Knowledge Preservation Workshop

Questions

How can knowledge be transferred across two generations when the intervening generation may not work in that field, nor use the information?

  1. Which organization is the best librarian or custodian for information?
  2. Who should be the custodian of information?
  3. How do you retain a technical memory?
  4. How do you keep young people aware of this resource?
  5. How do you ensure that the next generation can use the information?

Principle Themes

Questions 1 and 2

There was no consensus on who should be the custodian of data and knowledge. Rather it seemed to depend upon national requirements and national policies. 

Several custodians were mentioned, such as libraries, universities, state archives, and the IAEA, but the more important subject appeared to be how the knowledge should be transferred (see below for the response to Questions 4 and 5.)

Nothing contravened or conflicted with the existing IAEA recommended process (Consultancy meeting April 2-4, 2002 at Argonne National Laboratory.) That process recommended that the actual gathering and preserving information, knowledge, and wisdom, be the responsibility of individual nations, thus preserving knowledge rights.  It was also recommended that individual nations appoint guardians of the information.

The IAEA INIS activity, with some changes, could play an important role in information preservation.

Question 3

There was consensus that the information of aging experts should be retrieved as an urgent matter – principally through ‘smart’ video interviewing. 

This might include:

Stimulated interviewing through questioning by peers or by young professionals

Indexable video recordings

There was a consensus that the storage medium for information should be the latest available at the time and that there should be an effort to transfer information to new media as time demanded.

Hard copy was noted to be the most enduring of storage though it suffered from problems of volume and problems of searching it. However, the selection of storage media was a technical issue.

Questions 4 and 5

For keeping the new generation(s) aware of the value of the information and for maintaining the ability to use it, there was a consensus that the preservation of knowledge took more that simply a gathering of quality data on the latest storage medium – it took a continuum of people or ambassadors to transfer knowledge, to create an awareness of both the knowledge and its value.

This “continuum of people” took several recommended forms:

  • An international organization such as the IAEA, which might also be charged with providing package courses in the technology for distribution principally to universities but also be presented at the IAEA
  • Private firms, or ‘middle men,’ charged with the responsibility of providing a Corporate Memory and of continued ‘selling’ of its value, perhaps rewarded by a long-term share in use-fees. This is a lesson learned from the Human Genome Project in which long-term health information was required.
  • Universities with the responsibility of including information on the discipline in their courses – in this case the lecturers would be the custodians of commonly available information, though not necessarily of detailed information and data.
  • An international university performing the same function with international contributed information
  • Frequent meetings on the subject such as special societal sessions at major conferences or IYNC conferences.
  • Government funded design projects for students to keep the discipline alive and involve the older experts in these projects as part of an on-the-job transfer of knowledge. This process might even enhance the knowledge base.

Such transfer of knowledge could be maintained on a national basis using the nation’s own information resources or be conducted on an international basis from internationally shared information. The concept of an international index, or knowledge database of access information (addresses to guardians of information) was considered necessary but not sufficient.

There was a consensus that information had to be used otherwise it would cease to be useful. Use required that it might be the subject of research projects or be taught actively to succeeding generations.