The Zombie Stack Exchanges That Just Won't Die
What's the difference between a ERMS and a Knowledge base?
III has a ERMS called ERM. Is that also acting as Knowledgebase for the link resolver?
Or is erms here to mean the ability to add licenses, track expiry dates etc etc?? Similarly I am of the impression A-Z lists are populated from erm/knowledgebase. eg serialssolutions 360core feeds straight to their EJ portal. Basically i am confused abt difference between erms and knowledgebase.
aarontay
A Knowledge Base is a system for storing information in a computer system in such a way that the information can be reasoned with automatically. A canonical example of a knowledge base might be Cyc. A Knowledge Base is usually coupled with one or more types of inferencing engine, which may use deduction, induction, inference to the best explanation, or other types of reasoning to derive answers to questions.
For example, if a KB system knows that most birds can fly, that penguins are a kind of bird, that penguins can't fly, that Tweety is a penguin, that yesterday Tweety was sealed in a room where there is no way in, and the only way out is by flying, that Tweety is alive and outside the room, and that there are mechanical tools can be used by living things to fly, the system might hypothesize the existence of penguin-operated flying machines.
A Knowledge Management System is a storage system designed to hold documents so that they can be found by humans. Good Knowledge Management Systems support taxonomies, thesauri, and other Knowledge Organization Systems. They should support full text search, as well as manual and automated metadata management.
There are two possible expansions of ERMS - Electronic Record Management System, or Electronic Resource Management System.
An Electronic Record Management System is similar to a Knowledge Management System, but may have specific features designed to support compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
An Electronic Resource Management System is typically a system designed to direct catalog users to online versions of resources that the library owns. Sometimes this is at the level of an individual article. Occasionally these systems work better than using scholar.google.com.libproxy.lib.foo-state.edu .
For ease of understanding, let's simplify this a lot. Let's say you subscribe to an aggregator database (something huge like Onefile or Academic Search Complete). That database has a very large number of full text articles & other records, and keeping track of what's currently contained within it is time consuming and complicated. An ERMS would typically contain information about your sub to that database, such as license, acquisition/order record, vendor info, how to get usage stats (even the stats themselves, depending on the system), admin info, etc etc etc. A knowledge base would have info about what the database itself contained, and possibly how to get to it. This way you don't have to keep track of what's in it - the kb vendor does that for you. You would likely have a way of marking what your library has access to (databases, individual journals), and the kb might be linked to the ERMS, to the link resolver, to the A-Z list, etc.
As one of the answers points out, ERMS can mean several things. I think it should be clear that in this context it can only refer to 'Electronic Records Management System' (note, 'Records' not 'Record').
Assuming this, the answer is simple.
An ERMS organises information for the purposes of managing it (managing its security, its retention, its ownership and so on). A Knowledge Base organises information with a focus on the retrieval of information.
But the real question is: can you have one without the other - or rather, should you? No. Clearly an ERMS that does not support retrieval is useless; and a Knowledge Base that does not manage security etc. is a liability. So basically I conclude the question is ill-founded.