The Relationship between Librarians' Information Literacy and Their Ability to Communicate in Academic Libraries

Today, the ability to establish effective communication and information literacy is one of the librarians’ employment requirements. In libraries with using appropriate information literacy and the ability to communicate properly with users, librarians can play an important role in raising their information needs. Therefore all of these categories are necessary.

The present study is descriptive-correlative in terms of its purpose. Data were collected from a sample of 130 people by simple random sampling. The statistical population of the study included librarians of the libraries of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad's Islamic Azad University (Number, 163), as well as librarians of the Birjand University libraries and Islamic Azad University of Birjand (Number, 25) who were full-time at the time of the research (2018). Data were gathered using two questionnaires: Nikpour, Landscape and Rajaee Nejad (2012) with a reliability coefficient of 94 percent and communication skills of Rahnama Librarians (2012) with a reliability coefficient of 73 percent.

Findings indicate that there is a positive and significant relationship between information literacy and librarian communication skills and the amount of communication skills and information literacy of librarians in Mashhad and Birjand cities did not differ. There was a positive and significant relationship between all aspects of "information literacy" including identifying information needs, locating information, evaluating information, and efficient use of information and communication skills of librarians.

The results reveal that the level of communication skills and information literacy of librarians and non-specialists are not the same. Also, demographic characteristics (gender, level of education, and service record) did not play a role in librarians' information literacy and communication skills.