Abstract:

Lately, the skill of emotional intelligence (EI) has become popular and being adopted into the standard set of management skills. By definition, EI is the ability to understand both internal and external feelings, within the domains of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. Within the last decade, researchers have studied EI on diverse professions that include teachers, doctors and engineers. While these studies increased our understanding on EI, very few, however, have attempted to study EI in the context of librarians. More specifically, studies on EI involving librarians working in Malaysian public libraries, is still not available. Against this concern, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the need and importance of studying EI among Malaysian Public Librarians.