Asia-Pacific Conference on Library & Information Education & Practice, 2009

EFFECT OF LIBRARIAN CERTIFICATION ON
KNOWLEDGE AND MOTIVATION OF JAPANESE LIBRARIANSKEITA TSUJI
Graduate School of Library, Information and Media Studies,University of Tsukuba
1-2 Kasuga, Tsukuba-city, Ibaraki-ken 305-8550, Japankeita@slis.tsukuba.ac.jp

FUYUKI YOSHIKANE
Department of Research for University Evaluation,
National Institution for Academic Degrees and University Evaluation
1-29-1 Gakuennishimachi, Kodaira, Tokyo 187-8587, Japanfuyuki@niad.ac.jp

KYO KAGEURA
Library and Information Science Course, Graduate School of Education, the University of Tokyo
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japankyo@p.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Introduction. There are not many kinds of librarian certification in Japan. Among them, Shisho (SC) isalmost the only certification for public librarians, but few libraries and parent organizations (e.g., local
public entities) take this certification seriously. About half of full-time-employee (FTE) public librarians
do not have an SC. However, from this background, can we conclude that SC is useless? To see what theeffect of SC certification really is, we conducted a survey.
Method. We asked questions about (1) the knowledge and skills of librarians and (2) their motivation to(a) librarians with an SC certification, (b) librarians without SC, (c) non-librarians with SC, and (d) nonlibrarians without SC. The total number of respondents was 700 (numbers of types (a), (b), (c) and (d)were 137, 124, 114 and 325, respectively). We used an Internet survey service provided by Yahoo! Japan.
The survey was conducted from January 18 to 29, 2008.
Results. The librarians with SC knew the meanings of library-related terms and were confident in using
database search techniques. On the other hand, the librarians without SC did not know basic terms suchas "reference service", "OPAC" or "ILL" and their knowledge and skills seemed to be no more thanwould be expected of ordinary library users. As for job motivation, our results showed that many librarians with SC wanted to continue their jobs and wished to improve their skills and knowledge, while nota few FTE librarians without SC replied that they did not want that. As for their reasons for becoming librarians, "Because the parent organization ordered me to work at the library" was the most chosen
among FTE librarians without SC.
Conclusion. If all the other conditions are the same, libraries and their parent organization should preferably place people with SC certifications in libraries.

1. Introduction
There are not many kinds of librarian certification in Japan. Among them, Shisho is almost the only
certification for public librarians. 1 However, few libraries and parent organizations value Shisho librarian certification (henceforth SC) and about half of public librarians do not have one.2 Is SC useless forlibrarians? The present study is intended to assess the effect of having an SC on the competences oflibrarians. Although our primary goal is to reveal its effect on librarians, we will investigate its effecton non-librarians too. More than 12,000 students acquire SC in more than 250 colleges and universities
in Japan every year (Miwa et al. (2006)). 99% of them do not become librarians. In the sense that alarge number of non-librarians with SC are being produced through LIS education, SC's effect on theirabilities is an important issue.
Acquiring any kind of certification is thought to have the following effects on the acquirer: (1) acquisition of knowledge, (2) strengthening of motivation toward subsequent learning, (3) increase in
self-confidence and (4) favorable treatment when looking for jobs because of the skill certification. Of
course, these effects are not independent and in many cases one will kindle another. This study particu1

It is stipulated in Article 5 of the Library Law in Japan.
As of April 1st 2007, the number of FTE public librarians is 13,573. Among them, librarians with SC
number 6,914 (J.L.A. Editorial Board of Library Year Book (2008)).
2

