Khozestan Institute for higher education students' viewpoints on librarians' nonverbal communication skills

This study attempted to investigate Khouzestan Institute for Higher Education students' viewpoints on librarians' nonverbal communication skills and their roles to attract the audience. This is an analytical survey which used a researcher-made questionnaire to measure librarians’ communication skills in five dimensions by 39 statements. It also measured students’ satisfaction of librarians’ performance through one question. The population consisted of 3500 bachelor students enrolled in second semester of 2016-2017 academic year. According to Krejcie and Morgan Table, 346 students were determined as the sample. Using SPSS v.20 software, descriptive and inferential statistics were applied. From the students point of view the total score of nonverbal communication skills of librarians was 4.58±0.71. The highest means belonged to “facial expression” (4.70±.30) and “their situations and hints (4.64±.468). The score of students’ satisfaction with librarians was 4.68±0.47, accordingly.    There are a lot of research on non-verbal communications skills in general; however, there was no sufficient research on librarian's non-verbal communication skills. Library in academic institutions, where librarians interact with the youth, non-verbal communication skills may prevent many unnecessary encounters.