Animals can be great antidote to workplace stress!
Watching fish swim, patting a kitty, walking with a dog – it can all help to reduce stress, lower blood pressure, and diminish the symptoms of anxiety. Ahhhh….what could be nicer?
If your library has a fish tank, or a resident cat, or a therapy dog who visits and wouldn’t mind taking a break from listening to kids read so she can listen to librarians talk about their day – you are set! If you don’t have one at hand, there are plenty of other ways to watch some relaxing fish. Many aquariums have live cams, where you can enjoy watching some fish swimming all over the world!
We all feel it, and the end of year can bring all kinds of extra stress for us with the semester winding down and holiday celebrations winding up. Working in libraries is no protection against workplace stressors; in fact, working with patrons – which is generally rewarding – can provide a significant amount of stress in our daily work.
I have spent a lot of time talking with library people across the country about workplace stress, and it was pretty depressing. Most of us are here because we enjoy our jobs, they provide us with a lot of professional satisfaction, and despite the problems we face libraries are still great places to work!
But minimizing discussion of workplace stress just minimizes the real problems we face. It is better to face the issue, and to help ourselves and our staff to resolve problems that can be fixed and to get some training to handle problems that cannot. Stress causes all kinds of problems, from an uncomfortable workplace to workers suffering from burnout and never able to return to their jobs. Employee health is an important part of providing good service, and stress can just torpedo that.
Everywhere I went to conferences to talk about stress, people would come up to me and whisper that they were glad someone was talking about this. They thought they were alone in it, that they were doing something wrong because they were feeling stress.
Ignoring stress does not make it go away!
Thinking that “real” librarians wouldn’t get stressed is incorrect!
Acknowledging this is an issue in our profession is important – and the best way to help us all to overcome it. We need to think about ways to manage workplace stress on the individual level, in our library organizations, and across the profession.
So this is our December Monthly Topic: Stress Management. We can’t fix everything in your workplace, but we hope we can give you some tools to work with and some ideas to think about in your library. Continue reading Stress Management: Why Bother??→
We know December is still several weeks away, but it is such a busy time of year, we wanted to let you know about this event so you can mark your calendars now!
We decided to make the Monthly Topic for December Stress Management. This is because the end of the year can be a stressful time in libraries. There is so much going on, and everyone else is busy and stressed so they are not helping to calm things down!
But this is not just a seasonal issue. Mary’s research into stress in libraries has shown there is a LOT of stress happening in libraries all over the place – probably including yours! Library people have been embarrassed to admit being stressed at work, even though we have plenty of stressors – but it has not been discussed often enough.
So in this seminar we will look at some common stressors in libraries, and identify some strategies for addressing them. And we will work through some skills for personal relaxation, to help us survive the end of the year chaos, then take our new skills of stress management into the new year!
We will offer this seminar twice in-person on Tuesday, December 6: from noon to 1:30, and again from 4:30 to 6:00. You are invited to attend either in-person session (they are identical). Feel free to bring your food! We will provide beverages. Web material will be available for members unable to attend.
This is such an important skill for everyone in your library to master. We all need to advocate for ourselves in the workplace, for our libraries, and for the profession. During November we will collect and share information on each of these aspects of advocacy, to help build your skills and your comfort level with it.
At the heart: Advocacy is fun!! We get to tell people how great our libraries are, all the wonderful things we provide to our communities, and how valuable we are!! It can be tempting to just assume people know about this – but we want to really be sure they understand, so we need to tell them. This is our chance to brag!
CMLE will offer an in-person training session at our Headquarters (570 First Street SE, St Cloud, MN 56304). This will happen Nov 15. Spaces are filling fast – so don’t delay!
First session: noon to 1:30:
Second session: 4:30 to 6:00
Webinar will be provided online for future viewing
You are invited to attend either in-person session (they are identical). Feel free to bring your food! We will provide beverages.
This is such an important skill for everyone in your library to master. We all need to advocate for ourselves in the workplace, for our libraries, and for the profession. During November we will collect and share information on each of these aspects of advocacy, to help build your skills and your comfort level with it.
At the heart: Advocacy is fun!! We get to tell people how great our libraries are, all the wonderful things we provide to our communities, and how valuable we are!! It can be tempting to just assume people know about this – but we want to really be sure they understand, so we need to tell them. This is our chance to brag!
CMLE will offer an in-person training session at our Headquarters (570 First Street SE, St Cloud, MN 56304). This will happen Nov 15.
First session: noon to 1:30:
Second session: 4:30 to 6:00
Webinar will be provided online for future viewing
You are invited to attend either in-person session (they are identical). Feel free to bring your food! We will provide beverages.