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larly spotlights items (1) and (2) above. In other words, we would like to answer the following questions: Does SC result in acquisition of knowledge and skills? Are librarians with SC still interested in
improving themselves? It goes without saying that any attempt to prove a cause and effect relationshipwith the acquisition of certification is difficult. However, through a comparison of the four groups
mentioned below, we hope to clarify the covariant relationship between certification acquisition andeach attribute and paint a fairly realistic picture of the effects of acquiring certification.
We surveyed the following individuals who graduated from university on their knowledge andskills obtained through acquiring SC and motivation in regard to the jobs and services they are engagedin:(a) Individuals who have SC and are currently working at a library,(b) Individuals who have SC and have never worked in a library,(c) Individuals who do not have SC and are currently working at a library, and(d) Individuals who do not have SC and have never worked in a library.
Here, the term "university" refers to both junior colleges and four-year universities. The term "library"refers to the National Diet Library, prefecture, municipal, and ward libraries, and elementary, juniorhigh school, high school, and university libraries.3 The positions included in "work" include regularstaff members, non full-time staff members, and part-time workers.
Though there have been various discussions of the state of library and information science education in colleges and universities (Shibata (1994); Maekawa (1995); Asahina (2001); Ooshiro (2001);
Sakata (2002)), of which LIPER is a good example (Nemoto (2004); Miwa et al. (2006); Ueda et al.
(2005); Ueda et al. (2006)), empirical survey research focused on individuals with SC are not common.
This is probably because it has been difficult to implement follow-up surveys focusing on individuals
who acquired SC but chose not to work as a librarian (group (b) above). Because individual privacy isprotected, most universities would not reveal contact information about such individuals. This study
took that problem into account and employed a new method, i.e., an Internet survey. In an Internet
survey, we can ask questions such as, "Do you have an SC?" and, "Are you currently a librarian?" tosome hundreds of thousands of monitors nationwide in a preliminary stage. We can then choose only
the individuals who fit the conditions (i.e., the four types of people mentioned earlier) and ask themdetailed questions.

2. Related Studies
Despite their importance, empirical surveys on people with and without SC are not common. Maeda(1985) reported the basic attributes, such as age, sex, and working years, of public librarians in Osaka
Prefecture. But librarians with SC were not distinguished from those without SC. The Practical Social
Education Research Center in National Institute for Educational Policy Research (2007) conducted alarge survey on the current status of public librarians in Japan. But the target was limited to librarians
with SC, and a comparison with librarians without SC was not made.

3. Method
The present study used the Yahoo! Research4 Internet survey. We conducted a preliminary survey tofind individuals for the four groups described in Section 1 and asked selected persons to respond to themain survey.
3.1 Preliminary Survey
The preliminary survey requested respondents to select the qualifications that they currently had, andthose who selected SC from 23 choices (such as certified public accountant and teaching license) wereassumed to have SC. To see whether the respondent had worked at a library, the preliminary survey
included the question, “After graduation from university or junior college, have you ever worked at alibrary (including part time, temporary staff, etc., but not including volunteer activities)?” We selected
the final subjects from these candidates by using the sample adjustment described in Section 3.2.
3

We should have asked only public librarians because SC is a certification intended for them. But we
asked other types of librarians because (1) it was difficult to obtain enough public librarians and (2)there is no certification for university and national librarians in Japan, and we expect that SC is also
effective for such librarians.
4
http://research.yahoo.co.jp/

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Asia-Pacific Conference on Library & Information Education & Practice, 2009
3.2 Sample Adjustment
Four attributes that were considered to contribute to the differences between groups were controlled inadvance. They were (1) sex, (2) age, (3) junior college or university graduate, and (4) liberal arts majoror science major.5 For instance, the proportion of women with liberal arts majors is relatively higher for
people with SC than those without SC. Thus, even if some differences between groups (a) and (c) wereobserved, the inference that these differences are simply related to there being more women in group(a) rather than having SC might be sustainable. Here, in order to avoid such an argument, respondentsfor (d) were selected to have the same composition ratio with (b) for the above four attributes. For
instance, the proportion of women and junior college graduates in group (d) would have the same values as that for group (b). Thus, the effects of the four attributes would be equal for (b) and (d), and theeffect of the attribute of SC should be easier to observe. We wanted to use this policy for group (a) and(c) too, but the group (c) candidates obtained from the preliminary survey were not sufficiently numerous for this type of composition ratio adjustment. Thus, group (c) was not adjusted. As discussed later,
the ratios of the four attributes of group (a) and (c) were found to be quite similar.

