This document discusses the soft skills required for 21st century librarians. It identifies key soft skills like listening, communication, interpersonal, customer service, leadership, project management, and presentation skills. It also covers technical skills in areas like information literacy, collections development, research contributions, and information technology. Overall, the document emphasizes that today's librarians require both professional qualifications and a diverse range of soft skills to effectively manage libraries and provide user-oriented services.

1. Soft Skills for the 21st
Century Librarian
By
Dheeraj Singh Negi

2. Introduction
• Today’s librarians having professional degrees in library
and information science is not sufficient unlike in the
past. There is demand for librarians having
multidimensional aptitude in the areas of technical work,
administrative work and also in providing user oriented
services along with soft skills. Like any other profession,
the soft skills are required in day-to-day working for
carrying out routine jobs more effectively. The librarians
working in large organizations like corporate offices are
already practicing these skills through by experience or
training.

4. • Listening skills: The library professionals must have
good listening skills as he/she has to interact with
different types of users all the time. By carefully
listening to users’ he/she can identify the exact
requirement and then provide the service
accordingly.

5. • Communications skills: Command on language
especially English and also regional one will improve
the communication. Good communication skills also
require understanding people, self-confidence. With
this one can achieve lot and solve problems too.

6. • Interpersonal skills: Librarians have to deal with all
levels of people like Management, users, colleagues
in library, vendors etc. To deal with each one on
them in rightful manner requires interpersonal skills.
When you work in large organization, it is most
important to build rapport with all departments,
which helps in managing the library and providing
better services to every one.

7. • Public relations: One needs to use PR very effectively
to attract users in libraries through various ways. It
also helps to bond with users and vendors too. Also
gives ability to work with other professionals.

8. • Customer service: Customer is library user and to
satisfy his information needs is customer service. The
librarians are always giving attention to their users
and providing services through CAS, SDI or other
specialized services. The customer service
emphasizes the customer satisfaction, which
guarantees that user will always come back to library.

9. • Leadership skills & Teamwork: Library management
especially the big library is team exercise. Hence it is
required to have leadership skills to manage and
guiding the team time to time, as every subordinate
is important for carrying out their work efficiently for
smooth running of library.

10. • Negotiating skills: These skills are required on special
occasions such as handling bulk purchases,
specialized databases subscription with vendors etc.
Also some times in delicate situations like library
committee meetings or avoiding undue requirements
from arrogant users etc.

11. • Writing skills: The librarians are sometimes asked to
submit/help in writing research proposal/ business
proposal/project report, which requires good writing
skills. Today there are many library professionals who
are contributing to various publications even in-
house or even by blogging for sharing their
experiences and helping users.

12. • Project management skills: In corporate sector many
times, librarians are part of some project team and
assigned specialized jobs such as knowledge
management or digital institutional repository. These
require dedication, understanding of the project,
time management for completion of work, teamwork
and reporting back the results etc.

13. • Presentation skills: The presentation skills are
required in report writing, library committee
meetings and even in daily work which represents
the library management overall for users. It not only
emphasizes the individual skills but also from library
presentation by means of its decoration, users
guides, and library ambience.

14. • Teaching skills: This is essential for new user
orientations or in case new service is introduced such
as online database searching. It also includes
motivating reading habits in users.

15. Leadership and Management Skills
• Leadership – influencing and motivating others to strive for
excellence; able to adapt to a variety of working/learning
styles, scenarios and organizational cultures and to lead
change within the organization
• Financial management – understanding the principles of
planning and budgeting in academic libraries
• Human resources management – understanding the principles
of effective personnel practices and human resource
development
• Services and resources development – understanding how to
assess the need for and to plan and implement new services
and/or resources in light of current and anticipated needs

16. • Risk management – understanding the advantages and
disadvantages of any action or decision and being able to
effectively evaluate both to support any decision made
• Project management – planning, organizing and managing
resources to successfully complete specific project objectives
within a certain time frame
• Assessment and Evaluation – understanding the concepts and
methods for service, resource and project evaluation and
outcomes assessment
• Partnerships & Collaborations – understanding the reasons
and strategies for developing collaborations and partnerships
with stakeholders and relevant communities

17. Collections Development Skill
• Scholarly publishing cycle – understanding the life
cycle of scholarly publishing, from creation through
various stages of use to disposition
• Collections development and management –
understanding the concepts, issues and methods
related to the acquisition, and disposition of
resources, including knowing collection strengths
and library and institutional goals and objectives for
resource development

18. • Digital curation– understanding best practices for the
selection, collection, preservation, description, organization,
and archiving principles for digital documentation and
research data in various formats
• Digital preservation – understanding of the principles, activities,
policies, procedures, and services for persistent access
• Management and preservation of collections – basic
understanding of the management and preservation methods
for general collections and for rare books and archives
• Records management – understanding how information is
organized for easy identification and retrieval, including
cataloguing and metadata standards for all formats.

19. Information Literacy
• librarians should have a strong understanding of, and
commitment to, the following:
• Information literacy – principles of information literacy in the
academic environment, including numerical and data literacy
• Learning and teaching – knowledge of learning models and
strategies as well as relevant teaching pedagogy and models
for the academic environment
• Institutional teaching and learning – knowledge of
institutional teaching and learning programmes and goals to
effectively connect with stakeholders and integrate
information literacy programs as appropriate

20. Research & Contributions to the Profession Skills
• Research and publication – contributions through
writing, editing, refereeing or reviewing of books, articles
or reports
• Conferences – contributions through presentations to
professional or scholarly associations/meetings
• Formal study – taken to broaden subject or professional
knowledge and may include study for advanced
professional and/or related academic qualifications
• Teaching – teaching courses in areas of librarianship,
archives or other academic disciplines

21. • Conference management – planning, organizing or conducting
professional programs, workshops, seminars or conferences
• Professional Associations – active participation in professional associations
which may include holding executive office, serving on committees, etc.
• Active engagement in community initiatives – especially those associated
with their area of professional or subject expertise
• Staying informed – ability to stay abreast of research in a specific area to
support a research agenda or to support other work as a librarian within
the library
• Research models and methods – knowledge of the fundamentals of
qualitative and quantitative research methods including the research
process (e.g. question formulation, peer review, etc.)
• Grant writing – knowledge and pursuit of avenues available for grants to
facilitate research work

22. Information Technology Skills
• librarians should have strong knowledge and capability in
the following:
• Integrated library systems (ILS) – knowledge of basic
structure, content and use of an integrated library system
• Emerging web technology – knowledge of major trends
in web development including online social networking
tools (as of 2010, would include Twitter, Facebook,
MySpace, etc.)
• Electronic resources management – knowledge of how
digital resources are acquired, managed and accessed

23. • Web page development – understanding of principles of
web page design and maintenance
• Institutional repositories – Understanding the basic
structure, content and use of campus institutional
repositories
• Learning management system (LMS / CMS) – knowledge
of the structure and the use of campus LMS / CMS
• Database management – understanding how databases
are designed and structured for convenient data and/or
information retrieval