Librarians Skills and Competencies for Scholarly Communication and Repository Management in Nigeria

Abstract

The rapid change in scholarly communication and knowledge management has transformed the repository services and imposed new skills and competencies for repository management. This study is posed to assess the skills and competencies of librarians for repository management and scholarly communication in academic institutions in Nigeria. The study adopted a survey research design to assess the skills and competencies of the librarians using NASIG “Core Competencies for Scholarly Communication Librarians 2017”. The sample size of the study comprises 120 librarians across 40 institutions. The findings of the study indicate among others that; 74 % of the librarians have a general understanding of repository platforms, 54.17% background knowledge of open access movement, and 58% experience in advocacy for open access. At the same time, 83.3% of the librarians can capture, store, and preserve the research output. While 62.3% understand research impact, only 35.8% understand emerging alternatives measures of the impact. Although, 73.1 % understand Data description and storage, only 20.8% understand text and data mining. The study concluded that awareness, skills, and competencies of the librarians is increasing and recommends among others; setting up a framework for the employment of repository and scholarly communication librarians and training on repository management and scholarly communication.

An assessment of professional competencies and skills required for library professionals of management institutions in Kerala (India)

“…The librarians need to be aware and competent in these technologies so that they can educate which materials they can upload and share and copyright issues. According to Adam and Kaur (2021), majority of the respondents were familiar with copyright issues is deviating with our study results revealed that only 46% were competent with copyright issues. Electronic conferencing played a significant role during the Covid-19 pandemic and its importance was realized much after the pandemic.…”

“…On the other hand, they have moderate and low competency skills on metadata development, digitization, applying new technologies to library, library website development and the ability to create different file formats. In Nigeria, Adam and Kuar (2021) assessed librarians skills and competencies for scholarly communication and managing the repository found that majority of the respondents understand digital preservation, repository platforms, collect, store and preserve research output of the institutions and develop policies, author’s rights, knowledge on data description and storage and indicators of research impact. In another study conducted in India, Shastri and Chudasma (2022) found that majority of Gujarat State library professionals rated operating skills as above average and excellent for information literacy skills such as Operating System, MS-Office, DBMS, Library Automation, Cataloguing and Metadata, Subject Gateways, Electronic Bulletin Board, Asynchronous library services (FAQ, E-Mail, Webform etc), RFID and Cloud Computing Service.…”

Determination of library staff skills to enhance visibility of intellectual output in Nigerian universities

“…The benefits of IRs are enormous. Authors such as Adam and Kiran (2021a) recognize that the implementation of IRs will solve the issue of visibility and at the same time facilitate the quick dissemination of indigenous knowledge from Africa. IRs will also improve the impact factor and university ranking (Nunda and Elia, 2019; Christian, 2008).…”