4. Results
The preliminary survey was conducted from January 18 to 20, 2008, and main survey from January 24
to 29. After the preliminary survey, a total of 851 individuals who belonged to any of the four groups
were selected and requested to respond to the main survey. A total of 708 individuals responded, andthere were 700 valid responses. The number of responses for groups (a)-(d) were (a) 137, (b) 114, (c)124, and (d) 325.
4.1 Basic Attributes
Table 1 shows the results for sex, age, junior college or universities graduated, and liberal arts orscience major. 6 With regards to sex, there was a high proportion of women (86.8%) among nonlibrarians with SC. This value was used to adjust the sex ratio for the non-librarians without SC sample.
The proportion of women among non-librarians without SC (88.0%) is the result of such an adjustment.
The composition ratio of the age structure peaked in the 30s for all 4 groups. As this differs fromthe age composition ratio of the general population, this indicates a bias in this survey method and canbe said to show the limits of the Internet survey.
We can see from Table 1 that the proportions of sex, ages, and college or university graduates do
not differ significantly between librarians with and without SC. In addition, the proportions of science
graduates among librarians with and without SC were 8.0% (=2.2+3.6+1.5+0.7%) and 5.6%, respectively, and they were not significantly different. Therefore, the observed difference between librarians
with and without SC, which we will describe in the next section, is likely to have been derived from
attributes other than the above. We will relate the differences to SC.
4.2 Affiliation and Responsibilities
The results for non-librarians will be shown first and then the ones for librarians.
We asked non-librarians what kind of work they were engaged in. The results are shown in Table
2.7 For instance, we can see that 6.3% of non-librarians without SC are engaged in the constructionindustry while only 1.3% of non-librarians with SC are engaged in it. Although most ratios do notsignificantly differ between those with and without SC, the ratios concerning bookstore and information technology are significantly different (at the 0.01 level and 0.05 level, respectively). It can be said
that relatively more non-librarians with SC than those without SC have jobs in these industries.
We asked the librarians the type of library that they worked in and whether they were full time(FTE) or part-time workers. The results are shown in Table 3. We can see that the ratio of university
librarian among FTE librarians with SC is 30.0% while the ratio among FTE librarians without SC is
12.5%. Generally, the ratio of school librarians among FTE librarians without SC is higher than thatamong FTE librarians with SC. The reverse can be said about university librarians. As for the otherlibrarian types, there seems to be little difference.

5

The definition of science included the four fields of science, engineering, agriculture, and medicine/pharmacology; other fields were considered to be liberal arts.
6“N” represents the sample size.
7
Table 2 does not include respondents who are not working. Therefore, the total number of respondents (N) is different from N in Table 1.

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Asia-Pacific Conference on Library & Information Education & Practice, 2009
NonNonLibrarians
Librarians
Librarians
Librarians withoutwith SC
without
with SC
SC
SC
Male
22.6
13.2
25.0
12.0
Female
77.4
86.8
75.0
88.0
20s
35.8
23.7
35.5
24.9
30s
49.6
47.4
46.8
47.4
40s
14.6
28.9
17.7
27.7
Junior college
21.2
29.8
24.2
32.3
University Keio University
4.4
0.0
2.4
1.2
University of LIS
2.9
1.8
0.0
0.0
Other
66.4
66.7
66.9
63.4
Graduate school
5.1
1.8
6.5
3.1
Science
Science
2.2
0.0
0.8
0.3
Engineering
3.6
0.9
3.2
1.5
Agriculture
1.5
0.0
0.0
0.3
Medicine
0.7
0.9
1.6
0.3
Liberal arts Law
5.1
3.5
7.3
4.9
Politics
1.5
0.0
1.6
1.2
Economics
4.4
1.8
8.1
8.0
Business
2.9
0.9
7.3
9.8
Sociology
2.9
7.9
4.0
7.1
Education
8.8
3.5
16.9
9.8
Literature
54.0
62.3
29.8
29.8
Home economics
1.5
3.5
4.8
10.2
Arts
1.5
0.9
2.4
3.1
LIS
7.3
7.0
0.8
0.3
Other
2.2
7.0
11.3
13.2
N
137
114
124
325

Table 1. Sex, age and academic career of the respondents.
NonNonLibrarians Librarians
with SC
without SC

Agriculture, forestry and fisheries
Construction
Electricity
MachineAutomobile
EnergyTransport
Health care
Mass media
Publication
Bookstore
Education
Information technology
FinanceInsurance
Real estate
Restaurants
Other manufacturing
Other wholesale
Other
N

0.0
1.3
0.0
2.6
2.6
0.0
2.6
6.4
0.0
5.1
2.6
14.1
16.7
7.7
2.6
2.6
1.3
6.4
7.7
17.9
78

1.0
6.3
1.6
2.6
2.1
1.0
3.6
6.3
1.6
3.1
0.0
8.3
8.9
8.9
4.7
1.0
2.6
10.9
11.5
14.1
192

Table 2. Occupations of people with and without SC.

