A qualitative interview study of high school librarians' emotional labour

Introduction. The concept of emotional labour can be described as the strategies used to express emotions required of a job, and the strategies used to suppress those emotions that are inappropriate in the workplace. This paper aims to examine the emotional labour of Swedish high school librarians. Method. For this study, six high school librarians were interviewed about emotional situations in the workplace and how they handle their emotions. The interview transcripts were analysed thematically, using QDA Miner Lite software. Analysis and results. Emotional labour theories and role theory were used to understand the librarians' emotional labour. The findings show that emotional labour occurs in interactions with students, teachers/colleagues and managers. Situations that require emotional labour include students that make a racket in the library, students in need of support in personal matters and challenges of instructional work. However, the most prominent theme concerns teachers/colleagues and managers who do not have accurate knowledge of the librarians' competencies. The librararians use deep and surface acting strategies to handle their emotions, as well as situation modification, situation selection and venting. These strategies are used both during interaction and before/after (outside of) situations. Conclusion. Interactions with students are not the primary cause of the librarians' emotional labour. Rather, the main reason for emotional labour is managers' and colleagues' limited knowledge of school library work and the competencies of school librarians. One effect of this limited knowledge is that the librarians do not always get the opportunity to practice their competence. Another effect is the risk that the students do not get equal access to the librarys' and the librarians' services – in turn, the risk of this inequality affects the librarians' emotional health negatively. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science