I will say briefly that library social work is kind of a real thing because so many homeless people and other marginalized people spend time in libraries. It’s a way of getting to people who are vulnerable and might not be attached to another institution.
I will say briefly that library social work is kind of a real thing because so many homeless people and other marginalized people spend time in libraries. It’s a way of getting to people who are vulnerable and might not be attached to another institution.
Especially since social workers and librarians have very different skill sets. A librarian is not going to have the skills to help a homeless people navigate the shelter/supportive housing system, but a social worker will.
This is not unlike teachers and professors now being tasked to do the work of therapists and social workers, without proper training, and certainly without any added compensation. A colleague and I have been commiserating about how lovely it would be if we could just focus on what we were taught to do: teach.
Huge numbers of students have a mental health diagnosis. They nearly all have a therapist, so it’s not like they’re trying to get me to completely take over that role, thank goodness. I’ve set up my procedures so that they can get one no-questions-asked extension per semester, in hopes of maintaining reasonable boundaries.
They still often want to unload about their problems. I’m a good listener, and I probably would’ve been a good therapist in a different life. And I don’t mind being a mentor, while also trying to maintain healthy boundaries. But the past few years, the scale of their problems has been overwhelming.
I thought it was bad in my world until I read a Guardian article about a week ago detailing extreme absenteeism at British universities, which seems to have risen as high as 70 to 80%. That’s the percentage of students absent, not in attendance!
Public libraries are used in many ways that are new, or new-ish: supervised parental visits, trade-off spaces for divorced parents, remote work, tutoring. That they are havens for homeless/marginalized people who have no where else to go isn't an argument for them to use library budgets to hire social workers. It's the municipality that should be funding social workers to visit or maintain an office in the building.
Should the library be a site for food distribution, a summer recreation program, remote-workers? Many are. I'm just not sure that the drive to be all things to all people, or the thing that needy people need the most, isn't a futile, un-ending endeavor.
I’m a librarian and at least in my area we do not get any extra money (or training) for supplying additional social support. It therefore depends on the individual librarian if they want to go above and beyond to help in this way. Tbh, it also depends on the person asking and how polite they are. A lot of people are rude and pretty anti social so a lot of my colleagues are unwilling to help them.
Also a librarian, and same. We've had some additional training (how to administer Narcan, for instance), but not much. We do try to point people in the direction of services, but unfortunately most of them don't want the help that's actually on offer. They want money for a hotel room and takeout from a restaurant, not a bed at the local shelter and food from the community pantry. While these are understandable things to want, they're not generally the aid available and we're certainly not empowered to give it to them. We frequently get abuse for not giving the kind of help desired, or giving the wrong kind of help (i.e., calling for an ambulance when someone has passed out in the washroom and isn't responding).
As I often say, if I'd wanted to be a social worker I'd have gotten an MSW instead of an MLIS. But alas.
I can relate somewhat, as hospital registration, people seem to assume that I'm, like, a building supervisor, so I get asked all kinds of things that I have no idea about. Patients are often upset when I can't offer them vouchers for a cab or a hotel room, or that we don't just have social workers sitting around waiting for people to walk in and ask for help.
Another necessary skill set is that of security guard. My university, Portland State University, took the position that the university library was a public space. For that reason it made no effort to keep out the homeless.
When I resumed using the library after a long absence, I was shocked to discover homeless people engaged in such non-academic activities as washing in the bathrooms, searching garbage cans for treasures and sacking out on the comfy lounge furniture.
One day I came to one of the library's quiet floors and settled down to work in one of the carrels. Two strapping young men who were obviously homeless were fast asleep on lounges, their duffel bags next to them. After a while they woke up and began speaking in normal conversational tones. As I always do when I am on a quiet floor, I waited to see whether they would leave or stop talking. When the didn't, I did what I always do in such situations: I walked over, told them they were on a quiet floor and suggested they move up or down a floor if they wished to chat. That elicited a response I had never encountered from a student. He gave me a dirty look and said "You can't tell ME what to do." FFS
It was foolhardy of me to have done that. The guy was probably armed. Armed or not, he had no business being there. University libraries are for enrolled students, faculty and other members of the university community and the public, provided they follow reasonable rules of conduct. They are not refuges for the homeless and other marginalized people who are not there to use the facility for its intended purpose any more than the university president's office is.
