"No One Told Me": A dialog on preparing public librarians to provide social services in public libraries
Author(s)
Gross, Melissa
Latham, Don
Baum, Brittany
Crabtree, Lauren
Issue Date
2022-10
Keyword(s)
Social services
Interviews
Education for librarianship
Social justice
Education of information professionals
Curriculum
Continuing education
Public libraries
Abstract
Libraries are being called upon to assist with a variety of social problems including everything from housing and food insecurity to disaster recovery. In response, some public libraries have called on social workers to help. These developments beg the question of whether information professionals are being prepared for the realities of public library careers. This presentation reports findings from a series of 28 interviews with public librarians and branch managers to explore their views on how library and information science programs can ensure that students are prepared to respond to their community's social service needs. Findings reveal that the inclusion of social work interview skills, de-escalation training, knowledge of social service resources, and instruction on how to collaborate with and supervise social workers would better prepare students for the realities of working in public libraries.
Series/Report Name or Number
Proceedings of the ALISE Annual Conference, 2022
Type of Resource
text
Language
eng
Handle URL
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117937
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21900/j.alise.2022.997
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2022 Melissa Gross, Don Latham, Brittany Baum, Lauren Crabtree
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).
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