Managing and Preserving Indigenous Knowledge in the Knowledge Management Era:

challenges and opportunities for information professionals coming an important resource in planning and manag-ing sustainable development projects. The dominant in-formation management model has been based on acquir-ing, organizing and preserving recorded and codified knowledge, which is largely generated by researchers, laboratories and research institutions. Obviously, such a model of managing information has little room for IK, which is not formally codified and resides wholly in the minds of local people. The move towards a knowledge-based society requires a fundamen-tal shift in thinking about the methodology of manag-ing information resources generated by society. Know-ledge management, with its emphasis on developing, gathering, utilizing, processing, preserving, and sharing all the existing information resources and knowledge, has already begun to exert a significant influence on the information society. In fact, knowledge has been char-acterized as the capacity to recognize natural or social patterns, and understanding of their nature as well as the cause-and-effect relationships inherent in those patterns (Ubogu, 2001: 3). In that regard, knowledge has been defined as infor-mation combined with context, interpretation and ex-perience (Davenport et al., 1998). It can be either ex-plicit or implicit. Explicit knowledge is formally expressed in symbols or language, whereas implicit knowledge is not codified and resides in people’s minds. The emerg-ing knowledge society (Drucker, 1995) makes it manda-tory for society to manage both explicit and implicit knowledge. The failure of information professionals in Africa to manage all information resources will impact negatively on society in general and on the development of Africa in particular. Furthermore, libraries, archives and media centres cannot claim to be bastions of the national cultural heritage without embracing local know-ledge systems and institutions. Indigenous knowledge must be managed because it plays a crucial role in the sustainable development of society