The Department of Knowledge Management (DKM) is one of the departments established in the Sokoine National Agricultural Library (SNAL). The department has three sections namely: Acquisitions, Cataloguing and Classification section; Information and communication technology (ICT) section; and E-resources and institutional repositories section.
DKM responsibilities
- Organization of knowledge through cataloguing and classification – Processes of assigning bibliographic description, subject analysis for material, assigning classification notation and physical preparation of materials to be sent to the shelves for use.
- Management of electronic information resources: Needs assessment, identification, selection, acquisition, and promotion.
- Management of institutional repositories (SUAIR and TaCCIRe): This involves collection of all SUA scholarly publication, digitizing and depositing them into the repositories.
- Abstracting services: Creation of abbreviated contents representing the important points from an original work. Abstracting services create abstract of papers and generate an indexed list of abstracts by author, title and subject.
- Indexing: Process of assigning subject terms to a work. It involves deciding what an item is about and translating this into index terms.
- Management of ICT activities including management of SNAL databases, OPAC, Website, maintenances and repair of ICT facilities.
- Planning and organizing for activities and provision of an environment which is conducive for tapping tacit and explicit knowledge and resource sharing among employees within the University and beyond.
- Evaluation and analysis of collections in order to determine how well they serve user in terms of meeting their needs.
- Budgeting for various information resources, selection, acquisition and de-selection of information materials.
- Making and managing database for undergraduate research projects.