Since then, the current university president's lack of a backbone led to the takeover of the library by a few anti-Israeli student protesters and a larger number of the usual opportunistic hooligans of the kind who've given Portland the nickname "Little Beirut." By the time the police chased them out for the second and final time, they'd caused at least $750,000 in damages, not including the cost of repairing or replacing electronic equipment. The library closed during spring midterms and is not slated to reopen until the start of the fall term.
If this doesn't cause the school to restrict access to the library, what will?
Absolutely. I know at least one library in Minneapolis that employs a full time Social Worker. The delightful book. The Library Book, by Susan Orlean, features how the LA public library (the branch featured in the book) has been tuned into more of a community center
Why should the Library be a community center? Who approves this kind of funding? Why is the government hiring social workers in and outside of the library? Sounds like at least one org is accomplishing its mission.
This “community” is already a lot of things, some good some bad, but can it please not become anti-library or anti-social worker? That plays right into the criticisms everyone already has of the heterodox left.
I'm not anti library...I may be anti social worker, as far as I have been able to tell they are mostly ineffective busy bodies. However, that's not the point I was making. I'm anti wasting money. And having Library social workers overseen by the Library (Which can't seem to even manage its own affairs let alone social workers) and Health and Human Services Social Workers seems like a waste and potentially hard to manage both.
I think the idea is that not everyone is going to want to go to a social work office or community center who might need those services. And some places don’t have a community center, but almost everyone knows that a library is a safe place in their community they can go during the day. If someone comes in who might need help having a social worker there to offer them services is useful and could actually save money vs also building a community center.
Of course this will only really happen in communities of a certain size. It’s not like every library needs an on-staff social worker.
I don’t care if social workers operate out of a library. Have your office at Home Depot. My point is, this seems like its own separate department and management structure.
I will say briefly that library social work is kind of a real thing because so many homeless people and other marginalized people spend time in libraries. It’s a way of getting to people who are vulnerable and might not be attached to another institution.
Especially since social workers and librarians have very different skill sets. A librarian is not going to have the skills to help a homeless people navigate the shelter/supportive housing system, but a social worker will.
This is not unlike teachers and professors now being tasked to do the work of therapists and social workers, without proper training, and certainly without any added compensation. A colleague and I have been commiserating about how lovely it would be if we could just focus on what we were taught to do: teach.
In what context are you coerced into being a therapist? Any examples? Just curious.
Huge numbers of students have a mental health diagnosis. They nearly all have a therapist, so it’s not like they’re trying to get me to completely take over that role, thank goodness. I’ve set up my procedures so that they can get one no-questions-asked extension per semester, in hopes of maintaining reasonable boundaries.
They still often want to unload about their problems. I’m a good listener, and I probably would’ve been a good therapist in a different life. And I don’t mind being a mentor, while also trying to maintain healthy boundaries. But the past few years, the scale of their problems has been overwhelming.
I thought it was bad in my world until I read a Guardian article about a week ago detailing extreme absenteeism at British universities, which seems to have risen as high as 70 to 80%. That’s the percentage of students absent, not in attendance!
Public libraries are used in many ways that are new, or new-ish: supervised parental visits, trade-off spaces for divorced parents, remote work, tutoring. That they are havens for homeless/marginalized people who have no where else to go isn't an argument for them to use library budgets to hire social workers. It's the municipality that should be funding social workers to visit or maintain an office in the building.
Should the library be a site for food distribution, a summer recreation program, remote-workers? Many are. I'm just not sure that the drive to be all things to all people, or the thing that needy people need the most, isn't a futile, un-ending endeavor.
Oh, I know. I like that you brought up that you doubt they are getting the funding to add on social services.
I’m a librarian and at least in my area we do not get any extra money (or training) for supplying additional social support. It therefore depends on the individual librarian if they want to go above and beyond to help in this way. Tbh, it also depends on the person asking and how polite they are. A lot of people are rude and pretty anti social so a lot of my colleagues are unwilling to help them.
