LIBRARY SKILLS REQUIRED BY THE PARAPROFESSIONAL STAFF IN USER SERVICES DEPARTMENT

Abstract

This paper provides a review on the library skills that are required by the paraprofessional staff in user services department, explore the specific types of paraprofessional staff for user service department, and their roles. The study put together comparatively the user service information resource and service delivery responsibilities and the information utilitarian service support roles of the paraprofessional library staff and examines that, the more befitting type of paraprofessional library staff for user services are the “page”, “library aides”, and “library Services Assistant”. The types of responsibilities of user services paraprofessional staff was examined to be the middle level complementary roles in a way that relates to ‘user assistance’, and ‘library support’ in user management, information retrieval and access, shelve management, circulation desks services, reading area management and close access information services, among others. It also examined the library skills required by the user service paraprofessional library staff, who are expected to have the soft library – skills, hard library – skills, and the library information technologies use – skills, among others. The study concludes by stressing the existence of differing practices in the labelling paraprofessional library staff as “library support staff”, “library nonprofessional”, “not-certified” or “non-licenced librarians”, “post-secondary school” or “diploma certificate holders” in consistently, as well as confusion in their schedule of responsibilities. The study suggests the need for library regulatory agencies/parastatals and the libraries themselves to review the existing library staffing pattern/nomenclature and responsibilities to suit the current changing library environment, development in knowledge acquisition and certificates, changing users’ information needs and seeking behaviour and the changing trends in information services, among others.