Continuous Professional Development (CPD) of librarians: A bibliometric analysis of research productivity viewed through WoS

Abstract

This study sought to provide a descriptive analysis of the research output pertaining to Continuous Professional Development (CPD) of librarians. CPD is crucial as it upgrades employees' skills and has the potential to increase productivity and improve customer service in libraries. Therefore, there is need for extensive research in this area. Web of Science (WoS) core collection database was used to retrieve sample data for the bibliometric analysis. A total of 165 records were retrieved. After abstract screening, 77 records specific to CPD of librarians were analysed. A statistical software package called R (Biblioshiny) and VOSviewer were used for data visualization. This study was limited to publications written in English and indexed on WoS only. The study findings revealed that most productive countries in this research area are the USA, the United Kingdom and Australia. In Africa, Nigeria and South Africa have taken the lead. In terms of most productive institutions, University of Nigeria and the University of Sheffield ranked first. Considering the publication period, 2009 and 2013 were the most productive. Library Trends and Journal of Librarianship & Information Science are the most productive publishers. Research on CPD of librarians is dominant in academic libraries, hence there is need for similar studies to be conducted in public and school libraries. Most prolific authors are E. Hornung G. Hallam and S. Lewis. However, F. M. Mason and M. R. Kennedy have the highest number of citations. The citation impact shows that research activity pertaining to CPD of librarians is very low. Low research productivity in CPD of librarians may inhibit informed decision making due to lack of availability of scientific research output. As a result, libraries may continue to have an unskilled and irrelevant workforce that does not meet the changing demands of the 21st century users. Especially African countries and other developing nations. Therefore, this paper has attempted to raise awareness on the research dynamics pertaining to CPD of librarians through bibliometric analysis. It is hoped that this work will trigger more research interest in LIS discipline.