ICML 9

9º Congreso Mundial de Información en Salud y Bibliotecas

Salvador, Bahia - Brasil, 20 a 23 de septiembre de 2005

BVS4

4a. Reunión de Coordinación Regional de la BVS

19 y 20 de septiembre de 2005

Use of knowledge maps representing Traditional medical information

Participantes:
  • Professor, Head of Dept. of Lib & Inf. SC., University of Madras, CHENNAI-5  - India
  • Librarian, Literary Research and Doc. Dept., C.R.I.S., CHENNAI-106  - India

Knowledge mapping represents the on going quest within an organization.  Knowledge maps help to represent explicit and tacit knowledge, which are closely linked to strategic drivers and market intelligence. It highlights islands of expertise knowledge architecture or corporate memory. Knowledge management facilitates the achievement of organizational goals effectively.  It consists of the systematic processes, such as create, capture, share and leverage the knowledge that is needed for an organization to succeed.

The article indicates how knowledge maps can be utilized to explain the knowledge assets of medical information.  India is rich in traditional medical systems such as Ayurvedic and Siddha, which are based on herbal medical products. This article explains the mapping technique, which highlights the tacit and explicit knowledge of these traditional medical systems.

Information scientists take pride in calling themselves as Knowledge managers; hence it is essential to unders tand this complex domain called knowledge management. Knowledge Management is essential rather than Information management. That does not mean one can dispense with Information management because it is a sub domain of knowledge management.  The major aim of this article is to illustrate knowledge management concepts through knowledge mapping technique.

A knowledge map is a navigational aid for illustrating Explicit and Tacit knowledge of any organization. It highlights the importance and relationships between knowledge stores and the dynamics. It helps to represents sources, flows, constrains and loses.  It also highlights knowledge pools, competencies, practices and system activities.  In this article the knowledge mapping technique has been used to explain how knowledge maps can be utilized to illustrate knowledge assets of medical information. Since India is rich in traditional medical systems such as Ayurvedic and Siddha, which are based on herbal medicines and not very popular in western cou ntries, it was felt that the same could be used to represent knowledge mapping technique