An Organization’s Mountain of Knowledge
Most organizations, regardless of their size or sector, have amassed an enormous stockpile of knowledge in various formats—slide decks, reports, data analysis notes, lessons learned, after action reviews, prep notes, templates, checklists, and more.
In many cases, once these knowledge assets are created, they never see the light of day again. Instead, they become buried in organizational platforms such as Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Box, Dropbox, SharePoint, and others.
The result: tons of unused, untouched organizational knowledge deeply hidden and out of reach. Staff waste valuable time and resources reinventing processes, duplicating work, making the same mistakes, and rewriting documents. This leads not only to wasted time, effort, and money, but also to frustration and sometimes declining morale.
One of the core challenges of knowledge management (KM) is to ensure that valuable and relevant knowledge assets are easily accessible and usable by your team. This is where digital curation comes in.
What Is Digital Curation?
Digital curation is the process of selecting, organizing, describing, preserving, and enhancing digital content for current and future use.
By applying digital curation practices, organizations can showcase their knowledge, make it more findable and discoverable, and use analytics to improve ongoing KM efforts.
Curation Techniques: Putting Digital Curation into Practice
- Use Metadata
Apply a consistent and comprehensive metadata schema to describe and classify your knowledge assets. Metadata may include taxonomy terms, keywords, categories, authors, dates, formats, sources, and other descriptors that help users locate and understand content. - Create Landing Pages
Develop landing pages and dashboards within your intranet or knowledge base to highlight and feature the most relevant, useful, and popular knowledge assets by audience, topic, or purpose. Consider curated collections, featured articles, recommended resources, and user-generated ratings or reviews. - Use AI and Automation Tools
Leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to streamline curation. AI tools can assist with natural language processing, machine learning, text mining, and recommendations—helping to extract, enrich, and link knowledge assets or provide personalized suggestions. - Design Matters
Present curated content in an engaging and user-friendly way. Incorporate icons, buttons, photos, and videos to enhance visual appeal and interactivity. Use alt-tags for accessibility and improved search. - Establish Curation Workflows and Governance
Formalize workflow and governance models for curation by defining roles and responsibilities for curators, editors, and content owners. Clear procedures help ensure staff trust the accuracy and validity of curated content and support quality and consistency. - Define a Curation Strategy
Align curation activities with KM goals and business objectives. Define scope, purpose, criteria, methods, roles, and responsibilities. Establish standards, guidelines, and best practices to meet user needs consistently. - Draw Insights from Analytics
Leverage analytics and metrics to monitor, evaluate, and improve curation. Track access, usage, feedback, and the impact of curated content to identify gaps, needs, trends, and new opportunities for curation.
Moving Forward
Many of these curation techniques depend on having an intranet or knowledge base. Even if your organization doesn’t currently have one, you likely have a platform (such as SharePoint, Google Workspace, or Salesforce) that can be adapted for this purpose.
Regardless of the platform, systematic steps and digital tools make it possible to curate knowledge more effectively. These tactics help increase the value, quality, and accessibility of your knowledge assets and should be woven into any knowledge management strategy.
