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Librarians vs Knowledge Managers

There has been a lot of discussion in the last week in relation to a post published on the ExplodedLibrary.info blog in the blog post called "reflection on KM and libraries in law firms" the author writes about their experiences of libraries that have been managed by Knowledge Management teams. The blog post raised some interesting points, which have been picked up by a number of other bloggers incluing Mary Abraham in her post "Librarians vs Knowledge Managers" in the 3Geeks and Law blog post "Libraries and KM, cant we all just get along" Musings on the Librarian?s Role in Knowledge Management in Law Firms from the Strategic Librarian blog and Knowledge Managers, Librarians, Practice Support, and Business Analysis from the Strategic Legal Technology blog

I don't completely agree with the points raised in the original post, but I cant see how Libraries can be perceived as second class if they're being run by Knowledge Management departments, having said that in both the law firms I've worked for the Libraries have been part of the Knowledge Management team and have "ultimately" been managed by a Knowledge Manager/Knowledge Director rather then a Library Manager. Something else the post made me think about is whether Law Librarians are all actually Knowledge Managers, generally individuals who work in Libraries will manage Knowledge to a degree so is this really a case of a mountain being made out of a molehill? or is that too much of a simplified view of an issue that seems to be quite controversial!

Full post as published by LI Issues on May 04, 2010 (boomark / email).