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The Souls of Our Students, the Souls of Ourselves: Resisting Burnout through Radical Self-Care

Maria T. Accardi PaLA Annual Conference, College & Research Division Keynote, October 6, 2015

1. I want to start my remarks by noting that it was ten years ago this summer that I moved

to the fine Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to embark on my library school journey at

the University of Pittsburgh, so it is immensely humbling and pleasingly full-circle-ish

(yes, this is a word!) that I stand before you now, in Pennsylvania, addressing this

august body of colleagues, to talk to you about burnout in the library profession.

2. Next, Id like to invite you to Tweet your thoughts about this talk using the hashtag

#PaLAburnout. My Twitter handle is @mariataccardi.

3. When I was considering a title for my talk today, I was deliberate in my choice of the

word radical, not just because it represents this idea of a thorough and complete and

fundamental change or alteration or reform, but also because the etymology of the

word appeals to me as a Latin word nerd. I studied Latin in high school and college,

and I was particularly fond of learning to recognize Latin derivatives, or English words

with Latin origins.

4. So I chose the word radical knowing that the origin of the word radical comes

from the Latin word radix, meaning root.

5. I should note here that not only did I study Latin, but I was also an English major, so I

am skilled at reading extended metaphors into just about everything. So walk with me

for a minute while we visit the garden in my backyard. I promise this will all hang

together. When my wife and I bought a house this past January, one of the things I was

most looking forward to was having a proper backyard for vegetable gardening.

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Previously, we had attempted container gardening on the balcony of our condo, but

this was not very satisfying, and the tomato output was pretty pathetic, so a whole yard

of our very own to do whatever we wanted with seemed immensely exciting. It also

helped that my wife is a skilled and knowledgeable gardener. When we first met, she

told me that she was a Master Gardener, which I didnt realize was a thing. I just

thought it meant she was really good at gardening. But no! Its really a thing, involving

hours of education and training and service.

So as the spring season in our new home approached, Constance considered the

options for gardening in our yard, and after much research and reading and deliberation,

she decided upon square foot gardening in raised beds in the back yard. She had learned

that the soil in the yards of old homes often are contaminated with lead, and when we had

the backyard soil from our 115-year-old house tested, we discovered that there were

indeed very high levels of lead. So raised beds it was, with purchased organic soil.

6. The idea behind square foot gardening, if this isnt familiar to you, is that basically you

plot out a grid in your garden bed, and you plant whatever you want to plant spaced out

very carefully according to square foot gardening guidelines. Its supposed to be a

good way of growing a bunch of stuff in a small space.

7. It turns out, though, that plants seem to have their own ideas. I dont fully understand

what happened in our squash and zucchini bed, but as you can see here, one squash

plant interpreted the sides of the raised bed as mere suggestions that could be easily

dismissed. Theres more plant outside the bed than there is inside the bed.

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8. The bed with two tomato plants and two eggplant plants, also did not obey the neat

precision that square foot gardening seems to promote. They kind of grew however

they wanted, wherever they wanted.

9. Another interesting development was that some plants totally failed. Our Japanese

eggplant produced one sorry-looking specimen, then gave up. Also, our Bush Goliath

tomato plant became known as the Bush Disappointment around our house. It

produced one nice looking tomato and then, apparently exhausted by this output,

turned brown and did nothing more for several weeks. Constance speculated that one

problem could be that square foot gardening did not give the plants sufficient room for

adequate root development.

10. This realization was revelatory for me, not just as a way of explaining what was

happening in our garden, but also as a metaphor for what was happening in my

professional and personal life. In our square foot gardening experiment, we learned

that we have to space plants out more generously to give the roots enough space to

fully develop and provide the necessary foundation to flourish. Similarly, it occurred to

me that the burnout Ive been grappling with on and off for years would also benefit

from more generosity of space and room. Cramming together years of activities

publications, presentations, hundreds upon hundreds of library instruction sessions,

countless hours sitting at the reference desk, faculty senate committee meetings, the

worrying lack of resources that only seemed to increase, all of those things to which I

said yes when I really really wanted to say nostarved the roots that were

supposed to anchor me in place and also allow me to flourish. Combine the starved,

cramped roots with insufficient watering and nutrients in the soilor, in other words,

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insufficient compassionate self-care, along with the lack of professional support and

recognition and validation of my workand it was no wonder that I felt so hopeless,

so used up, so numb and empty, like a robot-librarian going through the motions with

no real true emotion underneath. In this numb, robot state, I was unable to recognize

the need to feed my own roots, which also meant that my deep, abiding, and genuine

passion for empowering students was also starved. I could not care for my students if I

could not care for myself.

