The mid 1990s a time for rethinking libraries

By the mid 1990s, new technologies were transforming global communications and commerce, making it easier to get and share information. The new buzzword for the twenty-first century would be knowledge: the economic lifeblood that would need to be understood, captured, distributed and managed by specialist knowledge workers. The emergent knowledge economy posed tremendous challenges, opportunities and threats to the library profession, and a vigorous debate ensued. In 1995, a group of researchers from Queenslands Griffith University conducted a national survey of users and non-users of state and public libraries in an attempt to discover what the role of the library would and should be in the knowledge economy. Called Navigating the Economy of Knowledge (Mercer et al., 1995), this report portrayed Australian state and public libraries as unique, multi-functional community resources, a vital component of one working, creative nation. It concluded by saying that if libraries were to capitalise on the opportunities now available to extend their reach and visibility, the library would need to abandon its modesty. Also in 1995, Japanese authors Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi released a book called The Knowledge-Creating Company How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. This book was then and still is widely influential in the way that knowledge creation has come to be understood. Nonaka and Takeuchi brought a sophistication and originality to the knowledge question. Starting by questioning Western epistemology and targeting the limitations it had inherited from Classical and Cartesian roots; they moved on to mount a critique of twentieth century managerial thinking from Frederick Taylor to Peter Drucker. With great precision they demonstrated how the mostly technocratic threads of management thinking were an inadequate foundation for understanding how innovation works in practice and, therefore, how human beings can actively create knowledge to change the world. (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995, p. 32) The dynamic relationship between tacit and explicit knowledge is beautifully described and worth revisiting. Drawing on their own Zen Buddhist tradition, and the counter-intuitive practices of successful Japanese companies, Nonaka and Takeuchi wrested knowledge creation from the passive transmission model within which it was buried, and presented a spiral metaphor that was dynamic and empowering. In doing so, they brought the heart and body back into the way problems to do with knowledge sharing and its impact on business innovation, were conceived. Back at the State Library of NSW, 1995 was also a big year. It saw the departure of Alison Crook, the librarys innovative CEO, and the beginning of a scenario planning exercise that I devised and led over the following year. In this exercise, a group of executive and senior managers from across the library met to research the tensions and trends that were likely to impact on the library in some way over the next 15 years.

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