Public library
University library
School library
National Diet LibraryN

Librarians with
Librarians without
Shisho Certificate
Shisho Certificate
FTE
Part-time
FTE
Part-time
34.0
46.0
34.4
56.5
30.0
37.9
12.5
32.6
24.0
14.9
50.0
8.7
12.0
1.1
3.1
2.2
50
87
32
92

Table 3.Types of employment and libraries.

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We asked the librarians what services they provide (allowing multiple answers). Table 4 lists the ratiosof the respondents. For instance, 42.0% of FTE librarians with SC are engaged in children's services.
This table shows that librarians with SC are engaged in specialized (such as reference services andclassification) and more services than librarians without SC. Relatively more FTE librarians without
SC are engaged in accounting and general affairs.
Librarians with
Shisho Certificate
FTE
Part-time
Circulation transaction
78.0
83.9
Reference service
82.0
66.7
Children's service
42.0
32.2
Service for the handicapped
20.0
6.9
Service for the aged
14.0
5.7
Library cooperation (interlibrary loan, etc)
46.0
33.3
Shelf reading
66.0
75.9
Selection
58.0
36.8
Cataloging
46.0
37.9
Classification
52.0
43.7
Input of various data
62.0
60.9
Accession
62.0
51.7
Preparation
54.0
51.7
Accounting and general affairs
34.0
11.5
Planning and management
50.0
4.6
Others
14.0
11.5
N
50
87

Librarians without
Shisho Certificate
FTE
Part-time
40.6
53.3
28.1
21.7
25.0
12.0
3.1
5.4
0.0
3.3
6.3
2.2
40.6
30.4
37.5
13.0
25.0
14.1
21.9
18.5
50.0
47.8
37.5
21.7
18.8
13.0
40.6
6.5
25.0
3.3
0.0
2.2
32
92

Table 4. Services engaged in by librarians.
4.3 Knowledge of Library-related Terms and Concepts
4.3.1 Knowledge of Library Terms
We asked respondents how well they knew 20 terms. The choices were "I know this term well," "I haveheard of this term," and "I have not heard of this term". The ratios of respondents who chose the third
choice are shown in Table 5. For instance, we can see that none of the FTE librarians with SC (i.e.
0.0%) answered "I have not heard of this term" in regard to "OPAC," whereas 56.3% of FTE librarians
without SC answered that way.
Let us explain the characteristics of the terms. We regard terms (1)-(9) to be basic and an understanding of them ought to be necessary for any sort of library work.8 Terms (10)-(13) are rather historically important.9 Terms (14)-(15) are related to intellectual freedom, and (16)-(20) are terms that appeared or have become an issue recently.10 11The historical terms were not well known to even FTE
librarians with SC. The basic terms were well known to FTE librarians with SC.
The FTE librarians with SC knew the terms the best, in the sense that the ratios in Table 5 are low.
The part-time librarians with SC followed them. It is a serious problem that librarians without SC do
not know much about even the basic terms. Half of them did not know "Reference service", "OPAC" or"SOGO-TAISHAKU (ILL)". About 80% of them did not know "Legal deposit" or "ILL". Interestingly,
non-librarians with SC know better than librarians without SC.

8

Terms (6) and (7) are synonyms for inter-library loan. "ILL" is written in the Roman alphabet and"SOGO-TAISHAKU" is written in Japanese Kanji characters.
9
Except in a few cases, the "SDI service" has not been provided in Japan. The term is no longer used.
In that sense, it can be regarded as a historical term.
10
The library (18) is one of the first instances of system (17).
11(16), (17) and (18) are currently in effect. Some libraries provide (19), while others do not. (20) does
not yet exist.

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Asia-Pacific Conference on Library & Information Education & Practice, 2009

(1) Reference service(2) OPAC(3) ISBN(4) Legal deposit(5) Archive(6) ILL(7) SOGO-TAISHAKU (ILL)(8) Bibliographic utility(9) Acid paper(10) Five laws of library science by Ranganathan(11) Farmington Plan
(12) CHUSHO Report(13) SDI service(14) Library Bill of Rights

Inappropriate discard by FUNABASHI-SHINISHI Public Library
Law concerning promotion of the reading(16)
activity of children
SHITEI-KANRISHA-SEIDO (Designated(17)
manager system)
YAMANAKAKO-JOHO-SOZOKAN (public(18)
library)(19) Document delivery service (DDS)(20) JOKYU-SHISHO (senior librarian)N(15)