But I have to point out here that its really hard to care for yourself, to water your

own roots and give them room to stretch out and really get established, when the soil in

which youre trying to find your footing doesnt fully recognize you as a valued

contributor to the garden of teaching and learning. Ive been chipping away at improving

the perceptions of library instruction on my campus for the better part of a decade, but

there are still many faculty members who dont get it, who see library instruction sessions

as a placeholder for their class if they have to attend a conference, as if were some kind

of substitute teacher. There are faculty members who do not see me as a full partner in

the teaching and learning experience of students, as a professional with real expertise. I

once wrote to a faculty member to confirm an upcoming first year seminar library

instruction session. I told her that I would be teaching the session and asked about the

library assignment and what her students research needs were.

11. Her reply, I dont think of this as teaching this class for me I consider it providing a service

for the FYS students. She signed her name with Ph.D. after her name, I guess to remind

me of who was who, to put me in my place.

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12. I know not all faculty members feel this wayheres one psych professor who called

me a library goddess. There are plenty of faculty members who are library champions,

who understand and value the work we do, who see us as valued collaborators, but its

really hard to remember this when there are plenty of people who are only too ready to

remind you that you and your work are not valued or important.

13. When you couple these kinds of perceptions with the emotional damage climbing the

tenure track or otherwise having to continually demonstrate that youre doing your job

and deserve to keep it, its a basic recipe for the starved roots of burnout. And it wasnt

during my gardening experiment that I realized I was burned out. The burnout was

happening well before that, and I knew it. I knew it, but I was afraid to talk about it. I

was afraid that it meant that I was a bad librarian, that I wasnt good at my job, that I

wouldnt get tenure. In a tenure-track position, youre encouraged to amass a quantity

of accomplishments and to make multiple sacrifices at your own emotional expense,

not to mention financial in this age of shrinking travel budgets. You dont really get to

say no to very much when youre on the tenure track, or if your professional status is

in any way precariousat least, I didnt feel like I could. I did get tenure, though, but

by the time I had gotten there, I didnt remember how to say no.

14. This inability to recognize your own feelings, to acknowledge them as real and true

and valid, is characteristic of the emotional labor involved in library work. Arlie

Hochschilds 1983 work The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human

Feeling reports the findings of her studies of workers who have emotionally

demanding jobs: flight attendants and bill collectors. One flight attendant reported that

she had difficulty shaking off the artificial smile she was obliged to wear, and the

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feelings the smile were meant to communicate, when she was off-duty. Its as if I

cant release myself from an artificially created elation that kept me up on the trip. I

hope to be able to come down from it better as I get better at the job (p. 4).

15. This seems especially relevant to me when you consider that reference librarians are

expected to be visible in a constant state of approachable readiness. RUSAs

Guidelines for Behavioral Performance of Reference and Information Service

Providers describe how reference librarians ought to appear. We need to make the

patron feel comfortable, and we set the tone for the entire interaction. We are

expected to acknowledge patrons by making initial eye contact, employing open body

language, or using a friendly greeting to initiate conversation. Were basically

supposed to be on at all times. Its not quite on the same level of constant perky flight

attendant friendliness, but it still can be emotionally demanding and taxing, especially

if were not feeling at our best.

16. This notion of emotional labor also seems especially relevant when you consider the

ACRL Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators: A

Practical Guide. I have consulted this document regularly since its 2007 publication to

help guide my practice and professional development, as well as the professional

development of the librarians who teach in the program I coordinate. As the document

itself states, This document is intended to help instruction librarians define and gain

the skills needed to be excellent teachers in library instruction programs and to foster

collaborations necessary to create and improve information literacy programs. And it

pretty much does just that. The Standards address things like administrative skills,

curriculum knowledge, presentation skills, and so on.

