If It Rained Knowledge

The inaugural meeting of ISKO UK will take place on 26 March at UCL. Potential members are welcome to attend. Full details here

"The quotation in the title, attributed to Samuel Johnson, goes on to say"If it rained knowledge I'd hold out my hand; but I would not give myself the trouble to go in quest of it." This neatly sums up what appears to be the attitude of many of today's managers and CIOs. Knowledge acquisition is made to look so easy by the search engine vendors, but in reality many websites and intranets are failing to meet the most basic needs of their users. Meanwhile, "information professionals" - librarians, information scientists, records managers, webmasters, knowledge engineers continue (with honourable exceptions) to work in their silos, conversing in their own jargon. Alan Gilchrist will suggest that these groups need to join forces to have a significant effect on the problems of information overload, information literacy and the growing need for interoperability within and between organizations." (ISKO UK, accessed 1 March 2007).