The changing roles of librarians

Abstract

This thesis entitled "THE CHANGING ROLES OF LIBRARIANS" aim to find out the changing roles of librarians at Tribhuvan University Central Library and constituent college libraries of Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu valley. Today, librarians are confronted with new roles during the execution of their work. The main objectives are to examine the competencies and skills of librarians in the current information age, to determine the effects of technology on the roles of librarians, to study the challenges faced by librarians in their new roles. Academic libraries have not sufficient budget to include fully automated system, in those libraries there are many more librarians who worked before 10-15years, they hesitate to adopt and use new technology because they do not have sufficient skills about uses of ICT (Information Communication Technology), these libraries provide especially manual system and little more automated system, and librarians are working in both systems at same time. They feel more difficult to handle both in same time are the major problems of Tribhuvan university Central Library and constituent college libraries of T.U. in Kathmandu valley. The related literature is reviewed from journals, thesis, articles, survey and internet. Totally eleven (11) literatures are reviewed for this study. The current study employed quantitative approaches. The study was descriptive in nature. Purposive sampling was used to select respondents from each of the twenty two(22) libraries. Data was collected using a questionnaire. A population of twenty seven (27) respondents was to be surveyed but only twenty four (24) of them responded to the questionnaire from nineteen (19) colleges. Quantitative data was descriptively analyzed using the MS Excel. The study revealed that the role of librarians at the T.U. has not necessarily changed in terms of duties, responsibilities, functions and processes, but what has changed is the intensity and manner of conducting the role. The main challenge remains that of re training of staff in the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs). Therefore the study recommended training of staff in the use of ICTs, acquiring powerful servers to increase bandwidth connectivity and allocating more funds towards various activities. Librarians should take the initiative of keeping abreast with the current information technologies which change with times for them to meet the changing needs of their users and to also keep a breast with the emerging trends.