The Working Environment and Changing Role of Corporate Librarians in Taiwan

Influenced by the concept of “Knowledge Economics”, knowledge management (KM) is getting a lot of attention in the field of business administration recently. Corporate centers are mostly affected by KM either in their working environment or in the role of their daily operation in the field of Library and Information Science. In the United States, the Special Library Association (SLA) conducted numerous studies about the working environment and the changing role of corporate librarians in the past ten years. Due to the differences in politics, economics, and culture between Taiwan and the western countries, the organizational structure and corporate culture of the enterprise will not be exactly the same. Therefore, local studies on similar topics are needed. The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of the KM on the working environment and the changing roles of the corporate librarians in Taiwan based on the result of National Science Council Research Project executed by the authors.