Section IX: International Scientific Community, Internet / Andrea Rosenauer (Wien)

Internationale Kulturwissenschaften
International Cultural Studies
Etudes culturelles internationales

Sektion IX: International Scientific Community, Internet, Kommunikationsprozesse und Erkenntnisinteressen

Section IX: International Scientific Community, Internet, Communication Processes and Cognitive Interests

Section IX: Communauté scientifique internationale, internet, processus de communication et intérêts cognitifs

Andrea Rosenauer (Wien) [BIO]
German
French

Cultural Studies Experts as Knowledge Managers

At least since the "sputnik shock" information management has been a term almost on all tongues in our "information society". It denominates those elements of the (scientific) communication process by which information is structured, managed and prepared so that information may serve as a basis for scientific research or for economic, social and political decisions. Very often this is done by building up relational data bases. If a very simplified definition - "data in context"(1) - is used to describe "information" it becomes obvious, that technological achievements like electronic data processing, electronic data bases, computer aided preparation of text and transmission of information via digital channels to a high degree support what we subsume by "information management" - however, technical achievements alone would not make it function. It needs the human mediator. To explain it in Norbert Gabriel's words:

Computers are unbeatable in processing, storing and retrieving - in this respect, human beings cannot compete. But human beings still cannot be replaced when it comes to the evaluating of information, the recognition of form and the understanding of context.(2)

While research projects that deal with the subject of information in various contexts today still have good chances to be supported(3), a fact, that may be interpreted as an acknowledgement of the social, scientific and political importance of information, while the social and economic importance of the access to information is just being recognized and equal conditions for all potential participants in the information process are still a long way ahead(4), a new concept turns up in the discourses of science, business, professional information workers and the mass media: knowledge management(5).

What is Knowledge Management?

Whether knowledge management is more than a mere catch phrase that helps, among other professionals, also information workers to create new self-consciousness and professional standing (the information worker becomes the knowledge worker, the information engineer becomes the knowledge engineer, and so on) remains to be seen. An almost synonymous use of "information" and "knowledge" is striking in the information professionals' and mass-medial discussions(6), but also in scientific literature. This may be due to the close-relationship of the concepts. Still, it seems interesting to think about this new concept and the inherent potentials that it may hold - especially for researchers and teachers in the fields of cultural studies.

If "knowledge" is understood as "the totality of (primarily relational, wide-ranging) skills" (...)(7), "knowledge management" might be described as consisting of all elements of the communication process which structure, manage and prepare knowledge so that it may serve as a basis for economic, social and political decisions. As can be seen, this definition is analogous to the one given above for "information management". The definition given and applied by knowledge workers who usually work in industrial enterprises sounds a bit different. In a magazine called "Knowledge-at-Work", knowledge management is defined as:

Die Definition, die von knowledge workers, die üblicherweise in Industriebetrieben tätig sind, für ihre Arbeit verwendet wird, lautet ein wenig anders: So wird im Magazin "Knowledge-at-Work" Wissensmanagement definiert als:

a business activity with two primary aspects:

Treating the knowledge component of business activities as an explicit concern of business reflected in strategy, policy, and practice at all levels of the organization
Making a direct connection between an organization’s intellectual assets - both explicit [recorded] and tacit [personal know-how] - and positive business results.(8)

It is exactly this difference in the definitions of "knowledge management" - especially with regard to the restriction to activities within an organization (the employer) in the latter one - which makes it evident that cultural studies experts must join the discussion, unless they want to be reduced to the rôle of passive observers. (the same part they already play in the field of information management and thus in the provision of information), just watching how knowledge management structures and cultures of decisive societal impact are created that only take into account industrial and economic demands.

Internet Based Knowledge Organization - the Example of the Communication Structure of the INST

The technological and structural bases for knowledge management are offered by hypertext based systems like the World Wide Web. "Hypertext is a network of nodes containing and representing information" as it is worded by Norbert Gabriel(9).

Hypertexts go beyond the offering of mere information: serving as networks of documents they arrange and organize knowledge and make it available by networking.

The aim is - again in Gabriel's wording - to achieve:

an increase of knowledge by new knowledge organization (by the recognition of further contexts and the achievement of new perspectives" (10)

As hypertexts can be made available and accessible via Internet they can be used as trans-national and transdisciplinary scientific communication systems. Being an institution committed to literature studies and cultural studies, the INST(11) has already some time ago recognized the potentials this (actually not yet) "world-spanning" network of networks offers. Today, the INST utilizes a communication structure that does not only allow for discussion and fast decision making but also forms an interactive network of knowledge. The electronic serial TRANS, since 1997 freely accessible via WWW and containing more than 100 articles(12), the exhibition "Cultural Studies and Europe"(13) or the online research co-operation "International Cultural Studies"(14) may serve as examples. By listing partners of the INST on a web page (15) and providing hyperlinks to the information these partners offer in the WWW, the knowledge and information pool is not only opened to exterior, further networks of information in the field of cultural studies; the web page also facilitates contacts between INST-partners and serves as an access point to their projects, research results and information offers. Orientation within this network of WWW sites and pages is rendered possible by a search engine (insensitive of context) and a navigation system (context related).

