Personal knowledge management

Personal knowledge management (PKM) is a collection of processes that a person uses to gather, classify, store, search, retrieve, and share knowledge in his or her daily activities and the way in which these processes support work activities. It is a response to the idea that knowledge workers increasingly need to be responsible for their own growth and learning. It is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management (KM), as opposed to more traditional, top-down KM.

History and Background
Although as early as 1998 Davenport wrote on the importance to worker productivity of understanding individual knowledge processes (cited in ), the term personal knowledge management appears to be relatively new. Its origin can be traced in a working paper by Frand and Hixon.

PKM integrates personal information management (PIM), focused on individual skills, with knowledge management (KM) in addition to input from a variety of disciplines such as cognitive psychology, management, and philosophy. From an organizational perspective, understanding of the field has developed in light of expanding knowledge about human cognitive capabilities and the permeability of organizational boundaries. From a metacognitive perspective, it compares various modalities within human cognition as to their competence and efficacy. It is an underresearched area. More recently researches have been conducted to situate personal knowledge management in the Web 2.0 and in particular trying to understand "the potential role of Web 2.0 technologies for harnessing and managing personal knowledge".

Models
Dorsey (2000) identified information retrieval, assessment and evaluation, organization, analysis, presentation, security, and collaboration as essential to PKM (cited in ).

Wright’s model involves four interrelated domains: analytical, information, social, and learning. The analytical domain involves competencies such as interpretation, envisioning, application, creation, and contextualization. The information dimension comprises the sourcing, assessment, organization, aggregation, and communication of information. The social dimension involves finding and collaborating with people, development of both close networks and extended networks, and dialogue. The learning dimension entails expanding pattern recognition and sensemaking capabilities, reflection, development of new knowledge, improvement of skills, and extension to others. This model stresses the importance of both bonding and bridging networks.

In Nonaka and Takeuchi’s SECI model of knowledge creation (see under knowledge management), knowledge can be tacit or explicit, with the interaction of the two resulting in new knowledge. Smedley has developed a PKM model based on Nonaka and colleagues’ model in which an expert provides direction and a community of practice provides support for personal knowledge creation. Trust is central to knowledge sharing in this model. Nonaka has recently returned to his earlier work in an attempt to further develop his ideas about knowledge creation

Personal knowledge management can also be viewed along two main dimensions, personal knowledge and personal management. Zhang has developed a model of PKM in relation to organizational knowledge management (OKM) that considers two axes of knowledge properties and management perspectives, either organizational or personal. These aspects of organizational and personal knowledge are interconnected through the OAPI process (organizationalize, aggregate, personalize, and individualize), whereby organizational knowledge is personalized and individualized and personal knowledge is aggregated and operationalized as organizational knowledge.

Criticism
It is not clear whether PKM is anything more than a new wrapper around personal information management (PIM). William Jones argues that only personal information as tangible resource can be managed, whereas personal knowledge cannot. Dave Snowden has asserted that most individuals cannot manage their knowledge in the traditional sense of "managing" and has advocated thinking in terms of sensemaking rather than PKM. Knowledge is not solely an individual product - that it emerges through connections, dialog and social interaction (see Sociology of knowledge). However, in Wright’s model, PKM involves the application to problem solving of analytical, information, social, and learning dimensions, which are interrelated, and so is inherently social.

An aim of PKM is "helping individuals to be more effective in personal, organisational and social environments" (, p. 221), often through the use of technology such as networking software. It has been argued, however, that equation of PKM with technology has limited the value and utility of the concept (e.g., ).

Skills
Skills associated with personal knowledge management.
 * Reflection. Continuous improvement on how the individual operates.
 * Manage learning. Manage how and when the individual learns.
 * Information literacy. Understanding what information is important and how to find unknown information.
 * Organizational skills. Personal librarianship. Personal categorization and taxonomies.
 * Networking with others. Knowing what your network of people knows.  Knowing who might have additional knowledge and resources to help you
 * Researching, canvassing, paying attention, interviewing and observational 'cultural anthropology' skills
 * Communication skills. Perception, intuition, expression, visualization, and interpretation.
 * Creative skills. Imagination, pattern recognition, appreciation, innovation, inference. Understanding of complex adaptive systems.
 * Collaboration skills. Coordination, synchronization, experimentation, cooperation, and design.

Tools
Some organizations are introducing PKM 'systems' with some or all of four components:
 * Just-in-time Canvassing - templates and e-mail canvassing lists that enable people to identify and connect with the appropriate experts and expertise quickly and effectively
 * Knowledge harvesting - software tools that automatically collect appropriate knowledge residing on subject matter experts' hard drives
 * Content management tools - taxonomy processes and desktop search tools that enable employees to subscribe to, find, organize, and publish information that resides on their desktops
 * Personal Productivity Improvement - knowledge fairs and one-on-one training sessions to help each employee make more effective personal use of the knowledge, learning, and technology resources available in the context of their work

PKM has also been linked to these tools:
 * social bookmarking and enterprise social bookmarking
 * knowledge logs (K-logs)
 * e-mail, calendars, task managers
 * Online Web Assistants
 * Wikis
 * Desktop wikis
 * Personal wikis
 * Semantic wikis

Other useful tools include Open Space Technology, cultural anthropology, stories and narrative, mindmaps, concept maps and eco-language, and single frames and similar visualization techniques. Individuals use these tools to capture ideas, expertise, experience, opinions, or thoughts, and this 'voicing' will encourage cognitive diversity and promote free exchanges away from a centralized policed knowledge repository. The goal is to facilitate knowledge sharing and personal content management.