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Abstract
Stress and burnout among librarians and library employees has been the focus of a number of studies over the years. Results have varied considerably, especially regarding the incidence of burnout. New developments in understanding about job engagement shed light on employees' response to stress, the dynamics of burnout and a range of inner health. This paper will describe a study of the incidence of burnout and job engagement among a sample of business librarians. Implications for library employers will also be addressed.
Introduction
Studies of stress and burnout among librarians over the years have reached varied conclusions in trying to characterize or quantify the issues. Burnout - a term that is often used in a casual way to describe one's perceived stress level - is more formally appreciated as a work-life imbalance issue whose understanding has been refined by careful research for about thirty years. Job engagement is a more recently described and studied relationship with work that reflects a healthy, balanced, and emotionally present connection.
Understanding Burnout
As defined by Christina Maslach, "job burnout is a psychological syndrome that involves a prolonged response to stressors in the workplace. Specifically, it involves the chronic strain that results from an incongruence, or misfit, between the worker and the job."1 The cumulative effect of chronic exposure to job related stress can take its toll. Without adequate replenishment of mental and emotional resources, tension, fatigue, repetitive tasks, and other stressors can wear us down. Exhaustion is a key component of burnout, but there are additional components that characterize it as a syndrome distinctive from other disorders. Maslach and a host of other researchers have developed a clinical conceptualization of burnout based on more than thirty years of investigation. Accordingly, burnout is a patterned response to chronic job stress characterized by three dimensions of response: "overwhelming exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job, and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment." 2
Cynicism and detachment are often referred to as depersonalization or dehumanization. Service employees may regard the customer as an object rather than as a human being.3 In the library, patrons might be regarded as queries, questions, or cases, rather than people. A detached library employee may frequently retreat to an office or...