The Critical Role of the Librarian/Information Officer as Boundary Spanner Across Cultures

As libraries become increasingly based on digital storage and~access technologies, knowledge management approaches seem particularly useful. Most knowledge management systems emphasize the role of information and communications technologies, and the question arises about the role of librarians in these systems. This paper posits that if globally digital libraries are to realize their potential for providing access to the widest feasible range of knowledge, librarians and information officers need to fulfill a challenging and critical role as boundary spanners across cultures. This paper is based on evidence that knowledge is culturally derived, acquired, and applied, and that learning —the acquisition of new knowledge—is enabled by skills that are culturally dependent. This aspect of knowledge suggests that the tacit dimension of knowledge and learning may require humans to aid in spanning the boundaries across different knowledge domains and different cultures. This paper has three components. First, it reviews what is becoming known about learning and how this relates to knowledge creation and knowledge transfer. Second, it reviews a boundary spanning model proposed by Carlile, comprised of three levels—syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic—and applies this model to learning across cultures. Finally, the paper discusses the implications of such a model of knowledge for libraries that seek to serve as global resources for multiple cultures. For digital libraries, new skills and approaches may be required for the pragmatic category