UC Berkeley Library

Academic librarians have increasingly gone public with their experiences of low morale and burnout, yet less attention has been paid to the workplace experiences of library staff. As Kaetrena Davis Kendrick notes in her work on the persistent harm of low morale in library settings, “the cost of silence can be high.” Our research team includes library staff, former library staff, a recent MLS grad, and librarians. Through 35 structured interviews with academic library staff nationwide, we seek to uncover how organizational culture, library hierarchies, and management style affect staff morale. In this poster, we present our findings establishing that efforts to address equity in compensation, provide professional growth opportunities, and create more collegial work environments can all improve staff morale. Finally, we suggest how you can make changes in your own libraries to assess and improve morale across staff hierarchies.