Burnout in New Zealand academic libraries

Abstract

Burnout is a debilitating condition that effects people who work with people. It is primarily caused by chronic emotional stress, but being disappointed in one"s work may be a contributing factor. Chief svmptoms are emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation of one's clients, and reduced personal achievement in one's work. Librarians have been found to suffer from burnout as they are regularly confronted with people who place considerable stress upon them and often give little positive feedback. Management's role in alleviating burnout in the workplace has been widely discussed in the literature. This study surveyed 66 full time qualified librarians in a large academic library in New Zealand using the Maslach Burnout Inventory. We found that burnout was an issue in the library with 47.5% of the respondents demonstrating high levels of burnout on one of the three MBI sub-scales We also found that the emotional exhaustion sub-scale was central to librarian bumout: for all the respondents who had high levels on two burnout sub-scales, one of them was emotional exhaustion. Contrary to our expectations based on previous studies, we found a small positive relationship between burnout and age. and between burnout and experience. We found that the type of library work done by the respondent was a factor in burnout. Across all three burnout sub-scales, managers had the lowest levels of burnout For emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation. the public services librarians had the highest levels of burnout, but the technical services staff suffered the greatest burnout on the personal accomplishment sub-scale. While the library's managers were aware of the need for stress management and were active in promoting good practices they were reluctant to use the term burnout and had not raised awareness of this problem with their staff.