The Changing Nature of Jobs: A Paraprofessional Time Series

This study attempts to determine if paraprofessional jobs have changed significantly as a result of automation during the period between 1975 and 1990. Three raters reviewed job descriptions dated 1975, 1981, and 1990 from the technical services department of a small academic library using the Position Analysis Questionnaire, a widely used structured job analysis tool. Analysis of the resulting data-standard z scores on thirteen overall job dimensions using ANOVA and omega-squared estimates-indicates no statistically significant differences among the jobs. Although these results show that the change in jobs over time is more idiosyncratic than expected, they may also illustrate the de-skilling effect of computers on library functions.