Developing library professionals: the influence of communities of practice

In pursuance of promoting collective learning among library professionals, this paper is aimed at discussing the knowledge sharing techniques that took place in a community of practice (CoP) which was specially set up for the library industry. The issues will highlight how best practices that are shared in these CoP workshops are ‘captured’, catalogued and accessed via online social networking tools, fostering a collaborative knowledge sharing climate. For library managers facing an array of problems which resist traditional ways of learning or a knowledge worker who wants to know ‘how do I fix things’, the CoP can be utilised as an enabling environment to seek, embrace new experiences and be an integral part of the community that is focussed on enhancing and expanding their collective awareness and capabilities. We had drawn our implementation experience from the creation of an online CoP, ‘KMaya’ (www.kmaya.com.my) for our customers who are predominantly from the library community. Our study was conducted via online observations and face-to-face discussions in exploring the trends in stimulating the creation and sharing of tacit knowledge within the user community. The main thrust of the paper will be to highlight on how a CoP can be leveraged into sharing knowledge, transfer best practices and create long-term success of libraries and library professionals who work in them.