Creating a Person-Centered Library: Best Practices for Supporting High-Needs Patrons

Elizabeth A. Wahler and Sarah C. Johnson

ISBN 10: 1440880832 / ISBN 13: 9781440880834

Published by Bloomsbury Libraries Unlimited, 2023

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Creating a Person-Centered Library: Best Practices for Supporting High-Needs Patrons
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Libraries Unlimited
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1440880832
• ISBN 13: 9781440880834
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Brand New

About this title

Synopsis

Creating a Person-Centered Library provides a comprehensive overview of various services, programs, and collaborations to help libraries serve high-needs patrons as well as strategies for supporting staff working with these individuals.

While public libraries are struggling to address growing numbers of high-needs patrons experiencing homelessness, food insecurity, mental health problems, substance abuse, and poverty-related needs, this book will help librarians build or contribute to library services that will best address patrons' psychosocial needs.

The authors, experienced in both library and social work, begin by providing an overview of patrons' psychosocial needs, structural and societal reasons for the shift in these needs, and how these changes impact libraries and library staff. Chapters focus on best practices for libraries providing person-centered services and share lessons learned, including information about special considerations for certain patron populations that might be served by individual libraries. The book concludes with information about how library organizations can support public library staff.

Librarians and library students who are concerned about both patrons and library staff will find the practical advice in this book invaluable.

About the Authors

Elizabeth A. Wahler is Professor and Director of the School of Social Work at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA, and founder of Beth Wahler Consulting. She has collaborated with libraries and library systems across the United States to conduct assessments of their patrons' psychosocial needs and staff challenges with these types of patron needs; provided training to library staff about trauma-informed librarianship and other approaches to addressing their patrons' needs; and created and piloted various interventions to address patron needs and support library staff. She is recognized internationally for her work on library and social work collaborations.

Sarah C. Johnson, MLIS, LMSW, is adjunct lecturer at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois, where she teaches a course on library social work. She is a licensed social worker, and her research focuses on the impact of social work students conducting their field placements at public libraries. Her aim is to foster quality internships by building alliances among students, public librarians, and social work educators, with the goal of enhancing services to library patrons and their wider community.