What you are looking for are, perhaps, the primary (i,e., required or professional) and secondary (i.e.,  optional or personal) capabilities, both knowledge and skills, of academic librarians.

Without the required capabilities you can't perform at all as a (academic) librarian. The optional capabilities are perhaps what nowadays are also labelled 'soft skills', e.g. being able to engage in a structured dialogue with a customer (visitor of the library) in order to fulfill his request for specific information. 

Things like professional (hard) and personal (soft) competences and skills are usually listed in structured job descriptions which are set up and published by e.g. your country's Council or Association of Academic Librarians. Also, job requirements can be extracted from job advertisements issued by libraries looking for new employees. What about Handbooks for Research on Librarianship, or something with a similar name? I am sure you will find at least three when doing a Google Scholar search yourself - and if you are lucky enough, you will stumble upon exactly such a list as you are looking for.

Don't expect that there is one single definite structured description of academic librarians' competences. There will be gross differences between countries all over the world and also between universities being very general ones or very specialized ones. Just to find out what is generic and what is specific about librarians competences may be the first important step in your research. 

Of course, those competences and skills have markedly changed during the past 30 to 50 years, due to the advent of the computer, the personal computer and world wide web.

• Example:

I know that one or two generations ago librarians in the academy were expected to have a profound knowledge of and experience with so-called scientific databases and literature resources (including contents of all journals worldwide), mostly using a not so user-friendly interface. They had to be good intermediaries for users who didn't have access to a computer themselves or just plain didn't want to invest so much time in searching.

Nowadays, almost everybody has access to a huge worldwide pool of information resources, and can do their own search, using e.g. Google Scholar, Amazon, and a lot of other services (beware: there is a lot of info in the so-called "Invisible Web"!). So, the job of intermediary at an academic library isn't so much needed anymore, librarians can again focus on more important aspects of their job, or newer services never heard of before.

Anyway, having such a list of specific and general criteria to be used is just a first step towards measuring such a quality as competence. You also have to set up a measuring instrument, which needs to be tested and calibrated. That's a lot of work and requires a lot of technique to do correctly. But that's perhaps worth another question here on ResearchGate.

Thank You Mr. Paul, Yes I do. I'm looking for the thing such as explained by You. Maybe You can help me to find the academic paper or related paper with that topic?

no problem, look at the following place:

http://tinyurl.com/librarian-competences

I find a competencies standard for ALA. Is it works for my research if I adopt it? I want to understand the Indonesian librarians competencies but the instrument was for ALA (American Librarians)?

Great answer, Paul. The UK professional association is called CILIP - you'll find plenty about skills training on the website.  The really detailed info is for members, but I am sure you'll find useful material that non-members can access.  http://www.cilip.org.uk/cilip/jobs-and-careers/professional-knowledge-and-skills-base  See if your own national association does anything similar.  Or visit the IFLA website.

There are basic skills that librarians must possess. These are sometimes called professional and personal skills.  They vary depending on the type of library and the country.  I think that you can start your research by searching for competencies desired in librarians for different countries and work places. There are many. You can use these standards as guides to come up with your own recommendations that are appropriate for Indonesia. WE have our own standards for the Philippines. The standards were prepared by the Professional Regulatory Board for Librarians in consultation with stakeholders like the professional library associations, the academe and the job market. I can send you a copy of the standards through your email if you are interested

Thank You Karen & Lourdes, yes I found the regulation such as You tell me.

I found a regulation from the human resources ministry of Indonesia. Yes, basically there 2 kind of competencies, they are professional and personal competencies. The professional competencies related with a scientific achievement and the personal competencies related with a psychological achievement. Specifically, the the personal competencies consist of two aspects, they are social interaction and personality. But the regulation didn't explain more, what a social interaction and personality are. Maybe someone can help me to explain them? Or give me indicators of them? Thank You.

There's a danger of over-complicating this! When you write a job specification, you also write a person specification.  You list essential and desirable qualifications.  Then you consider what kind of personality you're looking for - whether close attention to detail, a strong team-player, cheerful and outgoing, extrovert and keen to help readers, etc.  The nature of the job will determine these.  Some people are more naturally suited to, eg, cataloguing or database work.  Others to leading a team, or running reader services. 

Unless your management has demanded that you research this matter in depth, then an element of commonsense combined with a little online researching should be all that you need.  Though I don't know your circumstances - maybe you're actually researching this and not working in the field, so my apologies if this seems insultingly basic!

The hard skills refered to by Paul Hubert include professional qualifications. Levels of experince in the respective area is also a measure, so are responsibilities held today and in the past,  publications and so much more. It may not be possible to get a single document with all what you may want .