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17. But it seems to me that an essential skill for being an instruction librarian or instruction

coordinator or any helping-people kind of librarian is the ability to regulate the

complicated emotions that are inevitably part of being a teacher or helping people. The

emotional labor required by our work has been well-documented. Julien and Genuis

(2009) describe the results of a qualitative study of Canadian academic and public

librarians involved in instructional work: A full range of affective experiences were

manifest in the diary and interview data (p. 929). Study participants reported a wide

range of emotions, ranging from pleasure and enthusiasm to more negative emotions,

such as frustration and disappointment. As the authors note, the teaching experience is

not always a joyful one (p. 930). Anyone how has had a carefully-planned and

eagerly-anticipated library instruction activity bomb knows that this is an

understatement. Julien and Genuis conclude with the observation that individuals and

organizations will benefit from considering the influence of emotional labour on

library staff with instructional duties (p. 934).

18. So why arent skills related to negotiating the emotional labor of teaching just as

essential as presentation skills or leadership skills? The absence of these skills in the

Standardsindeed, the actual invisibility of the reality of affect in the Standards

seems to me to resonate with the anxiety Julien and Genuiss study participants

reported about the visibility or invisibility of instructional outcomes (p. 931). The

participants struggled with the feeling that their teaching efforts didnt matter, probable

because the nature of the one-shot library instruction model that so many of us rely on

means that you rarely have tangible proof that a student actually learned something.

In short, instruction librarians battle the negative emotions of feeling invisible in many

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ways, and at the same time, the official professional document that purports to

formalize the skills we need to be good instruction librarians further renders us

invisible by completely ignoring the central role of affect in instructional work.

19. And what does this idea of emotional labor have to do with burnout? It might be useful

at this point to look more closely at burnoutwhat it is, what does it look like, why it

happensand its ramifications for the library profession. Christine Maslachs

foundational article, The Client Role in Staff Burn-Out, published in 1978 in Journal

of Social Issues, and it examines the dual role human services staff and their clients

play in the dehumanizing emotional exhaustion that is burnout. She characterizes it as

a mutually constitutive relationship.

20. Maslach continued to theorize the causes of burnout and developed the Maslach

Burnout Inventory, or MBI, which was first published in the Journal of Occupational

Behavior in 1981. The MBI was created based on Maslachs continued work with

human service workers, and it has been used in many many professional fields as the

primary tool to measure burnout.

21. Maslachs work on human services professionals is definitely generalizable, I think, to

librarians. In particular, public-facing librarians such as reference and instruction

librarians, whose entire professional mission and identity are wrapped up in helping

people, make library work unusually conducive to burnout. So my perspective in this

talk is going to focus primarily on the helping people side of librarianship, while I

acknowledge and affirm that librarians who do not work directly with the public

certainly experience burnout as well.

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22. In 1996, in Library & Information Science Research, Mary Ann Affleck published a

study of burnout among instruction librariansor, using the lingo of the times,

bibliographic instruction librarians. Affleck conducted a survey of instruction

librarians in New England and confirmed that burnout does happen with this particular

field. Affleck cites role stress as one possible cause of burnout. Role stress is the

conflict and ambiguity instruction librarians experience due to their marginal position

within the higher education environment; not all librarians have faculty statusnot

that faculty status is necessarily a guarantee of full status and recognition in the

university culture. Perceptions of the usefulness and value of library instruction

contribute to this role stress, as well as the lack of formal preparation available for

librarians who teach. This was published in 1996, and I think library school programs

have changed somewhat since then, but at the time, the lack of preparation for teaching

was significant. I think this is an interesting study that helps establish burnout as a real

problem in the profession, but it doesnt really offer much in the way of solutions,

aside from suggesting that there ought to be more library school preparation for

instruction.

