Understanding the Definition of Knowledge in Library and Information Science

Ask ten people what knowledge is, and you may get ten different answers. A scientist might say it is proven fact. A philosopher might call it justified true belief. A manager might describe it as the expertise that keeps a company ahead of its rivals. In Library and Information Science (LIS), this question is not just academic curiosity. How we define knowledge shapes how we collect it, organise it, store it, and share it. This post unpacks the major definitions of knowledge proposed by influential scholars, examines knowledge as an organised intellectual product, and explores how the field of Knowledge Management treats it as something fluid and deeply human.

Why defining knowledge is harder than it looks 🔗

Knowledge feels familiar, yet it resists a single tidy definition. Part of the difficulty is that knowledge sits at the top of a well-known chain studied across information science. The DIKW hierarchy, standing for Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom, is one of the most widely recognised models in the field. It is a model used widely within both information science and knowledge management to explain how raw facts become meaningful insight.

In simple terms, data are raw facts and figures with no context. When data are organised to answer the who, what, when, and where, they become information. When that information is connected and used to explain how things work, it becomes knowledge. Finally, knowledge applied with judgement to answer the question of why becomes wisdom. Each step adds context and value, moving from raw data at the base to wisdom at the peak. So at a minimum, we can say that knowledge is information that has been connected, contextualised, and made useful.

But this neat picture has critics. The information scientist Martin Frické argued that the model rests on shaky logic and suggested the field should reconsider its reliance on it. He pointed out that the levels are not always clearly related, and that data can be gathered by collecting information rather than simply observing the world. This debate matters because it shows that defining knowledge is not a settled question. It is an ongoing intellectual project, which is exactly why several major thinkers have offered their own definitions.

Multiple definitions of knowledge from key scholars 🔗

The way scholars define knowledge often depends on the lens they use. Philosophers approach it differently from sociologists, and economists differently again. Looking at a few major thinkers reveals how rich and varied the concept really is.

The philosophical view: justified true belief 🔗

The oldest and most influential definition comes from philosophy. For centuries, knowledge in epistemology has been understood as justified true belief. Under this view, you know something only if you believe it, it is actually true, and you have good justification for believing it. The Japanese management theorists Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi adopted this traditional definition in their famous work on organisational knowledge, though they noted that Western epistemology has tended to emphasise the truthfulness of belief above all else.

This definition is not without problems. In 1963, the philosopher Edmund Gettier showed that a belief could be justified and true yet still not count as genuine knowledge, exposing a gap in the classical formula. Many attempts have since been made to repair the definition, but no fully agreed solution has emerged. For LIS students, the lesson is that even the most respected definition of knowledge has limits.

Daniel Bell: knowledge as the engine of post-industrial society 🔗

The American sociologist Daniel Bell gave knowledge a central place in social theory. In his 1973 book The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, he argued that advanced societies were shifting away from manufacturing towards services and information. The central idea was the emergence of a society organised around knowledge and services rather than labour and manufacturing.

For Bell, the defining feature of this new society was not knowledge in general but a particular kind of it. He argued that the novel and central feature of post-industrial society was the codification of theoretical knowledge and a new relationship between science and technology. Every society has always relied on some knowledge, but Bell believed that the systematic organisation of theoretical knowledge into research programmes was something distinctly modern. His concept highlighted the strategic role of theoretical knowledge and the growing dominance of the service sector. In Bell’s framework, knowledge is verified, theoretical, and academic. It is the resource that drives economic and social progress.

Alvin Toffler: knowledge as the highest-quality power 🔗

The futurist Alvin Toffler took the idea further. In his “Third Wave” theory, Toffler described human history as moving through three great waves: an agrarian first wave, an industrial second wave, and an information-based third wave. His theory examined the civilisational changes that follow the agrarian and industrial stages, focusing on a new socio-cultural model driven by information and communication technologies.

Toffler’s distinctive contribution was to link knowledge directly to power. He argued that knowledge is the highest-quality form of power, shaping both wealth and the dynamics of society as a whole. Where earlier societies depended on force or money, Toffler saw knowledge as the resource that could control and even replace the others. This makes his definition broader than Bell’s. For Toffler, knowledge is not only theoretical and codified but a transformative social force. In the knowledge society, he believed, humans would dominate technology and direct the course of progress, rather than the other way around.

Knowledge as an organised intellectual product 🔗

Beyond these grand social theories, knowledge can be understood at a more personal level as an organised intellectual product. This view emphasises that knowledge does not exist in a vacuum. It is built from personal experience, skills, and the context in which a person operates. Two ideas help unpack this: the distinction between types of knowledge, and the role of the individual knower.