There are lot of competency scale on the Internet, you can either adapt or adopt, staff competence assesment scale, organisation competence and personal competence and professional competence. The indicators also varies depending on the angle of your research. Is it generic competences  when considering what is required to perform your current job activities or generic competences on the job? The  choice depend on your research.

If they are medical librarians, the Medical Library Association has a list of core professional competencies for medical librarians http://www.mlanet.org/p/cm/ld/fid=39. They are in the process of updating it and revising it.  Much of it applies to non-medical librarians if you change out the medical/health science parts.  They also have a web page on Competencies for Professional Success http://www.mlanet.org/p/cm/ld/fid=385 which would probably fall more into your personal competencies question.

http://www.mlanet.org/p/cm/ld/fid=385

http://www.mlanet.org/p/cm/ld/fid=39

Thank You Michelle it was very helpful :)

Hi Thoriq,

In general, the job of Library professionals include acquisition, technical processing, circulation and serial control. Though there are sea changes happening in the field of LIS in formats, etc., the foundation of the profession remains same. Earlier they dealt with print resources and now it is electronic and digital. So, you may have the parameters based on the basic competencies required for the librarian in the networked digital environment.  Regards

All competence scales I know of are intrinsically ordinal scales. This type of scale doesn't allow you to do much more than comparing levels of competences: lower than, equal or larger than. This type of scale doesn't have a lowest competence level nor a largest comptence level. Furthermore, even if you express degrees of competence by numbers, you are not allowed to add, subtract, multiply or divide those competence degrees, because it doesn't make sense and because you run the risk of producing non-sense results. As a consequence, you shouldn't calculate arithmetic means (averages) of competences, e.g. in a group of people, because that doesn't make sense either.

All this is known already for a long time, still - unfortunately - many people manipulate ordinal measures such as these competence measures, as if they were lying on an interval scale, which is a much more powerful scale type. I have been working for a long time on a principled solution of this problem.

 Happily, I can announce a breakthrough in this area. Some days ago I managed to define an interval scale for things like competences and yesterday I presented this result for the first time to my colleagues.

The interval-type competence scale model is based on a special sort of Fuzzy Logic (thanks to Prof. Morsi, Egypt) defined on the unit interval (numbers between 0 and 1) with the help of real numbers equal to or larger than 0.

You can manipulate such competence scores in much the same way as ordinary numbers, although of course the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are slightly differently defined.

You may also calculate a mean score, but it should be a weighted geometric mean, not arithmetic mean.

Furthermore, because it is an interval scale type, once you have found a competence scale, you may apply a pseudo-linear rescaling of the form a * score + b, in order to shift your scale up or down and to strech or shrink it a little bit, an operation often required by lecturers (assessors) if they are not satisfied with the spread and location of the scores they have found.

I will upload on ResearchGate a powerpoint presentation in due time, explaining how this fuzzy scoring model works. Please contact me if you like to apply it in your research.

Thank You very Much Mr. Paul, sure I will, I wait You upload it :)

The personal competency of any librarian in a given library can be measured by his ability to be able initiate and put in place strategies for effective service provision and  sustainable approaches for achieving value. It should be noted capability building is essential in achieving set objectives.

Hello,

You can have a look at CERTIDOC, an European initiative providing a very comprehensive coverage of the competencies and skills

http://www.certidoc.net/

Initially you can study what other academic libraries are doing in this area.

Some good studies are:

Core competencies for 21st Century CARL librarians

Assessment of Competencies of Professional Librarians in Nigeria

There are quite a size-able literature which you can study and then prepare a scaled checklist of competencies for your librarians to make your assessment.

Don't forget to validate and calibrate your scales in order to get a measurement instrument which is really satisfactory and representative. Otherwise you will get a lot of data without any real-world meaning.

Professional Competencies for Reference and User Services Librarians may be checked through this link: http://www.ala.org/rusa/resources/guidelines/professional

The Perennial Question of Librarian Credentialing

"Librarians wrestle with the question of what it means to be a “professional librarian.” Which persons — possessed of which qualifications and which “terminal degrees” — should and should not bear the title? The question has existed as long as university libraries have existed, but the rapidly and radically evolving nature of library work — coupled with the ever-expanding boundaries of the academic library’s remit — make the question newly difficult and newly controversial. Indeed, it would be challenging to name a debate among academic librarians more perennially contentious or important than that of credentialing..."

