Trauma-Informed Librarianship: Guidance for Libraries with and Without Social Workers

ABSTRACT

Libraries are facing unprecedented challenges, from physical threats of library staff, budget cuts, and increased patrons’ psychosocial needs such as poverty, mental health problems, or substance use disorders. There is growing awareness of many library staff experiencing chronic stress and even trauma from their work. With many of these patron challenges related to trauma, as well as the frequent experiences of staff trauma, adopting a trauma-informed organisational approach can be helpful to many libraries. Trauma-informed librarianship requires integrating the six principles of trauma-informed care throughout the library and its policies, programs, and practices. Social workers are often able to help libraries adopt a trauma-informed approach, but may not be accessible for all libraries since many do not have on-staff social workers or existing social work collaborations. Thus, this manuscript describes strategies that can be used by both libraries with and without social workers to develop a trauma-informed organisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Public libraries
• social work
• librarianship
• trauma-informed
• trauma

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth A. Wahler

Dr. Elizabeth Wahler is research faculty affiliate and previous director of the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and founder of Beth Wahler Consulting. She is a researcher, educator, consultant, and social worker that has collaborated with individual libraries, large library systems, and statewide library organisations throughout the US to conduct needs assessments of their patrons’ psychosocial needs and staff challenges with these types of patron needs, provide training to library staff about trauma-informed approaches to address their patrons’ psychosocial needs and reduce staff stress, and has created and piloted various interventions to address patron needs while also supporting staff. She has presented internationally on these topics and has published numerous articles on library patron and staff needs in peer-reviewed journals. She is co-author of ‘Creating a Person-Centered Library: Best Practices for Supporting High-Needs Patrons’, published by Bloomsbury Libraries Unlimited.