Abstract

Over the past two years, the ongoing development of a Concept and Prototype for Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) has been accompanied by a series of papers. They focused on furnishing Knowledge Workers with the career support they so badly need and on managing Personal Knowledge for the Creative Class Economy. They explored PKM devices’ impact on capacity development, on creative collaborations in support of individuals and institutions, and on Higher Education program and services portfolios. They explained how and why over forty renowned Knowledge Management (KM) methodologies as well as the concept of memes have been integrated in the PKM design and discussed its significance for the “Next KM Generation” as well as for human and technological development. They looked at existing barriers for deployment and supported demonstrations and tutorials. The novel approach benefits the personal, organizational, or educational spheres of the learning and working environment by following two guiding principles: from centralized organizational KM systems to autonomous but networked PKM devices and from document-centric knowledge bases to distributed meme-based repositories. This paper adds a further perspective by contemplating how the innovative potential of these combined principles is able to invigorate digital scholarship, individual and institutional curation, and the traceability of knowledge and argues for the establishment of a “World Heritage of Memes Repository (WHOMER).” The novel approach benefits the personal, organizational, or educational spheres of the learning and working environment by following two guiding principles: from centralized organizational KM systems to autonomous but networked PKM devices and from document-centric knowledge bases to distributed meme-based repositories. This paper adds a further perspective by contemplating how the innovative potential of these combined principles is able to invigorate digital scholarship, individual and institutional curation, and the traceability of knowledge and argues for the establishment of a "World Heritage of Memes Repository (WHOMER)."