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2024/12/12/guest-post-the-perennial-question-of-librarian-credentialing/?informz=1&nbd=&nbd_source=informz

Dear Thoriq Tri Prabowo , please find the attached article:

DEGREES OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANS: THE PERENNIAL QUESTION OF CREDENTIALING

"The essay below seeks to catalog and understand the positions and practices adopted by major university libraries in the United States, the opinions of those libraries’ chief officials, and the arguments those officials put forth in defense of their positions. The analysis of the results—both quantitative and qualitative—leads to three conclusions. First: Our profession remains deeply split on the question of credentialing, beset by fundamental disagreements about what it means to be a librarian. Second: The Association of College and Research Libraries’ statement on credentialing, crafted in the 1970s to forge consensus and reaffirmed as recently as 2018, has failed to do so; it has, in fact, created more confusion than clarity. And third: Current and emerging practices in university libraries and the reports and experiences emerging from those practices argue for capacious understandings of “librarians” and diverse options for credentialing—options that reflect the diversity of practices now in play..."

https://download.ssrn.com/2024/12/10/5050839.pdf?response-content-disposition=inline&X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEEkaCXVzLWVhc3QtMSJHMEUCIHpVAEbIZul11fMxtOSI2VMEJ%2FIGTX7BaK9GxOslSrttAiEAwDKjVGQiW1mnLQgy9LB%2BNmQhsg59mShpAk%2BNIaH1c9oqvQUIEhAEGgwzMDg0NzUzMDEyNTciDMjYTpKcxjWujUXrySqaBcqpW6EH9Q%2F1Ex%2BZgGmBAUgGhGBfBzO%2BuWasrlyENBHA0SnK5bsS9nGOqVEAxOiifpCwaVaJsjyiT5dSR4ToVmNCqKx5SPBj6EWgnJnypjmocdlYdKW18lHjYU1klXeF5nR90FwE%2F7chWFjeq1jlkJ6l2JykadXO8LflkaRxrWtu%2B4UbINS1I0H5oYiu9lZdjcvhhkXSwRnDK9qPbV3qedKuKZkYmla9GdQi%2FieewzBNO1%2B0ZYo7GA9pVxxYtNDP48zK8nJfEvlJ0gaBrg6YrPJ0q4vviGyULil1kn9YSrGZFjCoT96mf0xfVgLIvcaJFTGv6IM%2BQK7JItCmD%2FTSPttrh7or2N0apo8d8WaObucvir1cNjwwS%2BKhtthdViqogEvanW3Qo2duVWHPfccpzx9vNbz0krKfPJ%2BaAtJ93L%2BEW4lQbhd43RfvCJN%2Fnzz48pxOqNjfRWax2RZmp2dLunskOqVgJ3Ywds4ar%2F3QUOKUonaIdzsB3EGq%2BWi%2Fk1XbuCq4aLkmGTSzp2mtNzmcK4c3mGlWkKPctDF0ea%2FBFIvhMdKoDoE%2B%2B3MV7OPuPDB7f5R7uaB9Pmvj%2FKfvTalgGC1gr4jlgfevaEFZWmXO2TOuK44mr7A2pRRi38hTXU1CtrLfYEnBxdkOyZpsopl1Y48dQEBayz9Crd%2BHNoRS01Kdx8Sm4LiX4dgkqWGHWaVevZyVui%2FbREBof%2BFpi84aMm8YEhLV9FKYDLnfP9p3nuSzpr13GXvwgJefKh6StqSU6QFjVMygEvUxfuDpB2SbBX%2BG%2Fu0ojF063jIpXsYR8LeT67gWYa0bGYoa6eNgvU%2BjqJ6EM2%2B3X8lbN3zNblVYf74y4zeekAsFbrs82x0ZsWK%2BNd2n22r%2BJB3E%2BDCzqvq6BjqxAWN53kJBD2H08obZJnx9Bxjs0vIgKCMOH7P3HrA3KKfgyhIR81GxaHj6NCizY%2FTH8vf8RhK8P77DhRlhHZLoxCpzhph%2FvZyVDAWo95lQf3V2B9IOb2KfyL3bdFlnaZkLW%2FaGJRn72yF0drrJvGEVd9%2FdlbA8rBhSeZngwf0%2FN8dK6I78eZUslrPaaZBafhQ6pUgtkWKu0KLoPqMBY%2FhAQbyTm7yq%2B6FVEAh%2BI0sSDcAcVg%3D%3D&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20241215T092904Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=300&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAUPUUPRWE355QJSWQ%2F20241215%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=b7800df59a034e13479595409c76a3ca2e634dc41e0f283411c5edbe004c88ec&abstractId=5050839