Professional feelings : Librarians strategies for emotional labor

The purpose of this study is to illustrate the emotional labor of Swedish public librarians, find examples of strategies for emotional labor that librarians use, how personal attributes like being an introvert or an extrovert might influence these strategies and find out how guidelines and management affect the emotional labor of librarians. This is done by interviewing six public librarians who are working in different parts of Sweden, in differently sized libraries and with different amount of work experience. Our findings show that different forms of deep acting is the most common strategy for librarians and that consequences of emotional labor can depend on personality, and which strategy is used depending on this. Another finding is that management and guidelines play an important part in emotional labor. The leader should be involved in the daily tasks of the workers and should have knowledge of the situations that the worker deals with. A final conclusion is that knowledge and awareness of emotional labor can help reduce the negative consequences of emotional labor.