Librarians are the stewards of knowledge management at KMWorld 2025
From constructing taxonomies to implementing metadata standards, librarians' expertise ensures information systems are both efficient and user-centric. These same principles are applied to KM systems, enabling the integration of AI models that enhance data discovery, analysis, and utilization.
At KMWorld 2025, Dawn Brushammar, KM consultant, advisor and evangelist, Dawn Brushammar Consulting AB, Sweden, and Fleur Levitz, principal consultant, FDL Consulting NYC, held a session, “Knowledge Leaders: Integrating Library Science Into KM & AI,” discussing the growing intersection of librarianship, KM, and AI. Librarianship is redefining its role in the digital age, seamlessly bridging the gap between traditional KM practices and cutting-edge AI applications.
Brushammar, a seasoned librarian and KM expert, shared how library science principles are transforming the KM/AI landscape. Library science offers powerful tools for organizing, curating, and preserving knowledge.
Librarians have been the original semantic experts for centuries, Brushammar said.
“I’ve always been obsessed with how we capture and store knowledge so we can use it,” she said.
Before knowledge can be used it must be understood. Before it can be understood, it must be organized. Without structure AI gets things wrong, Brushammar said.
Librarians have always been stewards of access, equity, and trust. Now we need to apply those same values to intelligent systems.
“Now with AI we need to curate even more context,” she said.
Before meaning, everything looks like a mess, she explained. Without shared metadata, taxonomy, or mental model, we’re all lost.
Before dashboards or semantic layers, librarians translated raw data into human-friendly knowledge. Librarians built systems for organizing, preserving, and retrieving knowledge centuries before formalizing KM or AI, she noted.
Library-flavored capabilities that are also found in KM include organizing chaos, labelling to enable, connecting the dots, keeping it trustworthy, and guiding with empathy.
“AI can not make up for a messily structured knowledgebase,” she said. “AI will only learn from what we label. You always need a human-in-the-loop.”
Levitz shared how the rise of GenAI requires new skills for executives and government officials to harness the benefits, a new language and framework to provide context for future development, and how AI governance is built upon data governance, which arose to organize people to manage data records.
She examined several classical approaches to organize and rationalize human thought, namely through catalogs, classification schemes, and taxonomies and highlighted how librarians are stepping into pivotal roles within the AI-driven KM space—not just as knowledge managers but as ethical custodians.
“When I say librarians, I mean all of us, all of us that deal with information,” Levitz said. “The same skills that librarians have are needed, not just for a corporate environment but also for knowledge workers in the age of AI.”
The Dewey Decimal Classification system helped store and enabled the access of information, she explained. There is now the ability to access the library catalog electronically as well.
Integrated library systems empowered libraries to be connected to other libraries, exponentially increasing the ability to access greater records.
According to Levitiz, to prepare for the future librarians should:
- Develop AI literacy and critical understanding
- Integrate AI into core library services
- Lead in data stewardship and digital ethics
- Reimagine information literacy for the AI era
- Collaborate across disciplines
- Redefine professional identity around human strengths
“I want to inspire all of you to be those leaders, I see us as guides, stewards, and leaders to work alongside this technology,” Levitz said.
KMWorld returned to the J.W. Marriott in Washington D.C. on November 17-20, with pre-conference workshops held on November 17.
KMWorld 2025 is a part of a unique program of five co-located conferences, which also includes Enterprise Search & Discovery, Enterprise AI World, Taxonomy Boot Camp, and Text Analytics Forum.