With a background in both Information Management (IM) and Knowledge Management (KM) disciplines, I’m often asked how they relate to each other, and what we actually mean by “IM” and “KM”.

Providing text book definitions does not help, because even these are clouded by jargon and tend to be verbose. I’ve therefore tried to construct a very simple definition for both IM and KM which also infers the relationship between them, as follows:

Information Management: The structure, organisation, classification and life-cycle management of codified knowledge.

Knowledge Management: Accessing, sharing and ‘sense making’ of codified and tacit information.

If anyone can do better (in terms of simplicity and accuracy), please do let me know.