Soft Skills are Smart Skills: Necessity of Soft Skills for LIS Professionals in this Twenty First Century
Abstract
Changing the users’ awareness and the technology developed in this Twenty First Century, Library Professionals required to introduce new services, based upon user interest. Managing and running this current century library, professionals have a highly specialized job. So LIS professionals should be required multi-talented and multi-fold personalities. To reach the success and adding new variety of services in their libraries, this paper will helps to LIS professionals through Soft Skills.Various skills need to become a good leader. In Library concept, if you become a good Librarian you should have Library Professional Skills, Managerials Skills and Soft Skills. This paper describes the necessity of soft skill for library professionals. And it listed out the list of soft skills which are essential to survive effectively. Through this paper, we recommend all the library professionals must acquire and execute soft skills in order to better the outcome of their Library.
Keyword: Library Science, LIS Professionals, Soft Skills, Twenty First Century Libraries, Librarianship.
“Professional skills may help to get your Job, But Soft skills can make you a good Librarian”.
Introduction
LIS professionals need continuous grooming by new skills. Then only they become obsolete in this fast changing environment. Soft skills, becoming important at the middle level of library management. Library professionals have to be effective in oral, written an e-communication with their patrons, colleagues and managers, This soft skills will make them more effective to promote their library product and services through marketing. And thus this will help them to show their value to the parent organization. They also need good interpersonal and networking skill to interact with users and effectively collaborate with their colleagues. There is also a growing realization that libraries and information service play important social and community function. Thus, social and community building skills are useful for information professionals- both for community of colleagues (Abdus Sattar Chaudhry & Christopher S.G. Khoo).
Definition
Technical professionals in various disciplines such as information technology, engineering, architecture, and research and development are increasingly required to broaden their skill sets to master the so-called soft skills. Soft skills, as defined by Wikipedia, are “the cluster of personality traits, social graces, facility with language, personal habits, friendliness, and optimism that mark people to varying degrees. Soft skills complement hard skills, which are the technical requirements of a job.
Set of Skills
There are various types of skills that can be acquired. These skills are categorized under “Sets” based on their nature. There are five types of “Sets” of skills (Vidya V. Hanchinal. 2014)
To differentiate clearly between – Hard skills, Soft skills and Life skills as; any type of job/work/profession/trade requires a set of tasks to be executed. These are hard skills or Core skills. So these skills are basics for success in professional life. Soft skills, prepare us to be acceptable by others, so that one can attain materialistic and psychometric success in his/her career. And Life skills, prepare us to attain psycho-somatic success (Inner Happiness) in life. Nishitesh and Reddi Bhaskara (2012).
All these three skills finally elevate and refine our personality to greater heights, if one knows how to balance all these skills. The ever changing life style, hybrid cultures emerging management styles, technological revolutions essentially require refined sets of skills consisting of Hard Skills(Professional Skills), Soft Skills and Life Skills.
Skills Required for the 21st Century Library
Though various skills are required, but the skill needs depend on the role and context of the parent organization As all skills do not relate to everyone, a summarized set of skills under three broad categories of skills, i.e. generic, managerial and professional skills have been listed below. (Fisher 2004). S.P. Singh & Pinki (2009) (Fouire 62-74) (Oldroyd 30:45-49:69:78:99; Sridhar 141-149); TFPL Skill Set)
Generic skills |
Managerial skills |
Professional skills |
Communication skill |
Local and global thinking |
Information technology skills |
Flexibility |
Planning and organizational skills |
a. Hardware/ software and networking Skills |
Adaptability |
Financial management skills |
b. MS-Office suite |
Assertiveness |
a. Fundraising |
c. Power point etc. |
Self-confidence |
b. Skillful use of financial resources |
d. Library automation |
Creativity |
c. Accounting and auditing skills |
e. Database creation |
Innovation |
Managing change |
f. Internet |
Analytical skills |
Team building |
g. Intranet skill |
Problem solving |
Decision making |
h. Scanning techniques |
Decision making |
Leadership |
i. Networking skills |
Service attitude |
Negotiation skills |
* On-line search engines |
Customer relationship |
Consumer management skills |
* On-line databases search |
Improving one’s learning and experience |
a. User need analysis |
j. Desktop publishing |
Presentation skills |
b. Information seeking |
k. Content development |
Stress management |
c. Behavior analysis |
l. Digitization |
Time management |
Project management |
m. Web based services |
Interpersonal |
People management |
n. Virtual learning |
Group skills |
Stress management |
Information literacy |
Working with difficult people |
Time management |
Technical professional skills |
Resource management |
a. Information resource management |
|
b. E- serial management |
||
c. Metadata standards |
||
d. Standards |
||
e. System development |
||
Knowledge management5 |
||
Traditional skills |
Table No: 1 Required Skill for 21st Century Library
Soft Skills
Each one of us is endowed with two Kinds of Skills. Hard Skills and Soft Skills. Hard skills are human tangibles that often find a place in the individual.This soft skill are mostly of complementary nature representing human intangibles. Hard skills are nothing but academic skill that we have picked up in disciplines. Hard skills a can be obtained by reading books while soft skills cannot be acquired by merely reading books. Although it is difficult to give an exhaustive list of soft skills, let us look at the following list proposed by Goeran Nieragden under four heads:
|
|
Attitude Awareness |
Compensation strategies |
Conflict Handling |
Decision making |
Co-operation |
Learning willingness |
Diversity tolerance |
Self-assessment |
Etiquette |
Self-discipline |
Interlocutor orientation |
Self-marketing |
Teamwork willingness |
Stress resistance |
|
|
Delegating skills |
Problem solving |
Listening skills |
Systems thinking |
Presentation skills |
Troubleshooting |
List of Essential Soft Skills for Library Professionals
Following are some of the significant soft skills that are required to become a successful library professional.
Conclusion
Soft skills, becoming impartant of Library professionals in this 21st Century. A current century internet provides more exercise of this Softskills. The overlap in soft skill development and best practices across disciplines needs the Library Science course institutions have to think how to teach soft skills effectively. This paper presents and briefly mentioned variety of soft skills likely to be significant importance to LIS professionals. If we start to learn beginning from library science study itself, the huge difference will be there to execute their work environment. Of course, more and more innovative methods need to implement this soft skills to library studies. Through this paper, we request to add soft skill training to all library and information courses curriculams.
References
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