Exploring personality traits and vocational interests in librarianship

Librarianship is generally one of the most distinguished but misjudged profession throughout the history of information. A stereotypical perception about librarians seems to be stern, timid, and usually unsocial. The purpose of this study is to investigate personality traits in librarians and how different personalities differ in choice of specialities within librarianship.
Explanatory Sequential Mixed Method (ESMM) design was used to conduct this study. In the first phase, data was collected from 213 university librarians using EPQ (Eysenck Personality Questionnaire) across Pakistan. After analyzing the data collected in the first phase, focus group was conducted with 12 representative informants from the same population. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data collected during the focus group. SPSS was used to calculate required statistics such as frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation. Whereas, Nvivo 12 pro was used to establish categorization.
The analysis reveals that mostly librarians have higher score on Extrovert (personality pattern typified by an easy-going person, more social and carefree). Extroverts are more social, risk taker, impulsive, and enjoy always being around people who means friendly and flexible. Findings of this study also suggest that territorial division does not affect the personality traits thus have strong implication on service­oriented specialties and technique-oriented specialties within LIS profession.
The study is conducted on Pakistani university librarians; therefore, results are not largely generalizable. However, results are significant in terms of understanding personality traits within the profession of librarianship.