The Influence of Personal Responsibilities on the Performance of the Staff of University Libraries in Meru County

Job performance of university library staff is based on skills and knowledge in librarianshipwhich can be affected by internal and external factors such as personal responsibilities. Forlibrarians to carry out their duties effectively there is a need for minimal interference of workfrom personal responsibilities. To achieve expected performance, library staff need to prioritizetheir work obligations and balance personal duties outside the workplace. The study's objectivewas to assess the influence of personal responsibilities on the performance of university librarystaff. The study was anchored on border theory. It adopted a descriptive research design. Thestudy's target population was thirty-eight university library staff from four universities in MeruCounty. Census sampling method was adopted with the use of a questionnaire as the mainresearch instrument. The pretest of the research instrument was conducted at Chuka UniversityLibrary to check validity and reliability. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics andinferential statistics while qualitative data was analyzed thematically. SPSS was used toanalyze quantitative data. The findings from the normality test showed normality since all theprobability values of all variables was more than 0.05. The test statistic value was 2.182denoting no violation of auto-correlation assumption. Pearson Product Moment Correlationtechnique was conducted to establish correlation coefficient. There was a positive correlationbetween the work performance and personal responsibilities. The multiple linear regressionindicated the model was statistically significant in forecasting the influence of personalresponsibilities on work performance. This study concluded that there is a relationship betweenpersonal responsibilities and the performance of staff at University Libraries in Meru County.The study will add knowledge to existing scholarly work to benefit students, scholars andresearchers. Further research can be done to shed light to university library management onhow to balance personal responsibilities with work performance for optimal work productivity.Keywords: Personal responsibilities, performance, staff, university libraries