An empirical study of knowledge management in academic libraries in East and Southern Africa

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to distinguish between information management (IM) and knowledge management (KM) and present the findings of small‐scale research conducted to investigate KM practices in academic libraries in East and Southern Africa, and discussing the importance of KM and suggest the way forward.Design/methodology/approach – This research was undertaken in 20 university libraries in Africa using a questionnaire survey to investigate the current practices in university libraries in Africa to discover whether these libraries are practising KM or IM.Findings – This survey results seem to suggest that currently most participating libraries are practising IM. A majority of 65 per cent of the participants considered themselves information managers.Research limitations/implications – This survey have had some limitations: one, all the participants were University librarians; two, due to the unavailability of contact addresses, the survey could cover only eight African countries. Future r...

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