23. Afflecks 1996 article is an early example of discussions of burnout among instruction

librarians, and Beckers even earlier 1993 article in RQ suggests that instruction

librarians have strong potential for burnout due to tendencies such as idealism,

overdedication, and the setting of unrealistic goals (p. 355). Factors contributing to

burnout are discussed (such as lack of professional autonomy, as well as the denial that

burnout even exists) along with possible strategies and solutions for dealing with

burnout. Research suggests that personal, internal strategies, as opposed to external,

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organizational strategies, are the least effective. So while organizational strategies such

as reducing workload and increasing performance feedback are suggested, these are

not always entirely within the librarians realm of control. I think the most interesting

and notable aspect of this article is that it seems to suggest that instruction librarians

need to be less idealistic and enthusiastic about library instruction: The individual

strategy of lowering unrealistic goals is seldom mentioned (p. 355). It sounds to me

that Becker is suggesting that librarians should be less passionate or optimistic about

the value of their work, which strikes me as a really depressing way to approach a core

educational program the library provides. Sure, it can be helpful to lower your

expectations. Thats an almost foolproof way to avoid disappointment. But its also a

great way to live a dark life without hope, which isnt very satisfying or encouraging

and enjoyable or worthwhile.

24. Another article, this one from 2001, is notable in that the author, Deborah Sheesley,

offers a number of solutions to the problem of burnout, both inside and outside the

classroom. The internal solutions suggested are perhaps easier to undertake, given that

they are mostly within the librarians control. These solutions address things like

seeking collaborative teaching opportunities, or experimenting with teaching

techniques to keep things fresh and interesting, or emphasizing an interactive, student-

centered approach to teaching. Sheesley suggests that Coping strategies focusing on

the burnout victims emotions and undertaken by the individual are usually considered,

as suggested above, less effective than those focused at the organizational level (p.

449). However, these external strategies are harder to bring about, because they require

cooperation and buy-in from outside stakeholders. For example, a more participatory

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managerial structure within the library can help the burned-out librarian feel more

empowered. Feeling as though your voice matters, that you get to participate in

decision-making, rather than being passively decided about, makes a difference. But

this requires a cultural and organizational shift that a single librarian is really not able

to bring about alone.

25. If we return to the garden, I want to talk about what I think is really needed to foster a

library culture that is resistant to the insidious strains of librarian burnout. I can make

lots of recommendations for what libraries should and shouldnt do in order to allow

their workers to be more fully human. This involves firmly, visibly, and

enthusiastically supporting the public-facing emotionally demanding library work by

directing resources (financial and otherwise) into that area. Library directors also need

to recognize the full humanity of the librarians carrying out the essential services that

make the library more than a building full of books and computers. Library

administrators need to give more than just lip service to work-life balance. My library

director has a rewarding life outside of his job. He plays music in a folk band and

makes regular appearances at local farmers markets. And more than just setting an

example of the importance having interests and passions outside of the workplace, he

supports an organizational environment that facilitates work-life balance. I really dont

feel any pressure, overt or subtle, to prioritize my work life over my domestic life. I am

treated like an autonomous, empowered adult who can leave early for medical

appointments or to pick up my wife from work or just take a mental health day if I

need it and have no other pressing obligations. This is huge, and I know I am fortunate

in this regard. Ive heard some horror stories from colleagues whose supervisors expect

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their staff to essentially disregard their basic humanity and needs in order to serve the

needs of the organization.

26. Ive spent a lot of time talking here about, well, me. Or librarians in general, but I

havent forgotten that the title of my talk also addresses the souls of students. My

reference to the souls of students is an allusion to Teaching to Transgress, where bell

hooks writes, To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our

students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can

most deeply and intimately begin (p. 13). What the souls of students means might

vary from person to person, but for me, the soul of a student is their essential

humanity, their inherent dignity and worth and value, their right to be safe and cared

for in the educational setting. I believe wholeheartedly that students are whole people

in the classroom and in the library. They bring with them all of the things that make

them humantheir stories, their beliefs, their filters, their talents, their challenges,

their emotional baggage, everything. It is easy to forget all of this when the prevailing

terminology reduces a student to a patron, a user, or, worse, a customer, and

describes our human encounter as a transaction requiring an interview. The term

interview, to me, implies a hierarchical relationship, where one person has the power to

ask questions, and the other person has to submit and answer them. If youll recall the

beginning of my talk, I confessed to you all that I was a Latin word nerd.

27. So, of course, I looked up the etymology of the word interview and was enchanted to

see that it comes from Latin via French, meaning to see each other. This is such a

beautiful image, but does an interview ever really happen this way? Think about the

last time you talked to a student at the reference desk, or at the circulation desk, or any

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kind of desk in the library. Did you really see the student? And did the student really

see you? What would it mean to truly see each other when interacting with a student?