Librarians with
Librarians without
NonNonShisho Certificate Librarians Shisho Certificate Librarians
with SC
PartPart- without SC
FTE
FTE
time1.1
time
0.0
12.3
50.0
44.6
65.8
0.0
8.0
51.8
56.3
51.1
80.3
0.0
2.3
26.3
50.0
41.3
66.8
4.0
16.1
48.2
75.0
80.4
88.3
2.0
6.9
10.5
25.0
22.8
27.4
20.0
24.1
83.3
81.3
80.4
95.4
0.0
2.3
34.2
56.3
55.4
74.5
10.0
21.8
59.6
75.0
79.3
88.9
8.0
10.3
36.8
68.8
64.1
67.7
28.0
23.0
71.9
81.3
92.4
97.2
58.0
75.9
86.8
87.5
91.3
96.3
26.0
31.0
74.6
87.5
81.5
84.9
38.0
60.9
78.1
81.3
81.5
93.2
0.0
8.0
50.9
65.6
67.4
88.3
14.0

29.9

75.4

75.0

84.8

90.2

10.0

12.6

57.0

56.3

70.7

81.5

8.0

24.1

66.7

71.9

71.7

84.0

32.0

75.9

90.4

90.6

90.2

95.7

38.0
32.0
50

50.6
34.5
87

69.3
52.6
114

71.9
71.9
32

76.1
65.2
92

88.6
69.8
325

Table 5. Ratios of respondents who answered "I have not heard of this term."
We previously saw that about half of the librarians without SC answered "I have not heard of this term"in regard to "Reference service" and "ILL". We thought that they might know of the existence of these
services but did not know the terms. Accordingly, we asked the following questions: (a) "Do you knowthat the libraries borrow books from other libraries if they do not have the books you asked?" and (b)"Did you know that librarians answer questions such as “Do you have books about PFI?” or “How doyou pronounce "木天蓼"?”. The ratios of respondents who answered "No, I did not know it" are shownin Table 6. For instance, we can see that 18.8% of FTE librarians without SC did not know the serviceof question (a), i.e. inter-library loan. Although the ratios are relatively lower than those in Table 5,
they are still unfavorably high. Nearly 40% of librarians without SC did not know the service of question (b), i.e. reference service, and the ratio is higher than that of non-librarians with SC.
From these results, we can conclude that the librarians without SC do not know much about libraryrelated terms and concepts (or services). They should learn more.12(a) Inter-library loan(b) Reference
serviceN

Librarians with
NonShisho Certificate Librarians
FTE
Part-time with SC
2.0
0.0
10.5
0.0
1.1
25.4
50
87
114

Librarians without
NonShisho Certificate Librarians
FTE
Part-time without SC
18.8
18.5
28.6
37.5
35.9
58.5
32
92
325

Table 6. Ratios of respondents who answered "No, I did not know it."
4.3.2 Knowledge of Databases
We asked their familiarity with databases. Table 7 shows the ratios of respondents who answered "Iknow how to use this database well.". For instance, 24.0% of FTE librarians with SC answered"PubMed or MEDLINE" or the like, while only 3.1% of FTE librarians without SC answered so.
Comparing FTE librarians, we can see that there were significant differences (at the 0.01 level) between the ratios of with SC and without SC for 14 databases (all except COSMOS and TSR). Comparing part-time librarians, there were statistical differences for 6 databases (i.e. ZASSI-KIJI-SAKUIN,
12

Incidentally, we can see in Table 5 and Table 6 that 60% of non-librarians without SC (i.e. ordinary
people) do not know about the existence of the reference service. Libraries should make an effort toinform them about it.

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Asia-Pacific Conference on Library & Information Education & Practice, 2009
CiNii, InternetArchive, "JDreamII or JOIS", "PubMed or MEDLINE", "Webcat or Webcat Plus"13 14).
Therefore, it can be reasonably said that librarians with SC are more confident in using databases thanlibrarians without SC.
Comparing non-librarians, we see that there were significant differences (at the 0.01 level) between
the ratios with SC and ones without SC for three databases: KIKUZO, ZASSI-KIJI-SAKUIN, and"Webcat or Webcat Plus". Because these are representative databases of newspaper articles, journal
papers, and books in Japan, we can say that SC enables holders to search for such materials.
It is interesting to note that in comparing non-librarians with SC and librarians without SC, significant
differences at the 0.01 level were not observed in all the databases. In that sense, the search skills orcompetencies of librarians without SC do not differ from those of non-librarians with SC. As shown in
Table 4, librarians without SC are not limited to working in a technical or back office capacity and theywould be sometimes asked by library users for bibliographic information. They should know more
about databases, at least ZASSI-KIJI-SAKUIN and Webcat Plus.

