Advancing Knowledge and the Knowledge Economy

Citation

Calvert, P. (2007), "Advancing Knowledge and the Knowledge Economy", The Electronic Library, Vol. 25 No. 5, pp. 631-632. https://doi.org/10.1108/el.2007.25.5.631.5

This collection of 25 chapters by different authors is a contribution to the literature on the knowledge economy (KE). It is based upon the premise that knowledge is a key resource for economic growth, but that there are factors that can inhibit its effective use. On the one hand technology might be a means to stimulate the use of knowledge, but access to technology and legal constraints on its use all inhibit the connection of knowledge to innovation and economic development.

The book is divided into an introduction of three chapters, with seven subsequent sections of two or more chapters on a range of topics. The editors have each written a chapter that helps to provide some context for the subsequent contributions to this volume. There are two chapters in the section on measuring knowledge. One is fairly general, the other devoted to measuring a country's potential for innovation. Both contain good ideas but don't seem likely to provide a complete solution to the problem, which is, after all, a hugely difficult process. The section on “Knowledge communities” contains three chapters with an emphasis on the importance of social capital.

There are four chapters on the role of institutions in the KE which naturally give a good deal of attention to universities. Cowan's chapter is challenging for anyone working in universities because it throws some doubt on the impact of university research on innovation and new knowledge; instead, he argues, their greatest contribution is in the codification of existing knowledge. Information managers will enjoy the chapter by Hedstrom and King (both work at the University of Michigan) because it features the role of libraries, archives, museums, galleries, and even zoos and aquaria, in the knowledge economy. The authors argue that it is through these institutions that we know what we know. The example of global climate change illustrates the point: no one collected the data now being used for climate change research with that purpose in mind, but such data was collected in libraries and other institutions simply because it might be useful at some future date. Skills known to information managers such as the identification, evaluation and collection of potentially useful information, its description and organisation, and provision for its retrieval and access, have all contributed to the KE. This infrastructure is the greatest resource we have in the KE at present and it needs to be nurtured so that it continues to be a resource for the future.

Two chapters on the relationship between knowledge and place give another dimension in the overall picture of the knowledge economy. Fagerberg's chapter on the digital divide in developing countries at times makes for dispiriting reading, but it does offer some hope through the identification of technology as a means of catching up with the developed world. This requires capacity building on a fairly huge scale, and there are all sorts of obstacles in the way. There are four chapters on innovation and five on control and cooperation. The last section is composed of two chapters on an emerging infrastructure in which the authors naturally predict that much knowledge creation will soon be done in a digital environment.

This is a book that has its place in almost every university library and LIS academics will find something of interest in its contents.