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

Abstract

PurposeVirtual communities of practice (VCoP) are becoming increasingly popular as professional networking. These communities support and shape professional development, especially in countries with limited opportunities and constrain like time and distance. This study throws light on the role of VCoP and its impact on the continuous professional development (CPD) of librarians in Pakistan.Design/methodology/approachThis study is carried out with qualitative research methods to understand effects of VCoP on CPD. With a thematic content analysis on the email conversations of a library and information science (LIS) Yahoo mailing group “plagpk”, the impact of virtual communities (VCs) on librarians' professional development in Pakistan over the past 20 years was analyzed.FindingsThis study demonstrates that VCs contribute to professional learning, problem-solving, knowledge creation, professional awareness and identity creation in the LIS field. Further, this study contributes a model to explain the formal and informal professional development for individuals and groups through VCoP engagement.Social implicationsIt is hoped that this study will help the librarian community create, get involved in the VCoP for personal, professional development consciously and create an impact in the profession. The finding of this study is generalizable to any social sciences or humanities professionals VCoPs.Originality/valueThis is one of the first studies in the LIS field to analysis the impact of VCs on the professional development of the librarians.

Text Mining Based Process Identification and Business Process Mapping from Job Description Documents

“…techniques, such as 1) interview (Chopra and Golab, 2018;Jacobson et al, 2012;Buwembo et al, 2014;Kang et al, 2016;Lee et al, 2014;Lewis et al, 2015;Kim & Talbott, 2017;Qutab & Shafique, 2011); 2) survey (Park et al, 2016;Ramhit, 2019, Mouza & Taousanis, 2017Butler, 2008;Carliner et al, 2015;Krumer-Nevo et al, 2011;Stybel, 2010); 3) systematic mapping study (Arias et al, 2018) and 4) process logs and IoT (Van der Aalst & Weijters, 2004;Song et al, 2022;Seiger et al, 2022;and Iman et al, 2024) Another finding is that from sample from 15 job descriptions document in, it shows that using the text mining method, the existing job description document can only extract information about processes and actors whereas to accomplish BP mapping, four elements are required: 1) actor; 2) process; 3) documents; and 4) document flow. As a result, in the research presented in this paper, restructuring the sentence in the job description is proposed on specific sentences, most notably the roles and responsibilities of positions.…”

“…Process identification can be performed by interviewing the workers. Usually it is conducted to search for social networks (Chopra and Golab, 2018), to know the perception of each volunteer interviewed (Jacobson et al, 2012); to find out the respondent's interpretation of the job description (Buwembo et al, 2014); to know satisfaction with the job description (Kang et al, 2016); to conduct a job analysis (Lee et al, 2014); to know the role of each worker (Lewis et al, 2015); to determine interest (Kim and Talbott, 2017); and to know the actual situation (Qutab & Shafique, 2011). The interview results will then be analyzed to perform BP mapping.…”

Evaluation Method of Information Dissemination Efficiency within Professional Virtual Community: Based on Chinese College and University Students

“…A willingness to share information and engage in passionate discussions around specific topics are common behaviors among PVC members (Qutab et al, 2022). For college and university users, the speed of production and dissemination of new ideas and new information has attracted widespread attention (Florenthal, 2015).…”