Anticipating and Overcoming Common Challenges for Library and Social Work Collaborations

ABSTRACT

The growing popularity of interdisciplinary partnerships among social workers and public libraries on a global level has resulted in the need to clarify common challenges that team members frequently encounter. Currently, many new library/social work collaborations are ‘reinventing the wheel’ as they design a new partnership, unaware of and unable to anticipate barriers. Based on the emerging research primarily stemming from the United States, information is presented in this article to guide public libraries and social workers across the globe to understand and navigate these common challenges. Authors of this manuscript note the benefits of cross-disciplinary partnerships and outline five prevalent obstacles both public librarians and social workers face when joining forces. Recommendations for anticipating and responding to these challenges are presented to libraries interested in social work partnerships and to branches that already collaborate with social service professionals. To prepare emerging professionals for such collaborations, guidance is also offered for modifying existing curricula to both social work and library and information sciences graduate education.

KEYWORDS:

• Public libraries
• social work
• interdisciplinary collaborations
• library social work

Disclosure Statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah C. Johnson

Sarah C. Johnson, MLIS, LMSW, is an Adjunct Lecturer at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois where she teaches a graduate 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.

Elizabeth A. Wahler

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 U.S. 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.