The changing roles, responsibilities and skills of subject and learning support librarians in the Southern African Customs Union region

Abstract

The study investigated, within the Southern African Customs Union region, the titles, roles, responsibilities, educational qualifications and skills of subject librarians. Semi-structured questionnaires were sent to 179 subject and other learning support librarians. The findings revealed that subject librarians performed many different tasks, emanating from the key responsibility areas of information literacy instruction, research support, faculty liaison, collection development and marketing. It found that changes had occurred in the profession over time, largely because of technological advances, and that these mainly affected the way tasks were performed, and resulted in subject librarians having to constantly update their skills in order to remain effective and relevant.