- Email: [email protected]
How do you know what you know?
How do you know what you know? CH&S Netways
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eems like a strange question doesn’t it? But, in the area of Health, Environment, and Safety this has become a key issue because of the overwhelming array of compliance requirements and our everincreasing desire for information for professional and personal use. So, how do you track compliance? Where do you keep all of those documents? How do you manage those documents so that you know which ones are most current and reflect the lessons learned? How do you quickly find that document that you need? All of these questions fit into—how we deal with the information overload that is part of our day-to-day activities. To answer these questions, one might focus on two topic areas: knowledge management and document management. Knowledge management turns out to be a major topic of the basic art of management. The subject of knowledge management seems to be more oriented toward an academic approach of gathering and managing information with definitions varying across a wide spectrum of sources. We found a number of web sites that address the subject. A simple key-word search of ‘‘knowledge management’’ found 20,300,000 hits on Google and 7,340,000 hits on Yahoo! Some of our readers may have seen knowledge management addressed in terms of software programs that claim to be the ‘final resource’ for managing all of the electronic documents, spreadsheets, forms, data, etc. But what really is knowledge management and how can you tell if it is going to help you? One resource where you might start gathering the answers to the basic question is The Knowledge Management Resource Center.1 This website contains lots of excellent information about knowledge management. The explore section divides the issue into 17 departments ranging from ‘‘What is knowledge management’’ to periodicals and university sites. The site is easy to use and provides a wide range of information. Another website that gave a succinct definition for the topic was at CXO’s publication CIO (Chief Information Officers).2 Their definition, ‘‘knowledge management is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets’’ is about as close as can get. DestinationKM.com3 is another multipurpose website. When you first arrive at the page you see lots of advertising and current news, however, if you click on the sidebar for ‘‘research center’’ it takes you a site where you
40
ß Division of Chemical Health and Safety of the American Chemical Society Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
can find a number of research and white papers by topic. Using software as an example, there were eighteen papers from various software providers. Thus, the user of this site will be able to get a flavor of the issues that might be involved in one or more aspects of the knowledge management issue or concern. Knowledge management has even reached the government sites. The Department of Energy has an information portal on ES&H Knowledge Management Tools.4 This site contains six different buttons to various information links—the Integrated Safety Management Resource Center, ES&H Topics, ES&H Policy, Library, Links and Training Resources. While these connections aren’t specifically related to a tool that you can use in your workplace, it does show you how knowledge management resources can be used to communicate information. A final site on this topic is one put out by TMS21.5 This site provides a great list of useful links and they are conveniently in one place. It might also be a good place to start. As with any new general topic, there are a host of resources out there, and the more specific your searches— the more likely you can hit upon what you need. Knowledge management is important—because it is not knowing what the organization knows that comes back to bite you in the end. Document management, took us in the direction of the nuts-and-bolts practical mechanics of how to store information so that it can be quickly retrieved for useful purposes. Simply put, what kind of file system do you use and how do you organize it? As we entered our quest for information on the topic we did our usual key-word search with a simple ‘‘document management’’ subject search. There is one site that gave very good practical advice on getting yourself organized. While the Web Style Guide6 site is oriented at maintaining websites, we found a great deal of practical information that we thought applied to organizing your information in a general context. After a long and tedious trip through a number of other sites related to getting documents organized it is easy to came to the conclusion that you should look for an off-the-shelf or offthe-web packaged product. Examples of such products are Livelink7 and DocSurfer.8 While we don’t and can’t recommend a specific product, we do recommend you consult with your in-house information technology department for assistance as they can give you guidance for your situation and may have already found a solution.
1074-9098/$30.00 doi:10.1016/j.chs.2003.11.006
Speaking of information overload, here is some other statistical information of no consequential interest
that we found in our key-word search during the particular days of our quests:
OK, go out there and get yourself organized!!!
