Librarianship as a profession : an investigation of Libyan librarians' attitudes

The purpose of this study is to investigate the attitude of Libyan professional librarians towards their profession. The study also seeks to compare attitudes of Libyan professional librarians from culturally diverse rural and urban communities toward librarianship as a profession. The diversity here refers to the distinctive characteristics of the two communities, which include social life style, values, hierarchies of values and attitude. It is also the purpose of this research to compare the attitudes of Libyan male and female professional librarians towards their profession. Another purpose of this study is to investigate if working in different types of libraries such as academic, public and special will have a different effect on Libyan professional librarians' attitudes towards their profession.The population of this study consisted of all Libyan librarians who at the time were employed in academic and special libraries, and all Libyan librarians who at the time were employed in public libraries that are located in the Tripolitanian area.Thornton's scale to measure librarians' attitudes towards librarianship was selected to be used in this study. In order to determine whether the instrument (scale) items possess the desired qualities of measurement and discriminability when used in different settings (Libyan libraries) and with different subjects, (Libyan librarians) and in order to revise and debug the scale by diagnosing and correcting failings, if any, the following steps were taken: (1) Refinement of the instrument (interviewing subjects). (2) Validation of the instrument, (construct validity). (3) Reliability of the instrument. (Split half). (4) Translating the instrument into Arabic. (5) Pilot study.A computer utilizing (SPSS) Statistical Package for Social Science was used for analyses and comparison.The study's major findings indicated that: (1) Libyan librarians working in libraries located in urban communities have a significantly higher positive attitude towards their profession than those who work in libraries located in rural communities. (2) Libyan rural librarians' gender has no significant effect on librarians' attitude towards their profession. (3) Libyan female librarians working in libraries located in urban communities have a significantly higher positive attitude towards their profession than Libyan male librarians working in libraries located in urban communities. (4) Libyan male librarians working in libraries located in urban communities have a significantly higher positive attitude towards their profession than Libyan male librarians working in libraries located in rural communities. (5) Library location has no significant effect on Libyan female librarians' attitude towards their profession. (6) Library type has no significant effect on Libyan librarians' attitude towards their profession. (7) Libyan librarians have positive attitudes towards their profession