University Records Management

Knowledge Management (KM) has many definitions.

At its core, it is the process of creating, sharing, using, and managing the knowledge and information of an organization.

Knowledge Management Best Practices 

• Name folders and files intuitively, so that your team (as permitted) can understand your content without having to click open every file.  This will also give structure to shared file directories.  See Knowledge Management Best Practices for more information.

• One copy in one place: Avoid duplicating the same file among team members. Keep one copy in a shared directory that all team members can access. Duplication overloads the search and browse experience, creates the need to manage and backup unnecessary information, and confuses version control.

• Email: Create a "Personal" folder to house your personal emails (vacation pictures, family correspondence, etc). This will enable segregation of this email from official Brandeis email records.

• Provide a key to what your acronyms stand for.  For example: ABC = [full name(s)]

• Early each January, update the properties of your file templates (e.g. presentation, spreadsheet, and word processing apps) so that the current year and your authorship is reflected. This will reduce misinterpretation of your work and record the source information.

• Rather than emailing large attachments to a group, email a link to it, or share a file or files in a shared drive.

• Tell and document stories and share lessons learned from your work, so that colleagues can leverage them.

• Search the organization's intranet and web site before recreating work that may have already been done:  Don't reinvent the wheel.

• Mark your calendar to periodically clean out your email, desktop, and shared drive content. Is there really a legitimate need to keep the content? Are there historically significant documents that should be submitted to the institutional archives?