Transdisciplinarity and Knowledge Management

Like a number of further organizations the INST has also recognized, that a technological "revolution in communication" by itself can neither serve an improvement in the dialogue of scientific disciplines nor in the communicating of knowledge to the wide public. Thus, not only the application of new technologies are taught in seminars but also transdisciplinary work and dialogue between scientists and information providers like librarians, Internet-providers and data processing specialists is being promoted - with conferences and TRANS forming an essential framework for this endeavour.

In his work "Dynamik der Kommunikationsgesellschaft" (Dynamics of the Communication Society) Richard Münch vividly describes the potentials of transdisciplinary teaching and research for a practice-oriented networking (and thus also managing) of specialized knowledge.

He states that

Specialization in practice becomes increasingly blind to the preconditions for research to be successful in practical application as well as to the immediate and not immediate consequences of this specialization. There is increasing danger that there will be permanent failures and undesirable immediate and not immediate consequences in spite of the existence of highly specialized knowledge.(16)

As a means to overcome the splitting up of knowledge he suggests the setting up of transdisciplinary studies in which the communicative competences for the mediation of knowledge are taught instead of having specialists who presently store knowledge in their brains, while this knowledge may as well be stored in data bases. Specialists will then be replaced (or supported) by flexible universalists.

Persons who have acquired a competence in understanding different terminologies, in the networking of specialized fields of knowledge, in communicating and mediating can, within a short time of training, perform new activities which are not based on specialized knowledge but on the understanding, networking, communicating and mediating between specialized fields.(17)

More than any others, the disciplines of cultural studies will play an important rôle in educating such "universalists" who will also work as knowledge managers. Knowledge workers describe knowledge management as "a cross-disciplinary domain" that incorporates a wide range from artificial intelligence to library and information sciences, to semantic networks. According to the views of the authors Barclay and Murray, this listing contains only part of the disciplines that provide knowledge for the construction of knowledge management systems.(18)

Knowledge Management Seen from the Point of View of Cultural Studies

Participating research and meta-discourses by cultural studies experts may initiate that future knowledge management provides more than attractively designed information for paying customers.(19) A list of desirable features of knowledge management, which is certainly still incomplete, should find its way into the discussions about the building of knowledge management systems that provide more than mere "value added information".

User orientation: while up to now information concepts in many cases are reduced to presenting a product of the information offered by one or more libraries, additionally restricted by the means available for data base designers as to the kind of representation, it is desirable to incorporate the producers of knowledge and the potential users (thus, among others, scientists).
Transdisciplinarity: Restrictions according to disciplines do not only increase the tendencies for specialization but also invoke the danger that exactly that kind of knowledge that is needed for the solving of complex problems or for achieving an increase in knowledge remains beyond reach due to the "blinders" of the system (specialized bibliographies, specialized data bases).
Flexibility and Interactivity: The one-way-communication from the data base to the end user is replaced by the possibility of networking input, output and commenting, as well as communication between users.
Trans-nationality: Not only the networking of existing national knowledge organization systems must be envisaged but also the creation of possibilities that allow for a world wide participation of all that may be potentially interested.(20)

In the end, the commitment of cultural studies experts to knowledge management will not only determine who has access to knowledge and in which way knowledge is networked. The very content, form and quality of the knowledge prepared and made accessible will serve as a foundation for decisions on which the future of cultural studies but also the future of the world we live in will depend.

Translation: Karin Haid

ANMERKUNGEN

1 Cf. Norbert Gabriel: Kulturwissenschaften und Neue Medien. Wissensvermittlung im Digitalen Zeitalter. Darmstadt: Primus, 1997. p.5. Concerning the problem of different definitions of "information cf. For example: Gerhard Budin: Wissensorganisation und Terminologie. Die Komplexität und Dynamik wissenschaftlicher Informations- und Kommunikationsprozesse. Tübingen: Narr, 1996 (Forum für Fachsprachen-Forschung, Bd.28). p.12ff und 56ff or Andrea Rosenauer: EDV-gestützte Literaturrecherche für GermanistInnen. Möglichkeiten und Perspektiven der Suche nach Information für den literaturwissenschaftlichen Bereich in elektronischen Datenbanken. Wien: Univ.Dipl.Arb., 1997. p.1ff.

