Support for Newly Employed Librarians’ Workplace Adaption: From the Perspective of Organizational Socialization Tactics

Abstract

　This work sheds light on the present conditions and challenges in supporting newly employed elementary and junior high school librarians in adapting to the workplace from the perspective of business administration studies’ organizational socialization tactics, and in doing so, aims to consider methods for improvement. Ten first-year school librarians working in three cities, selected from among ordinance-designated cities that staff all schools with school librarians, were chosen for interviews, which were conducted and analyzed with the KJ method. The results showed that primary factors such as training, support from others, a vision of a future as a librarian, and having a one-person workplace affected school librarians’ adaption to the workplace. The results also showed that limited opportunities to obtain support from others and to gain a vision of a future as a librarian were the main problems facing librarians. These results demonstrate the necessity of creating opportunities for training in which librarians from different schools can interact and ask questions, making a type of network to support communication between school librarians, improving school librarians’ compensation such that they can build a sufficient career, and forming an assessment system for school librarians as measures to resolve the aforementioned problems.