Key-word
Google hits
Yahoo! hits
Knowledge management Information management File management Organizing information
20,300,000 75,100,000 14,900,000 3,680,000
7,340,000 51,300,000 11,100,000 2,480,000
Document management
17,300,000
10,500,000
Chemical Health & Safety, January/February 2004
References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8.
http://www.kmresource.com http://www.cio.com http://www.destinationkm.com http://www.tis.eh.doe.gov/portal/ KsmlinkReg.htm http://www.tmsmarine.com/knowledge_&_risk_management_information_&_links.htm http://www.webstyleguide.com/site/ organize.htm http://www.opentext.com http://www.docsurfer.com
41
S
eems like a strange question doesn’t it? But, in the area of Health, Environment, and Safety this has become a key issue because of the overwhelming array of compliance requirements and our everincreasing desire for information for professional and personal use. So, how do you track compliance? Where do you keep all of those documents? How do you manage those documents so that you know which ones are most current and reflect the lessons learned? How do you quickly find that document that you need? All of these questions fit into—how we deal with the information overload that is part of our day-to-day activities. To answer these questions, one might focus on two topic areas: knowledge management and document management. Knowledge management turns out to be a major topic of the basic art of management. The subject of knowledge management seems to be more oriented toward an academic approach of gathering and managing information with definitions varying across a wide spectrum of sources. We found a number of web sites that address the subject. A simple key-word search of ‘‘knowledge management’’ found 20,300,000 hits on Google and 7,340,000 hits on Yahoo! Some of our readers may have seen knowledge management addressed in terms of software programs that claim to be the ‘final resource’ for managing all of the electronic documents, spreadsheets, forms, data, etc. But what really is knowledge management and how can you tell if it is going to help you? One resource where you might start gathering the answers to the basic question is The Knowledge Management Resource Center.1 This website contains lots of excellent information about knowledge management. The explore section divides the issue into 17 departments ranging from ‘‘What is knowledge management’’ to periodicals and university sites. The site is easy to use and provides a wide range of information. Another website that gave a succinct definition for the topic was at CXO’s publication CIO (Chief Information Officers).2 Their definition, ‘‘knowledge management is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets’’ is about as close as can get. DestinationKM.com3 is another multipurpose website. When you first arrive at the page you see lots of advertising and current news, however, if you click on the sidebar for ‘‘research center’’ it takes you a site where you
40
ß Division of Chemical Health and Safety of the American Chemical Society Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
can find a number of research and white papers by topic. Using software as an example, there were eighteen papers from various software providers. Thus, the user of this site will be able to get a flavor of the issues that might be involved in one or more aspects of the knowledge management issue or concern. Knowledge management has even reached the government sites. The Department of Energy has an information portal on ES&H Knowledge Management Tools.4 This site contains six different buttons to various information links—the Integrated Safety Management Resource Center, ES&H Topics, ES&H Policy, Library, Links and Training Resources. While these connections aren’t specifically related to a tool that you can use in your workplace, it does show you how knowledge management resources can be used to communicate information. A final site on this topic is one put out by TMS21.5 This site provides a great list of useful links and they are conveniently in one place. It might also be a good place to start. As with any new general topic, there are a host of resources out there, and the more specific your searches— the more likely you can hit upon what you need. Knowledge management is important—because it is not knowing what the organization knows that comes back to bite you in the end. Document management, took us in the direction of the nuts-and-bolts practical mechanics of how to store information so that it can be quickly retrieved for useful purposes. Simply put, what kind of file system do you use and how do you organize it? As we entered our quest for information on the topic we did our usual key-word search with a simple ‘‘document management’’ subject search. There is one site that gave very good practical advice on getting yourself organized. While the Web Style Guide6 site is oriented at maintaining websites, we found a great deal of practical information that we thought applied to organizing your information in a general context. After a long and tedious trip through a number of other sites related to getting documents organized it is easy to came to the conclusion that you should look for an off-the-shelf or offthe-web packaged product. Examples of such products are Livelink7 and DocSurfer.8 While we don’t and can’t recommend a specific product, we do recommend you consult with your in-house information technology department for assistance as they can give you guidance for your situation and may have already found a solution.
1074-9098/$30.00 doi:10.1016/j.chs.2003.11.006
Speaking of information overload, here is some other statistical information of no consequential interest
that we found in our key-word search during the particular days of our quests:
OK, go out there and get yourself organized!!!
Key-word
Google hits
Yahoo! hits
Knowledge management Information management File management Organizing information
20,300,000 75,100,000 14,900,000 3,680,000
7,340,000 51,300,000 11,100,000 2,480,000
Document management
17,300,000
10,500,000
Chemical Health & Safety, January/February 2004
References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8.
http://www.kmresource.com http://www.cio.com http://www.destinationkm.com http://www.tis.eh.doe.gov/portal/ KsmlinkReg.htm http://www.tmsmarine.com/knowledge_&_risk_management_information_&_links.htm http://www.webstyleguide.com/site/ organize.htm http://www.opentext.com http://www.docsurfer.com
41