Academic Librarian Burnout: Causes and Responses. Christina Holm, Ana Guimaraes, and Nashieli Marcano, eds. Chicago, IL: ACRL, 2022. 370p. Paper, $98 (ISBN: 978-0-8389-4856-9).

Abstract

Like other “helping” professions at this time in history, librarians live and work in a context of diminishing resources, vanishing support systems, challenges to our profession’s values, perpetual violence, and a lingering sense of doom due to continuous catastrophes and political instability. We are expected to continue to work and maintain normalcy while all of this happens around us, with a frequency sufficient to produce exhaustion and stress. Add to these factors ever-increasing workloads, constant role ambiguity, financial precarity, and the emotional labor required of professions like ours, and librarians are particularly prone to burnout. Are academic librarians unique in this regard? Not necessarily. That we have plenty of company should contribute to a greater sense of solidarity with all who are fatigued and overloaded by sagging systems. What we learn as we are responding to our own crises and strengthening our own networks is that we do have the power to empathize with and work toward improving conditions for all. Academic Librarian Burnout investigates the potential causes of the problem and works to identify strategies for interventions in this process.