I think to truly see each other, to respect and care for the souls of students, means

aligning the emotionally vulnerable parts of your self to the corresponding parts of the

student. It means remembering what it felt like to be in a college library for the first time

and not understanding where anything was or how to read a call number or why there

wasnt a fiction section to easily browse and how am I going to finish this research

paper thats due tomorrow. It means feeling incredibly stressed about balancing home

life, school life, and work life, and inevitably giving short shrift to one of those areas.

28. Im not suggesting that is easy work, this work of actively cultivating an attitude of

empathy, because its not. And its really only truly possible if we pay attention to our

own roots, this radical self-care. And by self-care, Im talking about lots of things. This

could include things like making a concerted effort to have restorative downtime, to do

the things that feed you and build you up, like going for long walks, or playing the

guitar in a Saturday farmers market, or giving yourself manicures on Sunday

afternoons, or spending time drinking tea on the front porch swing with your beloved,

or taking naps or practicing yoga or meditating. All of those things are very fine, very

excellent forms of self-care. But theres more to it. It also means saying no to the

things that do not allow your roots to grow and flourish and stretch. I know we dont

always feel like we can say no, but sometimes we actually can say it, and when we can,

we absolutely should.

29. In her book Writing Down the Bones, the poet Natalie Goldberg writes, When you

read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you. If you want to

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do good work, meaningful work, you have to feed yourself with good work, first. If

you want to care for the souls of students, you have to care for your own soul first, too.

Even when the soil is hostile or contaminated with lead.

30. I had the luxury of a semester sabbatical in the fall of 2014. My original plan, the one I

proposed in my sabbatical application, proposed to investigate the intersections of

teaching, learning, and storytelling, and to bring those threads of inquiry into

conversation with information literacy and library instruction. And I did indeed start

there, but I ended up meandering from that path a bit. As I read and thought and wrote

about what I was reading and thinking about, I also took some time to reflect upon my

seven years of climbing the tenure track ladder and how tired I was. The sudden and

startling vast expanse of compensated downtime to just think about whatever I wanted

to prompted me to acknowledge and contemplate the fact that I was burned out.

31. As is my natural inclination, I started to read and write about burnout, since reading

and writing is how I understand the world and try to make sense of things. I recognized

myself in the definition of burnout, which, put simply, is a syndrome of emotional

exhaustion and cynicism that occurs frequently among individuals who do people-

work of some kind (Maslach, 1981, p. 99). Another characteristic of burnout is the

development of negative, cynical attitudes and feelings about ones clients (p. 99).

Interestingly, for me, the clients in question about which I felt negative and cynical

were not students, the students for whom I retained a genuine deep fondness and

affection and care, but the faculty members I try to collaborate with in order to

promote the library instruction program and integrate information literacy throughout

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the curriculum. I felt really really tired of constantly trying to explain what we do, why

we do it, and why it matters.

32. It suddenly felt very urgent to me to talk to other people about librarian burnout, but I

didnt know where to start. I had deliberately quit all forms of social media before

starting my sabbatical in an effort to eliminate distractions, but it also meant I was very

disconnected from my peers at a time when I really needed to talk to people about what

I was thinking and feeling. So I reached out to my library director. I had zero intention

or desire to set foot on campus once I had packed my suitcase of books and left my

office in August, so we met off campus for coffee one evening. I confessed to him that

I felt burned out. I was not sure I wanted to be a librarian any more, or at least a

librarian whose primary task was library instruction. But if I wasnt a librarian, I

wasnt sure who I was. I harbored vague, secret dreams of being a creative writer of

some kind, and I even temporarily abandoned my sabbatical reading and writing and

started trying to write a novel, but obviously this was not a sustainable, mortgage-

paying pursuit. My directors response was to emphasize the necessity of having a rich

and interesting and fulfilling life outside of work, that the work of librarianship can be

fulfilling on its own but not the only source of meaning in life. This assertion might

seem a bit obvious to many people, but for me, it was significant. And it was a

viewpoint my director exemplified. He himself is a writer. He served as the dining

critic for the local newspaper for years, before giving it up to focus more on his interest

in music. As I said earlier, he leads a folk band and can regularly be found strumming

the guitar and singing in various places around town. He said that he enjoyed being a

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librarian, that he found it to be meaningful profession, but that it was also a vehicle for

subsidizing and sustaining his interests outside of his professional work.

