embedding knowledge into operations, decision-making, and innovation, knowledge professionals contribute to sustained competitive advantage. Their work helps build unique knowledge-based capabilities, making imitation harder for competitors.
• Enhancing Knowledge Culture and Identity: Knowledge professionals strategically shape organisational culture. They promote norms of knowledge sharing, continuous learning, trust, and open exchange. Over time, knowledge becomes part of the identity and values of the organisation. This cultural embedding often outlasts technology or process changes.
• Mitigating Risks and Ensuring Governance: The strategic role includes risk mitigation: ensuring compliance, preserving knowledge integrity, handling intellectual property, maintaining knowledge security, and managing knowledge obsolescence. They also enact governance over knowledge policies, define responsibilities, and reduce exposure to knowledge silos, redundancy, or decay.
• Strategic Visibility and Leadership: Knowledge professionals often occupy (or work closely with) senior roles—such as knowledge officers or strategy teams—and are visible in guiding knowledge investments. Their visibility gives weight to knowledge projects, mobilises buy-in, and positions knowledge as a strategic concern rather than an operational afterthought. Organisations with mature knowledge functions often have Chief Knowledge Officers or similar roles.
• Empirical Evidence and Challenges: While the theoretical case is strong, empirical studies show gaps. Organisations often perceive knowledge as essential but fail to implement knowledge practices effectively. Barriers include weak governance, cultural resistance, lack of incentives, misaligned measurement systems, and poor integration with workflow. Even so, firms institutionalising knowledge professionals and supporting systems often outperform peers in learning, adaptation, innovation, and efficiency.

5. Library and Information Science (LIS) Professionals as Knowledge Professionals

When we frame a library or information science professional as a knowledge professional, we acknowledge that their core competencies and missions go beyond managing books or databases. LIS professionals adopt key roles in knowledge creation, mediation, sharing, preservation, and strategic alignment. Below is a comprehensive account of how LIS professionals function as knowledge professionals — their roles, competencies, challenges, and significance — based on literature and practice.

Nature of the Role: Knowledge Facilitator, Mediator, and Engagement Specialist
LIS professionals are increasingly conceived not merely as custodians of information artefacts but as knowledge facilitators or engagement specialists. In that capacity, they mediate between knowledge sources and users, shape the knowledge environment, and actively stimulate knowledge creation and use. According to Calzada Prado and Marzal, librarians may perform “knowledge brokering, knowledge readiness, and knowledge promotion,” which reframes traditional library tasks like reference and outreach in a knowledge-centric paradigm. In short, LIS professionals intersect with users’ knowledge needs and the broader institutional, technological, and social systems that support knowledge flows.

Key Functions in the LIS Context
LIS professionals, as knowledge professionals, execute most of the canonical knowledge professional functions, but with special emphases shaped by the mission of libraries, archives, and information centres:

• Knowledge Acquisition / Capture: They survey internal institutional knowledge (e.g. research outputs, faculty work, archival records) and external sources (databases, scholarly literature). LIS professionals often elicit implicit expertise from domain experts (faculty, researchers) and convert it into explicit forms (repositories, institutional archives, metadata).
• Knowledge Organisation / Structuring: This is a traditional strength of LIS professionals. They design controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, classification systems, subject headings, ontologies, and metadata schemas that enable interoperability, discoverability, and semantic clarity.
• Knowledge Storage / Maintenance: They build and maintain digital repositories, institutional archives, content management systems, version control, backup, and preservation. The maintenance function also includes pruning outdated knowledge, merging duplicates, and ensuring consistency.
• Knowledge Retrieval / Access: LIS professionals design search and retrieval systems (OPACs, IR systems, discovery layers), refine search algorithms or ranking, provide navigation aids, cross-linking, and filters suited to user behaviour. They also manage access control, authentication, and permissions.
• Knowledge Sharing / Dissemination: They construct and operate knowledge-sharing channels: institutional repositories, open access platforms, subject portals, research guides, data services, interlibrary networks, outreach programs, and communities of practice. They teach users how to access, use, and contribute knowledge.
• Knowledge Application / Reuse: In collaboration with researchers, they may help integrate knowledge into new research, guide reuse of datasets, and assist in designing workflows where knowledge is embedded (e.g. in research support services).
• Evaluation / Feedback / Performance Measurement: They track repository usage metrics, download counts, citation impact, user feedback, gaps in collections, and user satisfaction. These assessments feed back into acquisition, organisation, and dissemination strategies.
• Governance, Policy & Strategy: They contribute to institutional policy on open access, data management plans, knowledge governance, licensing, intellectual property, access rights, and strategic alignment with institutional goals (e.g. research mission).
• Change Management / Culture Development: They advocate for open science, data sharing, institutional memory, trust, and a knowledge culture. Because some faculty or students resist sharing, LIS professionals engage in persuasion, training, incentive design, and role modelling.
• Knowledge Innovation / Creation: Some LIS professionals engage in knowledge creation themselves — e.g. metadata research, semantic web, linked data design, knowledge graphs, digital scholarship and bibliometrics — thus contributing new understanding in information science and related fields.