Management of knowledge, information and organizational learning in university libraries

The dynamic advancement of technological development and the importance of information and knowledge in modern-day society have determined that the principal competitive advantage of an organization is the capacity to manage these resources adequately. The abilities and knowledge that workers are capable of developing are transformed into a resource that modern organizations value in a growing way. Educational organizations, especially universities, must take advantage of their competitive resources. That is to say, they must know how to make intensive use of their knowledge in order to improve: the process of formation and learning of their students, the generation of new knowledge produced by research and the transference of said knowledge by means of publication and technical assistance. The processes of management of knowledge, organizational learning and information are intimately linked. Therefore, significant improvements can only be obtained in organizations if synergies are generated between each one of these processes. In order to study these three processes, the Universities' Library Systems of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso were selected as a unit of analysis, and considered as places of knowledge gathering, documentation centres and active agents in the development of abilities in the use and transference of information necessary to generate new learning and knowledge. The principal objective of this investigation was to characterize the management of information, knowledge and organizational learning in a university's library system, analysing its relationship and the way that these processes differ depending on variables such as department membership, the characteristics of users that rely on them, etc. The efficient management of organizational learning implies not only the use of previous knowledge but also the creation of new knowledge within the framework of what are termed communities of learning.