NIKKEI TELECOM 21
KIKUZO (by Asahi Shimbun Company)
COSMOS (by TEIKOKU Databank)
TSR (by Tokyo Shoko Research)
DIALOG
JDreamII or JOIS
G-Search@niftyPATOLIS or WPI
PubMed or MEDLINE
CA/CAplus/CA-SEARCH
Webcat or WebcatPlus
ZASSI-KIJI-SAKUIN (by National Diet
Library)
CiNii(by National Institute of Informatics)
InternetArchive
Google Book Search
Other than the aboveN

Librarians with Shisho
NonCertificate
Librarians
FTE
Part-time with SC
44.0
20.7
7.0
54.0
19.5
9.6
22.0
3.4
4.4
14.0
3.4
1.8
22.0
5.7
2.6
22.0
17.2
0.9
18.0
6.9
3.5
40.0
12.6
16.7
12.0
1.1
0.9
24.0
17.2
0.9
12.0
1.1
0.0
70.0
51.7
10.5
66.0
58.6
21.9
38.0
36.8
3.5
20.0
10.3
5.3
56.0
19.5
21.1
6.0
17.2
53.5
50
87
114

Librarians without
NonShisho Certificate
Librarians
FTE
Part-time without SC
6.3
13.0
7.1
9.4
9.8
4.0
6.3
6.5
4.9
3.1
4.3
0.9
0.0
2.2
1.5
3.1
2.2
0.3
3.1
3.3
4.0
12.5
19.6
18.5
0.0
1.1
0.6
3.1
2.2
0.3
0.0
0.0
0.0
6.3
5.4
3.1
12.5
14.1
4.9
6.3
9.8
2.5
0.0
1.1
2.2
15.6
23.9
20.9
59.4
39.1
60.3
32
92
325

Table 7. Ratios of respondents who answered "I know how to use this database well."
4.4 Why did they become librarians?
We asked why they became librarians (multiple answers were allowed).
Table 8 shows the ratios of respondents who selected the choices we gave. For instance, we can seethat 30.0% of FTE librarians with SC selected reason (2). We regard terms (1) and (2) to be ideal reasons in consideration of libraries' role in society. Reasons (3)-(7) indicated satisfaction of wants without a social viewpoint, but are somewhat neutral reasons. Reasons (8)-(12) are rather negative ones.
Although the most chosen reason was (3), reasons (1) and (2) are respectively second and thirdamong librarians with SC. In particular, the ratios of (1) and (2) are significantly different between FTE
librarians with and without SC (at the 0.01 level). FTE librarians without SC most often chose reason(11): "Because parent organization ordered me to work at the library". In Japan, it is often the case thatthe parent organization (i.e. local public entities or universities) orders its staff to work at a libraryirrespective of their background or career aspirations. As a result, some staff who do not want to haveto work at libraries and others who want to cannot work at libraries. The above results seem to be related to this system. As for the negative reasons (8)-(12), librarians without SC choose them slightly
more often than librarians with SC.

13

COSMOS and TSR are business information databases. ZASSI-KIJI-SAKUIN and CiNii are Japanese journal databases. JDreamII and JOIS are scientific-paper databases maintained by JST. Webcat
and Webcat Plus are databases of Japanese books and OPAC of Japa-nese university libraries and aremaintained by the National Institute of Informatics.
14
Among other databases in Table 7, NIKKEI TELECOM 21 is a database containing business information and newspaper articles. G-Search and @nifty are, in fact, vendors of various databases.
PATOLIS is a Japanese database of patent information like WPI.

