The acquired and required competencies of Pakistani university librarians: Determining the job satisfaction, organizational commitment and training needs / Asad Khan

Modern innovations have enhanced the significance of competent, satisfied and committed workforce. However, these innovations have caused numerous potential challenges for university librarians. University librarians are expected to be highly competent, satisfied and committed employees to serve users in their information needs. However, previous researchers indicated that acquired skills of Pakistani university librarians are not matching with modern professional demands. This has given birth to numerous questions, such as ineffective performance, poor attitude of university librarians towards the attainment of required skills, negligence of professional values, compatibility between LIS curriculum and job market, perplexing levels of satisfaction and commitment of librarians, limited training opportunities due to undefined areas of required skills etc. Modern librarianship demands university librarians to achieve high level of skills under different areas such as emotional intelligence, cognitive abilities, leadership, communication, collection management and technology management. Thus, in the perspective of Pakistani university librarians, the current exploratory study examines; 1) association of acquired competencies with job satisfaction and organizational commitment; 2) difference between the acquired and required competencies that further prompted to training needs assessment. The present research study employed cross-sectional survey methodology involving 225 samples, randomly selected from the population of 540 Pakistani university librarians. The survey response rate was calculated as 82%. The UniLIBCQ, as structured questionnaire was utilized to collect data on acquired and required competencies, job satisfaction and organizational commitment of Pakistani university librarians. The psychometric properties of UniLIBCQ were established through Cronbach alpha and exploratory factor analysis…