33. This idea that being a librarian did not have to be all-consuming, that it could be

meaningful but not everything, shifted something inside of me. It also made me realize

that I really, really needed to talk to other people about this, and more often. This idea

that I needed to talk to other people was reinforced by one of my sabbatical readings,

Steven Johnsons 2010 book Where Good Ideas Come From: A Natural History of

Innovation. One of the messages of the book that was most significant to me was the

importance of sharing your ideas. Innovation happens when ideas, and the people with

ideas, connect to each other, and in order to connect, you need to communicate.

Johnson notes that innovative discoveries happen not at the microscope, but at the

conference table, with other people.

34. As my sabbatical leave ticked by, and I continued planning my day around watching

General Hospital and reading and writing, it felt very clear, and very urgent to me, that

I need to figure out some way of connecting to other people experiencing burnout and

sharing those stories. I considered trying to do a qualitative research study of some

sort, and I still might attempt this, but this strategy seemed to have too many barriers to

me at that moment. Thats how I ended up creating the Academic Library Instruction

Burnout blog, where since its inception in March of this year, I have published 18

essays that describe personal experiences with burnout and reflect on its meaning,

implications, ramifications, and also just plain complained. A handful of those posts

were guest posts from other librarians who generously shared their stories and

experiences. My former co-worker and dear friend Emily Drabinski writes about the

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exhaustion that results from the need to constantly provide data and assessment reports

and this obsession we have in this profession with proving value. Its not that

accountability in higher education is necessarily a bad thing; its just that theres so

much of it, and it is tiring. Emily resists this burnout by having a deliberate and

concerted reading regimen that helps her stay connected to the ideas and words that

matter to her. Another friend and fellow Pitt alum, Nina Clements, talks about the

damaging effects of this idea of librarian neutrality, that librarians are somehow

supposed to have apolitical and neutral approaches to information access and learning,

and how she resists the notion of neutrality, and the burnout it can produce, through

her interactions at the reference desk. And yet another friend, Donna Witek, writes

about the challenges of assessment, and how she channeled these challenges into

creating a zine that explores the rich messiness of learning, and how learning doesnt

always fit neatly into precise boxes.

35. Shining light on my own burnout, and featuring stories from others who are also

experiencing it, had the useful effect of not just making visible something that felt

shameful and terrible, but it also served the very helpful function of helping me feel

less achingly alone. In my particular library organizational structure, all seven of us

librarians wear many hats, and are involved in reference and instruction, but we also

have one primary area that is our main thing. Mine is reference and instruction. This

means that for the Coordinator of Electronic Resources or the Coordinator of Public

Services, reference and instruction is something they do along side other things. But

for me, the Coordinator of Instruction and Reference, this is all I do. Im expected to

not just schedule library instruction sessions, and teach them, and assign them to other

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librarians, but also provide leadership and vision for how the program works. And lets

not even mention the challenge of wrangling a reference desk schedule, especially in

the summer, when librarians like to take their vacations! I do genuinely enjoy the

challenge of managing the instruction program, but I also feel a little lonely. It is a

confusing loneliness, because while on the one hand I appreciate that my colleagues

trust and rely upon my expertise about information literacy and instruction, I also wish

that I wasnt the only one for whom this was a primary responsibility.

Ive tried countering this loneliness in lots of ways, like having library instruction

brown bag meetings, or demonstrations where we try out new teaching strategies on each

other. These are good strategies and I need to make time to do them more oftennote to

self! But Ive also tried reaching out outside of the library to other people on campus who

seem to get what I do and why it matters and with whom there are natural intersections

between our work. This leads to me to describe one important solution I recommend for

dealing with burnout: seeking out productive partnerships. Before I entered the library

profession, I earned a masters degree in English, and as a graduate teaching assistant, I

taught first year composition and tutored in the university writing center. It was this

work, this business of trying to teach students how to engage with academic writing, that,

in part, inspired my desire to become an academic librarian. So pretty soon after arriving

on campus at IU Southeast, I reached out to the writing program and the writing center

director, and after a short while I had developed a satisfying and fruitful collaboration.