Tacit and explicit knowledge 🔗

One of the most useful classifications comes from the philosopher Michael Polanyi, who distinguished between tacit and explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge can be written down, articulated, and communicated to others, like a formula in a textbook or instructions in a manual. Polanyi argued that this explicit knowledge actually rests on a deeper background of tacit knowledge, a “tacit dimension” that is difficult to put into words.

Tacit knowledge is the kind of know-how we carry within us but struggle to explain. Think of riding a bicycle or recognising a familiar face. Polanyi treated knowing as a skill, and skills are usually learned through practice rather than spelled out in rules. This is why he saw knowledge as personal and embodied rather than purely abstract. The British philosopher Gilbert Ryle made a related distinction between knowing how and knowing that, separating practical skill from factual information. In this framework, tacit knowledge stems from individual experience and is often considered the source of all knowledge.

The knower at the centre 🔗

This brings us to a key point about knowledge as an intellectual product: it is inseparable from the person who holds it. Nonaka, building on Polanyi, treated an individual’s tacit knowledge as a kind of pure experience, knowledge that people have created and proven through their own committed, effective actions. For Nonaka, what matters is the practice, the doing, and the embodiment of knowledge within the person.

This has direct consequences for libraries and information centres. A book on a shelf or a file in a database contains recorded information, but that recorded content only becomes living knowledge when a person reads it, interprets it, and connects it to what they already understand. Knowledge stored in books and journals does not automatically translate into useful, usable knowledge unless it is read, manipulated, and communicated from one person to another. The intellectual product, in other words, is always activated by a human mind.

Knowledge in Knowledge Management 🔗

Nowhere is this human-centred view clearer than in the field of Knowledge Management (KM), which studies how organisations create, share, and use knowledge as a strategic asset. KM gave us perhaps the most quoted modern definition of knowledge.

The Davenport and Prusak definition 🔗

In their 1998 book Working Knowledge, Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak offered a definition that has shaped the field ever since. They described knowledge as a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. Crucially, they added that knowledge originates and is applied in the minds of knowers.

This definition rewards a close look. It has two parts. The first part describes the content of knowledge: a blend of experience, values, contextual information, and insight that we carry within us. This includes things like our experiences, beliefs, values, feelings, and motivation. The second part describes its function: knowledge gives us a framework for judging and absorbing new information. The word “fluid” is deliberate. Knowledge is not a static object but something dynamic that grows and reshapes itself as we encounter new situations.

Why organisations care about this definition 🔗

Davenport and Prusak also recognised that in organisations, knowledge spreads beyond individual heads. They noted that it often becomes embedded not only in documents and repositories but also in organisational routines, processes, practices, and norms. This is a vital insight for information professionals. It means that managing knowledge cannot be reduced to building bigger databases. The way teams work, the habits they form, and the culture they share are all carriers of knowledge.

The two authors were also clear about how knowledge differs from information. They argued that knowledge derives from information just as information derives from data, but that information becomes knowledge only through human processes such as comparison and drawing connections. This echoes the management thinker Peter Drucker’s observation that information only becomes knowledge in the hands of someone who knows what to do with it. For LIS, this is a reminder that systems and people must work together. A catalogue or repository organises information, but knowledge lives in the interaction between that information and a thinking human being.

Bringing the definitions together 🔗

So what is knowledge? The honest answer is that it depends on the purpose of the definition. The philosophical tradition treats it as justified true belief, focusing on truth and justification. Daniel Bell saw it as codified theoretical knowledge powering a post-industrial society. Alvin Toffler viewed it as the highest-quality power transforming civilisation. Polanyi and Nonaka emphasised its tacit, personal, and experiential nature. Davenport and Prusak captured it as a fluid mix of experience, values, and insight that lives in the minds of knowers.

For students of Library and Information Science, these definitions are not competing answers to be ranked. They are complementary tools. Each highlights a different property of knowledge that matters when we decide how to collect, organise, preserve, and share it. Understanding all of them gives information professionals a richer and more flexible grasp of the very thing their entire discipline is built to serve.

What do you think? Which definition of knowledge do you find most convincing for the work of a librarian or information professional, and why? And if so much knowledge is tacit and lives only in people’s minds, how should an information centre go about capturing and preserving it?

References

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4. https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-arrival-of-post-industrial-society
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13. http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/knowledge/knowledge.html
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