2 Gabriel. A.a.O., S.5. Cf. also: Steve G. Steinberg: Seek and Ye Shall Find (Maybe). In: Wired. Vol.4/1996/No.5. p. 108-114; 172-182. Here: p. 173ff.

3 Cf. The European Commission: Communiy Research. Fifth Framework Programme 1998-2000. WWW: http://www.cordis.lu/fp5/src/programmes.htm. Access to this and all further WWW-publications at 1999-04-30.

4 Cf. Our Creative Diversity. Report of the World Commission on Culture and Development. World Commission on Culture and Development, 1995. p. 103ff. Cf. also: Internet: Nutzungsdaten. In: INST: Kulturwissenschaften und Europa. WWW: http://www.inst.at/ausstellung/kuwi_int/nutzung_e.htm.

5 The term was spread to a broad public the first time in the USA by Tom Stewarts article "Brainpower" in Fortune Magazine. Cf.: Rebecca O. Barclay und Philip C. Murray: What is knowledge management? In: Knowledge-at-Work. WWW: http://www.knowledge-at-work.com/whatis.htm. Cf. The papers, discussions and the media reports of: Information Strategies for the 21^st Century. A Workshop Seminar. Organized by FID/ROE, ÖGDI, ÖUK and DU Krems, 1-2 March 1999, Danube University Krems, Austria.

6 Cf. Rebecca O. Barclay und Philip C. Murray: What is knowledge management? In: Knowledge-at-Work. WWW: http://www.knowledge-at-work.com/whatis.htm.

7 Dtv-Lexikon in 20 Bänden. Band 20: Wel-Zz.Mannheim: Brockhaus und München: dtv, 1992. S.120. For this paper the author tried to find a definition that is as simple as possible. Concerning thoughts and definitions connected with scientific theory cf. for example: Budin: Wissensorganisation und Terminologie. A.a.O., p. 11f or Wolfgang Balzer: Die Wissenschaft und ihre Methoden. Grundsätze der Wissenschaftstheorie. Freiburg; München: Verlag Karl Alber, 1997. p. 30ff.

8 Barclay/Murray: What is knowledge management?

9 Gabriel: Kulturwissenschaften und Neue Medien, p. 56f. Cf. also: Ursula Maier-Rabler: Strukturwandel der Wissensproduktion. Das Ende der Wissensmonopole? WWW: http://www.inst.at/trans/6Nr/maier.htm (especially: http://www.inst.at/trans/6Nr/maier.htm#3. Das Ende der Linearität)

10 Ibid., S. 83.

11 INST: Institut zur Erforschung und Förderung österreichischer und internationaler Literaturprozesse. WWW: http://www.inst.at/

12 TRANS. Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften. WWW: http://www.inst.at/trans/

13 INST: Cultural Studies and Europe or the Reality of Virtuality. WWW: http://www.inst.at/ausstellung/

14 INST: Internationale Kulturwissenschaften - International Cultural Studies - Etudes Culturelles Internationales. WWW: http://www.inst.at/studies/

15 INST: PartnerInnen. WWW: http://www.inst.at/partner.htm.

16 Richard Münch: Dynamik der Kommunikationsgesellschaft. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1995. p.148.

17 Ibid., p. 151.

18 Cf. Barclay/Murray: What is knowledge management? Cf. The report of sections III and VIII of the conference "Kulturwissenschaften, Datenbanken und Europa" (1998), WWW: http://www.inst.at/trans/6Nr/sektionen.htm#III, which points out the possible role of experts in cultural studies in the communication between technicians and librarians.

19 Concerning further potentials and realisations achieved by transdisciplinary co-operation cf. Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich: Wissenschaftskommunikation und Textdesign. In: TRANS. Nr.6/1998. WWW: http://www.inst.at/trans/6Nr/hess.htm. (especially: 4. Multimediale Wissenschaftskommunikation)

20 Cf. The resolution of the INST's conference "Europäische Literatur- und Sprachwissenschaften (Innsbruck, 1997). WWW: http://www.inst.at/trans/2Nr/resolutioneng.htm.

		Internationale Kulturwissenschaften International Cultural Studies Etudes culturelles internationales

Sektion IX:		International Scientific Community, Internet, Kommunikationsprozesse und Erkenntnisinteressen
Section IX:		International Scientific Community, Internet, Communication Processes and Cognitive Interests
Section IX:		Communauté scientifique internationale, internet, processus de communication et intérêts cognitifs

Institut zur Erforschung und Förderung österreichischer und internationaler Literaturprozesse

Research Institute for Austrian and International Literature and Cultural Studies

Institut de recherche de littérature et civilisation autrichiennes et internationales

