%0 Journal Article
%T The Required Competencies of Para-Professionals in Library Services of Sarawak State Libraries
%A Mohamad Noorman Masrek
%A Rusnah Johare
%A Mohd Sharif Mohd Saad
%A Hasnah Rahim
%J IBIMA Business Review
%D 2012
%I IBIMA Publishing
%X Para-professionals in the library services are library associates, library technicians, or library assistants who assist the professional librarians in library-related task. Mining the literature unveiled that studies investigating the required competencies on para-professional are still very limited. To address this gap, this paper reports a study that was conducted with the purpose to identify the required competencies of para-professionals in the library services. Adopting the survey research methodology, data were collected using questionnaires from 502 para-professional librarians working with the Sarawak State Library in Sarawak, Malaysia. The findings suggest that all the seven sets of competencies, namely general competencies; Agency and Organizational Knowledge; Reference and Research; Collection Management; Content Organization and Structure and Library Technology Management are either moderately or highly required by the para-professionals. Based on these findings, the appropriate training needs could be identified.
%K Competencies
%K para-professionals
%K training
%K libraries
%K Malaysia.
%U http://www.ibimapublishing.com/journals/IBIMABR/2012/451192/a451192.html