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Asia-Pacific Conference on Library & Information Education & Practice, 2009
Librarians with
Shisho Certificate
FTE
Part-time
Because libraries connect people and books in a
fascinating way
Because libraries hand down the intellectual(2)
heritage to our posterities(3) Because I want to read various books(4) Because I like children(5) Because librarians are stable in employment
Because I felt an affinity with librarians because(6)
my parents are librarians(7) Because librarians are cool(8) Because librarians can go home at the fixed time(9) Because librarians do not have to work hard(10) Because librarians do not have to talk to people
Because parent organization ordered me to work(11)
at the library
Because I failed to get the other job and had no(12)
choice(13) OthersN(1)

Librarians without
Shisho Certificate
FTE
Part-time

60.0

40.2

25.0

28.3

30.0

13.8

3.1

9.8

62.0
12.0
18.0

77.0
13.8
4.6

28.1
12.5
18.8

43.5
13.0
6.5

8.0

4.6

6.3

1.1

8.0
6.0
2.0
4.0

8.0
8.0
1.1
1.1

3.1
12.5
6.3
3.1

9.8
17.4
4.3
3.3

14.0

2.3

31.3

2.2

2.0

3.4

6.3

15.2

18.0
50

19.5
87

6.3
32

13.0
92

Table 8. Reason they became librarians.
4.5 Job Motivation
We asked the working respondents how much they wanted to continue in their present jobs. The results
are shown in Table 9.15 We can see that 56.0% and 59.8% of FTE and part-time librarians with SC
chose "I want to continue at my job as long as possible." These ratios are significantly higher (at the0.01 level) than the other four groups. In that sense, the librarians with SC are happy with their jobs.
On the other hand, 21.9% (i.e. 12.5% + 9.4%) of FTE librarians without SC wanted to quit their jobs.
The ratio is significantly higher (at the 0.01 level) than the librarians with SC. Although it is not statistically significant, the ratio is higher than that of the non-librarians without SC (i.e. ordinary working
people).16 In that sense, FTE librarians without SC are relatively unhappy with their jobs.
The degree of “wishing to continue in this job” might depend on what services librarians are providing now. Based on that idea, we calculated the ratio of those who want to quit their jobs among FTE
librarians without SC who are engaged in the services in Table 4. The services for which ratios were
the highest were cataloging: 38% (i.e. three people wanted to quit jobs among eight people who were
engaged in cataloging), accounting and general affairs: 31% (likewise, 4 out of 13), and reference service 22% (2 out of 9). Cataloging and reference services require skills and knowledge of librarianship.
If FTE librarians without SC feel depressed in these jobs, FTE librarians with SC should do them instead (FTE librarians with SC who are engaged in these services did not feel like quitting). Accordingly,
the number of FTE librarians with SC should be increased.

I want to continue my job as long as
Ipossible
want to continue my job
I have no idea
I want to quit my job
I want to quit my job as soon as possible
N

Librarians with Shisho
Certificate
FTE
Part-time
56.0
59.8
24.0
18.4
20.0
16.1
0.0
3.4
0.0
2.3
50
87

NonLibrarians
with SC
22.9
12.6
51.8
1.2
11.5
87

Librarians without
NonShisho Certificate
Librarians
FTE
Part-time without SC
28.1
31.5
23.6
34.4
23.9
21.9
15.6
32.6
39.3
12.5
8.7
8.4
9.4
3.3
6.7
32
92
224

Table 9. Percentages of respondents who want to continue the present jobs
To ascertain the respondents' desire to improve themselves as librarians, we asked how much interest
they had in competency tests and professional graduate schools for librarianship. We asked "Do you
want to take a competency test of skills and knowledge for librarians if such a test comes into being?"
15

Because people who are not working now were eliminated from the analysis, the number of respondents is different from the numbers in other tables.
16
More university librarians and public librarians wanted to quit their jobs. Two out of four FTE university librarians without SC wanted to quit their jobs and three out of 11 FTE public librarians without
SC wanted to quit their jobs.

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Asia-Pacific Conference on Library & Information Education & Practice, 2009and "Do you want to enter professional graduate school for librarians if such a school comes into being?" The results are shown in Table 10 and 11. We can see in Table 10 that 36.0% and 35.6% of FTE
and part-time librarians with SC chose "I want to take it very much," respectively. On the other hand,
only 3.1% and 10.9% of FTE and part-time librarians without SC answered that way. Similar results
were obtained for the questions about professional graduate school. We can see in Table 11 that while
56.0% of FTE librarians with SC chose "I want to enter if I can continue my job," only 15.6% of FTE
librarians without SC chose it. While about 80% of librarians with SC answered "I want to enter,"about 30% and 50% of FTE and part-time librarians without SC answered that way.
From these results, we can say that librarians with SC have a stronger desire to improve themselves
than those without SC.
Librarians with Shisho
Certificate
FTE
Part-time
I want to take it very much
36.0
35.6
I want to take it
50.0
52.9
I do not want to take it
10.0
10.3
I do not want to take it at
4.0
1.1
all
N
50
87

