Investigating the Occupational Burnout of Librarians in University of Isfahan

Since early 1980s, many empirical studies were carried out to recognize stress syndrome and occupational burnout in the United States libraries; the results indicated that the librarians in other countries are susceptible to these two conditions, as well. The present paper investigates the rate of occupational burnout in librarians of University of Isfahan, and evaluates the educational level, field of study, age, occupational experience, and the position of male and female librarians. The population under study included all the 61 librarians working in the libraries of University of Isfahan. The study was conducted as census. Maslash burnout inventory was handed in to all the librarians, and 57 copies were given back. In order to analyze the data, mean and standard deviation were used for descriptive statistics; also for inductive statistics, we applied t-test and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) using SPSS 16. The results showed that occupational burnout of librarians in University of Isfahan is at a moderate level in terms of intensity and abundance, while it is at a low level considering emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. There is a relationship between some demographic factors such as occupational burnout and gender (abundance of emotional exhaustion), educational level (depersonalization intensity) and field of study (intensity and abundance of emotional exhaustion), whereas there was no relationship between occupational burnout and age, occupational experience, and librarians’ positions. Regarding the obtained results, managers and officials should make appropriate plans to prevent occupational burnout in librarians working in the academic libraries.