Professional networking with emailing groups: A case of Pakistan Library Automation Group

Abstract

Library and Information Science professionals in Pakistan are taking the benefit of emailing groups to seek help from other professionals, share information, and enhance their services. This study aims to present an analysis of all messages posted to plagpk, a pioneer Library and Information Science emailing group in Pakistan. In this study, content analysis of messages posted to the Yahoo mailing group “plagpk” was made from the launching of the group till 14 December 2019. The findings ranked the category of resource sharing at the top position. The study also found that only a small number of group members posted emails to the group, and male group members dominated the female members in terms of sending emails. Library and Information Science professionals in Pakistan are widely using emailing groups to discuss and share professional issues. There is a scarcity of studies related to the use of mailing groups in Pakistan. This study will be helpful for professionals planning to use emailing groups for professional networking.

Role of virtual communities of practice (VCoP) in continuous professional development of librarians: a case of Yahoo mailing group from Pakistan

“…The authors of this study being moderators of the "plagpk" Yahoo mailing group received an email from the Yahoo group regarding the termination of certain services with caution to download the messages and other stored contents from the Yahoo group platform up to 14 December 2019; otherwise, all data would be removed from the site (Siddique et al, 2021). Hence, a dataset of size 781 MB consisted of 38 text files that were downloaded.…”

“…Siddique et al. (2021) explained that the moderation of the paklag mailing group was managed by a group of five moderators to spread of controversial and unethical emails.…”

“…We conducted a content analysis on 31,597 emails sent by 3,554 members (Figure 1 and Table 2) from December 2000 until December 2020. To maintain professional sanctity and avoid irrelevant discussions, a total number of 79 members were banned due to different reasons (Siddique et al. , 2021).…”

“…The Pakistan Library Association (PLA) was established in 1957 and contributed to the development of profession and professionals until 1995 when it became paralyzed for a decade due to low professional interest of governing bodies and the constitutional crisis of the PLA governing body (Siddique et al, 2021). This was also a period of growing ICT demand in the libraries while the responsible bodies did not work seriously or jointly.…”

“…This group helped Pakistani librarians connect and communicate by providing information on new jobs, LIS news, social news, peer learning, community building, and voicing professional development and awareness (Mahmood et al, 2008). Siddique et al (2021) explained that the moderation of the paklag mailing group was managed by a group of five moderators to spread of controversial and unethical emails. The moderators adopted two methods to accept or reject the emails: Yahoo web interface or through emails.…”