NonLibrarians
with SC
13.2
52.6
25.4
8.8
114

Librarians without
Shisho Certificate
FTE
Part-time
3.1
10.9
40.6
43.5
40.6
29.3
15.6
16.3
32
92

NonLibrarians
without SC
6.2
45.5
26.5
21.8
325

Table 10. Percentages of respondents who want to take a competency test for librarians

I want to enter even if I quit my job
I want to enter if I can continue my job
I want to enter if anything
I do not want to enter if anything
I do not want to enter at all
OthersN

Librarians with
NonShisho Certificate Librarians
FTE
Part-time with SC
8.0
1.1
1.8
56.0
48.3
26.3
20.0
28.7
24.6
10.0
6.9
22.8
4.0
6.9
16.7
2.0
8.0
7.9
50
87
114

Librarians without
NonShisho Certificate
Librarians
FTE
Part-time without SC
0.0
1.1
1.5
15.6
25.0
16.3
15.6
22.8
18.5
18.8
21.7
27.1
43.8
26.1
31.4
6.3
3.3
5.2
32
92
325

Table 11. Percentages of respondents who want to enter professional graduate school of librarians.

5. Discussion
As we have already seen, librarians without SC do not know much about library-related terms such as"reference service", "OPAC". For some terms, their knowledge seems to be no better than one would
expect for an average citizen. Conversely, librarians with SC knew the terms much better, regardless ofwhether they were FTE or part-time librarians. In addition, they knew how to use the representative
databases better than the librarians without SC. The knowledge and skills of librarians with SC thus
seems to be superior to those of librarians without SC.
As for job motivation, our results showed that many librarians with SC wanted to continue theirjobs and wished to improve their skills and knowledge. On the other hand, not a few FTE librarians
without SC wanted to quit their jobs and were not interested in improving themselves.
As for the reason for becoming a librarian, "Because parent organization ordered me to work at thelibrary" was the most chosen reason by FTE librarians without SC. As we mentioned earlier, it is often
the case that the parent organization orders its staff to work of a library, irrespective of their background and career aspirations. Baba & Yokoyama (1976) conducted a survey and obtained answers
from 227 Japanese university libraries. They found that 104 universities move librarians to departments
other than libraries. Suzuki (1998) analyzed university libraries where the librarians are moved to otherdepartment regardless of whether they have SC or not. It was shown that 396 university libraries out of
734 (54.0%) admitted to such moves in 1989, and 546 out of 902 (60.5%) in 1995. People who want tocontinue their jobs and improve themselves will obtain knowledge and skills faster and deeper thanthose who do not. The previously mentioned results on librarians' knowledge and skills indicate that.

6. Conclusions
To see the effect of Shisho (SC) certification, we conducted a survey of people with and without SC.
We found that librarians with SC knew library-related terms and were confident in making databasesearches. On the other hand, librarians without SC did not know very basic terms and their knowledge
and skills seemed to be less than what one would expect. As for job motivation, our results showed that307

Asia-Pacific Conference on Library & Information Education & Practice, 2009
many librarians with SC wanted to continue their jobs and wished to improve their skills and knowledge, while not a few FTE librarians without SC did not want that. From these results, we can conclude that libraries and their parent organizations should preferably place people with SC in libraries.
In the present study, the respondent librarians included various types such as public librarians anduniversity librarians. Because they are likely to differ in nature, we will conduct further investigations
by collecting more samples and categorizing them. Furthermore, we would like to conduct an interview
or use another survey method to ascertain the effect of SC more clearly.

References
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About the Authors
Kyo Kageura earned his BA and MS in Education from the University of Tokyo in 1986 and 1988,
respectively, and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Manchester in 1993. He is currently an
associate professor of the University of Tokyo and specializes in aiding translation and quantitative
linguistics.
Fuyuki Yoshikane earned his BA and MS in Education from the University of Tokyo in 1994 and 2000.
He is currently an assistant professor of the National Institution for Academic Degrees and University
Evaluation and specializes in bibliometrics.
Keita Tsuji earned his BA, MS, and Ph.D. in Education from the University of Tokyo in 1994, 1997,
and 2003. He is currently an associate professor of the University of Tsukuba and specializes in automatic thesaurus construction and LIS education.

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