Abstract:
Rapid development of technological environment has reshaped the roles of library staff
in the knowledge-dependent society. In order to manage and cope with this accelerating
rate of changes effectively, understanding of competencies of stsff has been recognized
as an important area. Among many such different approaches, KSP (Knowledge, Skills
and Practice attitudes) measurement can be considered as the most commonly applied
approaches to measure competencies in professionals at work. No previous attempts
have been found to evaluate the competencies of the library paraprofessional staff in the
university sector. The objective of this study was to investigate these competencies of
paraprofessional staff of the library. Data were collected through printed questionnaire.
A census was conduct including all the paraprofessionals in the library staff (43) and the
response rate was 100%. Educational qualifications (knowledge) show that there are
32% of males from the total population who qualified O/L while 28% of A/L qualified
personals. Minority of 7% were graduates in the male population. Females with O/L
qualified were 4% while the A/L qualified populations were 23%. There was only one
postgraduate degree holder among females. Males show more competency in work with
computers 26.8% than females 15.8%. Both sexes show equal competency in work with
the library database (26%). Females are more competent (10.5%) than males in
classification skills (4.9%). Cataloguing skills shows high frequency in both sexes male
29.3% and 31.6% in females across the age groups. Interestingly 10.5% of females
showing book binding skills with respect to males (9.8%). However 100% of the
respondents commonly got the attitude that “they got confidence to perform any given
task at the library after a proper training”. Even though the educational level of the
majority are below the Advanced Level of school the paraprofessional staff members of
the university are competent in different skills andsome of them are competent more
than one skill in the contextirrespecting the gender. It can be concluded that the
university administration can withstand against new information management
technologies and practices with the current staff with further training.