E-librarian competencies and staying relevant in midst of pandemic: Validation and development of instrument with SEM approach

The pandemic changed the way the way the information is being sought, processed, preserved and accessed by library users. This exerted a considerable impact on the existing capabilities and potential of the librarians to manage the transformed information-seeking behaviours across library users worldwide. The change in demands of users seems to possess implications for the manner in which the librarians are skilled and exercise their existing competencies. The pandemic blew open the need for competency change over and competency development in the librarian’s work ambit. The study leveraged the primary data approach to ascertain the factor validity with extractive factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The study was operationalised with the aid of factors ‘Pedagogical knowledge and skills’, ‘Leadership’, ‘Maturity’, ‘ICT Versatility’, ‘Environmental Awareness’, ‘Application of knowledge’, ‘Relationships within the current Profession’, ‘Disaster Management preparedness’ and ‘coping abilities’ The aspects of ‘Pedagogical knowledge and skills’, ‘Leadership’, ‘Maturity’, ‘ICT Versatility’, ‘Environmental Awareness’, ‘Application of knowledge’, ‘Relationships within the current Profession’, ‘Disaster Management preparedness’ and ‘coping abilities’ were observed as inter-related. The librarian’s digital preparedness is in itself a bigger occupational skill set that needs calibrated consideration. In the context of librarian’s preparedness, this could be tantamount to mean that disaster preparedness training, capability and potential is a learned activity and this can be harnessed over a period of time and space.