Build and Validate the Scale Personal Competency and Practical Requirements for Child Librarians Public Libraries

Purpose: Effective library services for children require a wide range of professional librarian skills. Therefore, it is important to identify the competencies of child librarians. In this study, a comparison has been designed and validated to assess the competencies and requirements of child librarians in public libraries. According to Tetens theory, the personality and character of every human being is composed of five areas, the first three areas are called internal areas and the last two areas are called external areas. The three inner realms include the realm of ideas and beliefs, the realm of feelings, and emotions, and the realm of wills and desires, and the three outer realms are the realm of speech and the realm of action.

Method: The method of the present study is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive in terms of data collection method. In this research, structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analysis have been used. To determine the content validity of the designed questionnaire, experts and librarians of public libraries were used. The sampling method in this section was purposeful sampling. The research community in the validation section of the research tools was librarians of public libraries in Khuzestan province. A simple random sampling method was used to distribute the research tools among the target population. A researcher-made questionnaire based on the research of Akbari, Shaghaghi, and Asnafi (1400) was used to collect data. Data analysis was performed using inferential statistical indicators including structural equation modelling.

Findings: The findings showed that the competencies of a secretary have three factors: beliefs, feelings, emotions, desires, and wills and 44 items; And action requirements have 2 factors of speech and behaviour and 34 items. The results of fitting the secretary competencies model of child librarians showed that the factor load of 44 paths is greater than 0.5 and also the calculated significant numbers are greater than 1.96 which indicates the confirmation of all paths. The results of confirmatory factor analysis of child librarians' action requirements model show that the calculated factor loads for all paths are greater than 0.5 and also the calculated significant numbers are greater than 1.96 which indicates the confirmation of all paths. Confirmatory factor analysis of the instrument showed that the instrument has a good fit and the combined reliability of all factors was higher than 0.90, which indicates the optimal reliability of the instrument. Also, the correlation of the scores of the components of the questionnaires is positive and significant, which indicates the convergent validity of the questionnaire.

Conclusion: In this scale, the competencies of a child librarian's secretary were constructed and validated with three dimensions of beliefs, feelings, emotions, desires and wills, and a scale of behavioral competencies of child librarians with two dimensions of speech and behavior. Secretary competencies refer to what is in the child librarian's mind about the child and services to children, and secretary competencies focus more on operational skills. This scale provides a benchmark for recruiting a child librarian. It will also be an indicator for strengthening and enhancing the secretarial and action skills of child librarians through educational programs.