Needed Soft Skills and their Status: Self-perception of University Information Professionals

Abstract

The objective of this study was to assess the self-perception of university information professionals regarding their overall and various clusters of soft skills. A survey method, using a questionnaire as data collection instrument, was employed to achieve the objectives of this study. The instrument of Kantrowitz developed in 2005 was adapted after expert review and pilot testing. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data using SPSS version 20. The population of this study was information professionals working in the central libraries of all the public sector general universities in Pakistan and all of them were included in the survey. The findings revealed that information professional perceived themselves competent in overall soft skills with a mean score of 3.68 for 372 university information professionals. The self-reported findings further revealed that information professionals were competent in performance management skills, interpersonal skills, political/cultural skills, and leadership /organization skills with higher mean score. However, they perceived themselves moderately competent in two important clusters of soft skills including: communication /persuasion skills and self-management skills with comparatively lower means, which need further development. To improve information professionals’ soft skills, Library and Information Science (LIS) curriculum at Master level should include soft skills. Moreover, in-service trainings on soft skills are also required for serving information professionals.