Page 151 - Journal of Library Science in China 2020 Vol.46

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150 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.12, 2020

The roles of reading promoters in libraries: Dimensions, antecedents and
consequences
〇a*
LI Wu〇, YANG Fei, MAO Yuanyi & LIU Yu
Although reading promotion programs have become one of the main services in today’s libraries,
there is still a great deal of ambiguity surrounding the role of reading promoters, which severely
restricts the professional development of this field. However, this issue has received little research
attention. Drawing upon the past research examining the roles of public relations practitioners and
team members, the present study adopted an empirical approach to identifying the roles of reading
promoters in libraries and exploring their antecedents and consequences. Specially, the study aims
to answer three questions：1) What are the dimensions or types of the roles of reading promoters
in libraries? 2) What personal and organizational characteristics will influence the degree of
librarians’ participation in different roles? 3) Will the degree of librarians’ participation in different

roles predict their perception of role importance and job satisfaction？
The target population of this study is librarians who have been involved in at least one
reading promotion program. Given the fact that there are no established scale measures for
reading promoters’ roles, we started with a focus group study and used the results to construct a
questionnaire for the subsequent larger-scale online survey. The survey was conducted over two
weeks in March 2018, and 554 valid samples were collected. Data analyses were conducted in
several steps with SPSS 22.0. Firstly, a split-half validation procedure was used to evaluate and
then confirm the dimension structure. Using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses,
the study shows that in the current practice, the roles of reading promoters include organization-
liaison, promotion-evaluation, investigation-planning, on-site leading, and internal counseling.
Beyond that, the regression analyses indicate that a reading promoter’s professional title as well
as the type (public libraries, academic libraries or school libraries) and location (in first-tier city-
located or non-first-tier city) of the libraries they work at can predict how much they are involved
in their different roles. Additionally, their degree of participation significantly influences their
perception of role importance and job satisfaction respectively.
This study and its findings fill a gap in the current literature and help us better understand the
roles of reading promoters in libraries. The different roles established in the current study, to a great
extent, reflect the continuum nature of the professional job of a reading promoter, which ranges from
managerial to mixed to technical work. Among them, organization-liaison lies at the managerial end,
promotion-evaluation at the technical end, and investigation-planning falling in the middle due to its
mixed nature, whereas the other two roles may fall on any point of the continuum. Furthermore, the
results, particularly those concerning the antecedents and consequences of different roles, provide
insightful direction for future training and the development of reading promoters working in libraries.

* Correspondence should be addressed to LI Wu, Email: lowie@sina.com, ORCID: 0000-0002-1633-2363.