Programs

Introduction to Emotional Labor

Many different forms of work contain a requirement, often unspoken, for employees to “put on a happy face,” and careers with high customer-service interactions like nursing, librarianship, food service, and retail (just to name a few) often take a toll on employees physical and emotional health.  This need is an invisible but powerful dimension of work-life for many of us working in libraries and other information service centers.  In this session, we’ll discuss the science behind these emotional requirements – emotional intelligence and emotional regulation - and offer suggestions, for both individuals and organizations, to lessen the negative impacts these tasks can bring and increase your engagement with the work you love.

Instructor

Miriam Matteson, PhD
Interim Associate Dean
Kent State University, College of Communication and Information
318 Library, P.O. Box 5190, Kent, OH 44242-0001
P: 330-672-2464
E: mmattes1@kent.edu

Miriam L. Matteson is an Associate Professor at the Kent State University School of Information and is Interim Associate Dean in the College of Communication and Information.

Her research broadly explores emotion in the workplace. She has studied emotional labor, dispositional affect, and interpersonal and emotional soft skills in a variety of library settings. She also researches information literacy instruction and individual differences in students’ development of information literacy. Miriam is also engaged in research and program development on continuing management education for librarians. She has published in College and Research Libraries, Library and Information Science Research, Library Management, Library Quarterly, and portal: Libraries and the Academy. She is the editor of the Future Voices in Public Services column in Public Services Quarterly.

Before earning her PhD in Library Science from the University of Maryland she worked as a reference and instruction librarian at the University of Maryland University College. She has also worked as a music cataloger at Indiana University, and a project manager at Universidad Simon Bolivar in Caracas, Venezuela. She was a reference librarian intern at National Public Radio and worked as a solo librarian at A.T. Kearney, a US consulting firm in Caracas.

Miriam is an active speaker at state, national, and international library conferences including Ohio Library Council, Academic Library Association of Ohio, Association of College and Research Libraries, American Library Association, and the European Conference on Information Literacy.

Continuing Education

Getting Started with Statistics for Librarians, an afternoon MLA Webinar, earn 1.5 MLA continuing education (CE) contact hours, generously sponsored by the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NNLM) office for the Greater Midwest Region.