Soft skills are a collection of people management skills, important to many professions and job positions, including academic librarianship. Yet the concept of soft skills lacks definition, scope, instrumentation, and systematic education and training. This literature review explores the definition of soft skills ; contrasts skills with related concepts, such as personality traits, attitudes, beliefs, and values; and compares a set of soft skill typologies. We discuss a number of conceptual issues associated with soft skills and suggest several lines of research to help clarify and strengthen librarians’ understanding of and development of soft skills.

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to explore the research on the personality trait of customer orientation (CO) and consider how it may be applicable to customer service work in libraries. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews business research literature on CO and relates it to library science literature on customer service. Findings – CO is a measurable personality trait that is shown to predict customer service behaviors in service employees. Research also shows that CO is associated with customers’ perceptions of service quality. Practical implications – Libraries should prioritize CO in their hiring, training and recognition processes. Originality/value – CO is a well-researched personality trait in the business literature. The original contribution of this paper is to report the research on customer orientation, relate it to similar concepts in librarianship and suggest ways libraries can integrate an awareness of CO in their human resources processes.