Tacit Knowledge Sharing among Public Librarians: Case of Fars Province

Purpose: A library and information specialist cannot rely only on his academic views. He can perform his job successfully only when he has access to his colleagues' scientific knowledge which is based on their experiences and uses it alongside his own knowledge. Therefore, it is essential and necessary to identify the ways of transferring the tacit knowledge of librarians and the factors affecting this transfer in order to improve the current conditions. Thus, The purpose of the present study is to identify the methods of tacit knowledge transfer and sharing and factors affecting it among the librarians of public libraries in Fars Province. Method: This study is an applied research that was conducted by the survey method. The research population included all 400 librarians of the public libraries in Fars Province, from whom 190 librarians were selected by using simple random sampling. The data collection tool was a questionnaire. The validity of this questionnaire was measured by asking for the opinions of information science specialists and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach 's alpha coefficient (α= 0.82 ). Furthermore, the SPSS (v.21) and Microsoft Excel (2016) were applied to analyze the data. Prioritization of the methods of tacit knowledge transfer and the factors affecting it were performed using the Kruskal-Wallis test, and the multiple linear regression and its coefficients were used to measure the relationships between the influential factors and the demographic characteristics of librarians. Findings: The results indicated that the most important methods of transferring knowledge between librarians of public libraries in Fars Province were verbal communication between library staff and their participation in in-service training courses, respectively. From the perspective of respondents, all three factors, including personal, organizational and technological, affect the tacit knowledge transfer; The need for a proper reward system (among the organizational factors), access to Internet (among the technological factors) and maintaining the job position (among the personal factors) have been the most important factors from the viewpoint of librarians. However, in the overall comparison, organizational factors were assigned the highest score and personal factors were assigned the lowest score by the librarians. Results of the regression equation also confirmed the existence of a significant relationship between the librarians' age and gender and the technological factors. Originality/value: So far, no research has been conducted within the country on the methods of tacit knowledge transfer and the factors affecting it among the librarians of public libraries. Therefore, the current research can pave the way for other studies in this field. In addition, among the studied factors, organizational factors and then technological factors were assigned the highest scores by librarians. Paying attention to these results can be useful in the short and long term planning of Iran Public Libraries Foundation in order to facilitate and reinforce tacit knowledge transfer among librarians. Furthermore, the results of the research showed that the existence of joint agreements and programs between Iran Public Libraries Foundation and universities, educational and research centers in order to hold different training courses can be effective in facilitating knowledge sharing. Keywords: Knowledge sharing, Tacit knowledge transfer, Librarians, Public libraries