By Ruzaif Adli Md Daud 
Principal Consultant , Sigma Group of Companies

Knowledge Management (KM) and knowledge sharing are important factors that support community lifelong learning. The concept of a Community Information Service (CIS) (Kempson, 2000) is attractive in drawing together people whose work shares similar aspects, and consideration is given here to how technology can be used to develop and support such a community. In this paper, concepts from the Community Information Service literature are used to consider the development of a software environment for people working as a community in the area of lifelong learning. The intention was to design the system in an evolutionary way, using a minimal set of essential elements which would be elaborated according to user feedback. Three key design questions are considered: Who can contribute resources to such a system? What happens to existing practices? How is the community engaged?

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Background
The Penang State Library (PSL) has been serving information to the Penang public communities for 67 years. Information is so essential that it has become part of every human being. All human beings have information need, either individual or collective. Information is that basic need of life, which helps in the proper fulfillment of other needs such as food; shelter etc. for its survival and growth. Hence it can be rightly said that without information, survival and development of any community is not possible. Therefore, it is the basic responsibility of any Public Library to provide information services to communities. In addition, the Public libraries, being the library of communities can play important role in providing effective Community Information Service (CIS).

Given the quantity of information that the PCL has increasing collected in the form of books, magazines, reports, digital materials and papers, computing systems are an obvious support tool to help staff work their way to provide CIS through the resources. PCL is well aware, though, that community does not want only to obtain and read formal documents—they want to know what colleagues are currently thinking, what methods and approaches are currently being used; and they want the opportunity to discuss ideas with colleagues across the boundary. But no one has time to attend workshops or other face-to-face events to facilitate these needs.

In response to this situation, in December 2005, members of PSL, assisted by two consultants formed a team to develop a Community Information Service Knowledge Network (CIS Knowledge Network). The title was intended to be ambiguous—the software system itself was a network, as were the groups of people it was intended to support. The goals were to expand social interaction, decreased transaction cost, increase information exchange, increase knowledge of community, increased access to quality information, ability to identify/share trusted information. The CIS Knowledge Network team realised that if the system were to be accepted, they would have to stay as responsive and flexible as possible in order to convince users that their needs were paramount, rather than the needs of either the system itself, or the management concerns of PSL.

2.0 COMMUNITY INFORMATON SERVICE (CIS)

Community Information (CI) is the combination of two terms i.e. Community and Information. The term “ Information” is used to identify many concepts; hence it is extremely difficult to define it precisely. Normally, information is a message, communicated by a communicator to a receiver. It is the product of human action in mind, which may be abstract or concrete. Therefore it is the raw material that is used in knowing, making decisions, taking actions, thinking and learning. Reid (1977) defines information as “a process rather than as material. Data only becomes information by the act of imparting it.” Information can be regarded as data, which can be transmitted between individuals, and each individual can make use of it in whatever form he/she wants. When information becomes publicly recorded, it becomes objective knowledge available to all. Community is a body of people in the same locality or a body of people leading a common life or a group of people having common rights or a group of people having a common possession or enjoyment.

Giggey (1988) defines community as “a group of people who have something common. This can be their age, education, religion, interest, political affiliation, activities, work, possession or a combination of two or more of these.” Similarly Usherwood (1977) defines community in a comprehensive way that “any geographical community or neighborhood will be made up of a number of communities definable by race, social class, or income group, employment, leisure interest, religion and so on, each with its own informal information network that has grown up without the help of librarians or any other information advice workers.” Thus community in general indicates towards a group of people having common interests. However, neither they can be assumed nor they can be created to legitimate a political programme or to support a plan for action. In the context of librarianship, it is a group of people with shared meaning and shared communication.

Community Information (CI) is the information for the survival and growth of the community or it is that information which is required by the member of the community to  make effective use of the available resources around them. In this context Kempson (1986) has rightly defined CI as “information of self-reliance and self-determination”. Thus CI is that information which helps to solve their day to day problems related to survival such as health, education, housing, legal protection, sound economic development, political rights etc and also to participate in social, political, cultural, legal and economic progress of the society either individually or collectively. The information services through which community information (CI) is provided to communities is called Community Information Service (CIS).

Download the full paper here...