Also a librarian, and same. We've had some additional training (how to administer Narcan, for instance), but not much. We do try to point people in the direction of services, but unfortunately most of them don't want the help that's actually on offer. They want money for a hotel room and takeout from a restaurant, not a bed at the local shelter and food from the community pantry. While these are understandable things to want, they're not generally the aid available and we're certainly not empowered to give it to them. We frequently get abuse for not giving the kind of help desired, or giving the wrong kind of help (i.e., calling for an ambulance when someone has passed out in the washroom and isn't responding).
As I often say, if I'd wanted to be a social worker I'd have gotten an MSW instead of an MLIS. But alas.
I can relate somewhat, as hospital registration, people seem to assume that I'm, like, a building supervisor, so I get asked all kinds of things that I have no idea about. Patients are often upset when I can't offer them vouchers for a cab or a hotel room, or that we don't just have social workers sitting around waiting for people to walk in and ask for help.
It’s not really a woke thing
Another necessary skill set is that of security guard. My university, Portland State University, took the position that the university library was a public space. For that reason it made no effort to keep out the homeless.
When I resumed using the library after a long absence, I was shocked to discover homeless people engaged in such non-academic activities as washing in the bathrooms, searching garbage cans for treasures and sacking out on the comfy lounge furniture.
One day I came to one of the library's quiet floors and settled down to work in one of the carrels. Two strapping young men who were obviously homeless were fast asleep on lounges, their duffel bags next to them. After a while they woke up and began speaking in normal conversational tones. As I always do when I am on a quiet floor, I waited to see whether they would leave or stop talking. When the didn't, I did what I always do in such situations: I walked over, told them they were on a quiet floor and suggested they move up or down a floor if they wished to chat. That elicited a response I had never encountered from a student. He gave me a dirty look and said "You can't tell ME what to do." FFS
It was foolhardy of me to have done that. The guy was probably armed. Armed or not, he had no business being there. University libraries are for enrolled students, faculty and other members of the university community and the public, provided they follow reasonable rules of conduct. They are not refuges for the homeless and other marginalized people who are not there to use the facility for its intended purpose any more than the university president's office is.
Since then, the current university president's lack of a backbone led to the takeover of the library by a few anti-Israeli student protesters and a larger number of the usual opportunistic hooligans of the kind who've given Portland the nickname "Little Beirut." By the time the police chased them out for the second and final time, they'd caused at least $750,000 in damages, not including the cost of repairing or replacing electronic equipment. The library closed during spring midterms and is not slated to reopen until the start of the fall term.
If this doesn't cause the school to restrict access to the library, what will?
Absolutely. I know at least one library in Minneapolis that employs a full time Social Worker. The delightful book. The Library Book, by Susan Orlean, features how the LA public library (the branch featured in the book) has been tuned into more of a community center
Why should the Library be a community center? Who approves this kind of funding? Why is the government hiring social workers in and outside of the library? Sounds like at least one org is accomplishing its mission.
I agree with you. I really like libraries but I don't like that they become a de-facto community centre in the absence of proper public services.
This “community” is already a lot of things, some good some bad, but can it please not become anti-library or anti-social worker? That plays right into the criticisms everyone already has of the heterodox left.
It sounds like these homeless people and social workers are the ones trying to make it less of a library.
I'm not anti library...I may be anti social worker, as far as I have been able to tell they are mostly ineffective busy bodies. However, that's not the point I was making. I'm anti wasting money. And having Library social workers overseen by the Library (Which can't seem to even manage its own affairs let alone social workers) and Health and Human Services Social Workers seems like a waste and potentially hard to manage both.
I think the idea is that not everyone is going to want to go to a social work office or community center who might need those services. And some places don’t have a community center, but almost everyone knows that a library is a safe place in their community they can go during the day. If someone comes in who might need help having a social worker there to offer them services is useful and could actually save money vs also building a community center.
Of course this will only really happen in communities of a certain size. It’s not like every library needs an on-staff social worker.
I don’t care if social workers operate out of a library. Have your office at Home Depot. My point is, this seems like its own separate department and management structure.
I completely agree. My undergrad is in social work, and I'm leaning towards public libraries.
About a week ago, heard on NPR a story about a libraries and social workers. It's been a thing for quite a while.