Curation v Synthesis in Knowledge Management

One of the functions of a community of practice is to provide a means for developing and co-owning a "body of knowledge" on behalf of the community (the other function is to provide a means for dialogue and discussion, particularly question-led discussion). Members of the community can offer pieces of knowledge, and the community as a whole (or the... See more

There are two approaches to managing a body of knowledge within a community of practice - curation, and synthesis.

Synthesis is the summarisation and documentation of knowledge, creating new content based on existing documents. So it is more than curating documents, it is combining, summarising, snynthesising them, removing duplication and contradiction,

Curation involves bringing together and organising documentsIn one place (in “community space”):-Tagged -Prioritised -Structured in a useful way (by practice or activity, not by document type, project, date, author etc)-Maintained, with obsolete material removed