My writing center colleague and I developed a plagiarism prevention workshop that we

offer regularly several times a semester. Its open to any student who wants to come, but

it is also required for students who have been sanctioned by the Office of Student Affairs

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for plagiarism violations. Ive visited the course the writing center director teaches for

undergraduate writing center consultants, where they learn about writing center theory

and practice, and talked to them about information literacy, and how they, as peer

consultants, can support and facilitate the campus information literacy learning goals.

This kind of collaboration with a like-minded colleague provides necessary nutrients to

help cultivate the roots of my work. Its not a surefire pesticide that will kill the bug that

is burnout, but it helps. Constance tells me that this is called companion planting, which

is the reason why she planted marigolds and basil in the tomato bedthese plants

naturally help each other grow.

And this is a recurring theme Id like to point out herethat I really dont know if

there is one true real cure for burnout, something that will completely and permanently

fix itother than just quitting your job. There are lots of solutions you can apply that

might perk up your leaves, make them a little greener, ward off pesky insects, stop the

squirrels from snacking on your tomatoes, but I dont think theres one cure-all fix that

will end it for good. But if I could make one thing happen, if I were to rule the world, or

at least rule libraries? I would argue for an approach to an organizational culture that

affirms the very real role of affect in the helping people kind of library work, provides

resources and professional support to foster healthy emotional expression and outlets, and

recognizes the librarian as a whole person with feelings and lives away from the public

service desks we staff. Regular and healthy communication, especially of the face-to-face

variety, is essential to any organization, and a good director should support regular

meetings with the staff as a whole, as well as one-on-ones for more private conversations.

Having a challenging reference encounter or a less-than-successful instruction session

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feels singularly terrible, but knowing that I can go talk to one of my colleagues about it,

get feedback, and commiserate is significant, and goes a long way toward healing the

painful isolation I often feel in my role.

I think a good library director should also encourage and support their librarians

in making choices that are in alignment with their values and goals. This means saying no

when it is possible and appropriate to do so. Due to some serious staffing challenges Ive

experienced this semester, Ive had to say no to a lot of library instruction requests, or

Ive had to offer them sessions that were at less than optimal times for their particular

needs. I could not and would not have had the courage to do this if I did not feel that my

director did not support this. I refused to run myself ragged trying to say yes to every

instruction request that came our way, or by consenting to schedule it on an already

packed day so that our stretched resources would be stretched beyond the breaking point.

I also am trying to set a burnout-prevention example for my colleagues who teach in the

program I manage by not asking or expecting them to teach more than one instruction

session a day, or staff the reference desk for more than three hours at a stretch, if I can

possibly help it. I felt empowered to prioritize my own self-care, and to subsequently

model self-care for my colleagues, because I knew my director supported this.

Another thing librarians can do to resist burnout is to stop thinking of ourselves as

service providers and instead view ourselves active participants and collaborators in the

teaching and learning mission of our campuses we serve and act accordingly. We do, of

course, provide essential services for the intellectual life of our campusI dont mean to

suggest that we do notbut I think that we get so caught up in our professional identity

as people-helpers to our own detriment. This means that I wish that I could go back in

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time to that email I got from that one professor, the one who said that she saw me as

providing a service rather than teaching her class, and I would reply politely, but

assertively, that librarians do teach. We have learning outcomes and assessment plans and

a whole scholarly field about library pedagogy and everything!

36. I wasnt at LOEX this past year, but I saw on Twitter that Angela Pashia, Kevin

Seeber, and Nancy Noe presented a pretty great sounding session about saying no to

library instruction requests that were not consistent with the learning goals and values

of the program. Some of these opportunities to say no are more obvious and kind of

offensivelike the instructor who wants to schedule a library instruction session when

they just happen to have to go a conferencebut even saying no in subtler ways can be

effective and empowering. When I get an email from an instructor asking me if I can

demonstrate databases to students, I am careful in how I word my response. I dont

say, yes, Ill demonstrate this to them, but instead I say something like, Id be

happy to teach students how to use library databases effectively. Whether my subtle

shift in language is lost on them or if it makes an impact I do not know, but it certainly

helps me feel better to assert myself and insist on my own expertise and the importance

of my role. Making small changes over time like this to resist the forces that lead to

burnout can subtly shift a culture, or so I would like to think.

