| dc.description.abstract | This study explores the nature of emotional labour in public library work through poetic inquiry. Building
off past qualitative and quantitative studies, this project adds nuance to the body of research on
emotional labour in library work. Participants participated in a 90-minute poetry workshop, facilitated by
the researcher and inspired by Freirean pedagogical principles, where they wrote poems about how it
feels to work in a public library. They wrote based on prompts about surface acting, deep acting, and the
physical sensations associated with libraries. These poems served as data for thematic analysis. The
primary four themes to emerge were “libraryness,” surface acting, identity, and empathy. This study
found that emotional labour manifests uniquely in public library work, where workers are typically deeply
passionate about literacy and social infrastructure. | en |