1	Cf. Norbert Gabriel: Kulturwissenschaften und Neue Medien. Wissensvermittlung im Digitalen Zeitalter. Darmstadt: Primus, 1997. p.5. Concerning the problem of different definitions of "information cf. For example: Gerhard Budin: Wissensorganisation und Terminologie. Die Komplexität und Dynamik wissenschaftlicher Informations- und Kommunikationsprozesse. Tübingen: Narr, 1996 (Forum für Fachsprachen-Forschung, Bd.28). p.12ff und 56ff or Andrea Rosenauer: EDV-gestützte Literaturrecherche für GermanistInnen. Möglichkeiten und Perspektiven der Suche nach Information für den literaturwissenschaftlichen Bereich in elektronischen Datenbanken. Wien: Univ.Dipl.Arb., 1997. p.1ff.
2	Gabriel. A.a.O., S.5. Cf. also: Steve G. Steinberg: Seek and Ye Shall Find (Maybe). In: Wired. Vol.4/1996/No.5. p. 108-114; 172-182. Here: p. 173ff.
3	Cf. The European Commission: Communiy Research. Fifth Framework Programme 1998-2000. WWW: http://www.cordis.lu/fp5/src/programmes.htm. Access to this and all further WWW-publications at 1999-04-30.
4	Cf. Our Creative Diversity. Report of the World Commission on Culture and Development. World Commission on Culture and Development, 1995. p. 103ff. Cf. also: Internet: Nutzungsdaten. In: INST: Kulturwissenschaften und Europa. WWW: http://www.inst.at/ausstellung/kuwi_int/nutzung_e.htm.
5	The term was spread to a broad public the first time in the USA by Tom Stewarts article "Brainpower" in Fortune Magazine. Cf.: Rebecca O. Barclay und Philip C. Murray: What is knowledge management? In: Knowledge-at-Work. WWW: http://www.knowledge-at-work.com/whatis.htm. Cf. The papers, discussions and the media reports of: Information Strategies for the 21^st Century. A Workshop Seminar. Organized by FID/ROE, ÖGDI, ÖUK and DU Krems, 1-2 March 1999, Danube University Krems, Austria.
6	Cf. Rebecca O. Barclay und Philip C. Murray: What is knowledge management? In: Knowledge-at-Work. WWW: http://www.knowledge-at-work.com/whatis.htm.
7	Dtv-Lexikon in 20 Bänden. Band 20: Wel-Zz.Mannheim: Brockhaus und München: dtv, 1992. S.120. For this paper the author tried to find a definition that is as simple as possible. Concerning thoughts and definitions connected with scientific theory cf. for example: Budin: Wissensorganisation und Terminologie. A.a.O., p. 11f or Wolfgang Balzer: Die Wissenschaft und ihre Methoden. Grundsätze der Wissenschaftstheorie. Freiburg; München: Verlag Karl Alber, 1997. p. 30ff.
8	Barclay/Murray: What is knowledge management?
9	Gabriel: Kulturwissenschaften und Neue Medien, p. 56f. Cf. also: Ursula Maier-Rabler: Strukturwandel der Wissensproduktion. Das Ende der Wissensmonopole? WWW: http://www.inst.at/trans/6Nr/maier.htm (especially: http://www.inst.at/trans/6Nr/maier.htm#3. Das Ende der Linearität)
10	Ibid., S. 83.
11	INST: Institut zur Erforschung und Förderung österreichischer und internationaler Literaturprozesse. WWW: http://www.inst.at/
12	TRANS. Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften. WWW: http://www.inst.at/trans/
13	INST: Cultural Studies and Europe or the Reality of Virtuality. WWW: http://www.inst.at/ausstellung/
14	INST: Internationale Kulturwissenschaften - International Cultural Studies - Etudes Culturelles Internationales. WWW: http://www.inst.at/studies/
15	INST: PartnerInnen. WWW: http://www.inst.at/partner.htm.
16	Richard Münch: Dynamik der Kommunikationsgesellschaft. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1995. p.148.
17	Ibid., p. 151.
18	Cf. Barclay/Murray: What is knowledge management? Cf. The report of sections III and VIII of the conference "Kulturwissenschaften, Datenbanken und Europa" (1998), WWW: http://www.inst.at/trans/6Nr/sektionen.htm#III, which points out the possible role of experts in cultural studies in the communication between technicians and librarians.
19	Concerning further potentials and realisations achieved by transdisciplinary co-operation cf. Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich: Wissenschaftskommunikation und Textdesign. In: TRANS. Nr.6/1998. WWW: http://www.inst.at/trans/6Nr/hess.htm. (especially: 4. Multimediale Wissenschaftskommunikation)
20	Cf. The resolution of the INST's conference "Europäische Literatur- und Sprachwissenschaften (Innsbruck, 1997). WWW: http://www.inst.at/trans/2Nr/resolutioneng.htm.