37. One final suggestion Id like to offer as a remedy to the problem of burnout is, in short,

intersectional feminism, and Ill explain briefly what I mean by that now, and also at a

breakout session tomorrow at 9:00 am, FYI! Okay, now, Im not trying to claim that

feminist approaches to library work can cure or prevent burnout, but I do believe,

according to my lived experience, that incorporating an intentionally feminist approach

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to classroom teaching and the reference desk work I do is a way of making my work

incredibly meaningful and rewarding. Feminist pedagogy is an approach to teaching

and learning that sees education as a site for social change, and it does this, in part,

through student-centered experiences that employ consciousness-raising about sexism

and other forms of oppression, validate student knowledge and experiences, foster

collaborative and egalitarian learning, and transform the traditional power relationships

between teacher and learner. When I first learned that feminist pedagogy was a thing, a

real thing in the world, it provided me with not just an approach to teaching, but also a

lens through which I could re-envision all of the work as I do as a librarian. I am

someone who really cannot live with myself and be content or fulfilled if I cannot

approach work in accordance with my values and politics. I just cant. Reading and

writing about feminist pedagogy, and enacting it, and reflecting on my practice, has

been an immensely rewarding and enriching experience that provides a much needed

healing balm on the soul-sucking despair that burnout can produce.

38. Id like to wrap up by returning once more to the garden in my backyard. When we

picked out our tomato plants in the spring, I was intoxicated by the possibilities

presented by an abundance of tomatoes growing in my very own backyard. It turned

out, though, that our cherry tomato plant was almost a bit too enthusiastic. Try as we

might, we simply could not keep up with its output, and soon I was bringing bowls of

tomatoes to share at work. Last week, my wife Constance made an executive decision

as the Master Gardener to end that tomato plants time on earth. She just ripped it right

out of the bed by its roots and that was it; we were done with cherry tomatoes. So here

is the last twisting tendril of this metaphor Ive been extending all throughout this talk:

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39. When you are trying to figure out how to deal with your own personal case of burnout,

it might be tempting to just pull yourself up by your roots and give up, to quit

everything, to just resign yourself to the numb cynicism, the dehumanization, the

feeling that nothing is ever going to feel right again. I know that feeling. And it

certainly would be indeed radical in a way to just give up, but it is also radical, I

believe, to tend to your roots more gently, to seek the kindness and support of like-

minded people, to employ the services of a trained mental health professional if that

seems helpful, and to nurture your own soul, your own roots, just as tenderly and

compassionately as you would the anxious student who is walking up to you at the

reference desk right now, waiting for you both to see each other.

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References

ACRLs Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators: http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/profstandards Affleck, M. (1996). Burnout among bibliographic instruction librarians. Library & Information Science Research, 18(2), 165-183. Becker, K. (1993). The characteristics of bibliographic instruction in relation to the causes and symptoms of burnout. RQ, 32(3), 346-358. Goldberg, N. (1986). Writing down the bones: Freeing the writer within. Boston: Shambhala. Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge. Johnson, S. (2010). Where good ideas come from: The natural history of innovation. New York: Riverhead Books. Julien, H., & Genuis, S. K. (2009). Emotional labour in librarians' instructional work. Journal of Documentation, 65(6), 926-937. Maslach, C. (1978). The client role in staff burn-out. Journal of Social Issues, 34(4), 111-124. Maslach, C., & Jackson, S. E. (1981). The measurement of experienced burnout. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 2(2), 99-113. Pashia, A., Seeber, K., & Noe, N. (2015). Just say no: Empowering ourselves and our expertise. LOEX conference presentation. http://www.loexconference.org/2015/sessions.html#pashia RUSAs Guidelines for Behavioral Performance of Reference and Information Service Providers: http://www.ala.org/rusa/resources/guidelines/guidelinesbehavioral Sheesley, D. F. (2001). Burnout and the academic teaching librarian: An examination of the problem and suggested solutions. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 27(6), 447.