Thoughts About Feelings is a heartfelt podcast that reminds you we all have thoughts about feelings and sharing them helps us get through them. Together with friends, Blair Imani and Mychal Threets talk about mental health, personal stories, and more. The show contains no sponsors and is instead brought to you by acts of self-care like drinking a glass of water or taking a deep breath. Blair Imani will help you get Smarter in Seconds about each episode's topic and keeping with Mychal's dedication to literacy and books, every episode is filmed in a book space whether it's a library or bookstore. With insightful questions from Mychal, Blair, and library kids we hope you leave each episode of Thoughts About Feelings with a few more reasons to keep on living.For video episodes of the podcast, subscribe to our Thoughts About Feelings Youtube channel.Produced in partnership with Ninth Planet Audio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Building Psychological Safety in Academic Libraries: Fostering Innovation, Well-Being, and Engaged Teams

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Mychal Threets’ sudden rise to fame as a pusher of ‘library joy’ isn’t over despite his exit from his job to focus on himself

"Librarianship has been conceptualized as a vocation or calling--rather than a profession--since the 1800s. Within this historical context, librarians are encouraged to think of ourselves as possessing a natural disposition to showing perpetual engagement, enthusiasm, and self-regulation in pursuit of our shared vocation. These assumptions about the profession can sometimes shield us from introspective criticism, but they can also prevent us from recognizing and managing the systemic occupational issues that afflict us. Academic Librarian Burnout can help librarians develop the agency to challenge the assumptions and practices that have led to so much professional burnout. In five thorough parts, it offers ways to discuss burnout in our work environments, studies burnout's nature and causes, and provides preventative intervention and mitigation strategies: Reframing Burnout; Conditions that Promote Burnout; Lived Experiences; Individual Responses to Burnout; and Organizational Responses to Burnout. Chapters explore the relationship of burnout in academic libraries and illness, intersectionality, workload, managerial approaches, and more, while offering real-life stories and ways for both individuals and organizations to address the symptoms and causes of burnout. The emotional, physical, and mental investment we require of librarianship--to go above and beyond to serve the ever--evolving needs of our patrons while perennially justifying our existence to library stakeholders-can come at the expense of our well-being. Academic Librarian Burnout addresses unsustainable work environments and preserves and celebrates the unique contributions of librarians"--