Social Workers and Public Libraries

Abstract

A growing interprofessional collaboration between social work and library professionals has fueled the emergence of library social workers and the exploration of libraries as a setting for social work. This exciting partnership evolves from common historic roots, a strong alignment of values, and effectively addresses changing community needs that aligns with both professions. Social work and public libraries are both products of the Progressive Era along with the rise of charitable organizations and settlement houses. In examining the evolution of libraries in the wake of changing technology and patron populations, social workers are critical community allies to respond to diverse community needs. Social workers, human service providers, and funders also now see public libraries as community centers and civic hubs, as well as even settlement houses for the 21st Century. Libraries serve as civic hubs that are essential connectors of information, education, resources, and access that addresses human needs. This commentary’s aim in exploring library social worker practice encourages community-university partnerships between our public libraries and the academic programs of social work and library science that strengthen civic and community engagement. Social work practitioners and educators are encouraged to spend more time at their public libraries through interprofessional internships, class projects, applied research, and dual-degree curricular development that can prepare next generation practitioner to work and lead in these community centers.

“Spending a Year in the Library Will Prepare You for Anything"

“…Our research is unique as we spoke directly with an array of interns from all over the United States -beyond just one branch or library system -about their lived experiences. The current study answers the call to conduct further research on these interprofessional collaborations (Soska & Navarro, 2020) as it used both quantitative and qualitative research methods to better understand the perspectives of students about their experiences in library-based social work field placements. The current study used the following exploratory research question to address the aforementioned gap in the literature: "How do social work student interns placed in public libraries perceive their work?…”

“…Previous studies on social work student library placements primarily focus on working with a specific population, such as patrons experiencing homelessness (Aykanian et al, 2020;Provence, 2018), a singular library branch (Cuseglio, 2020), or one library system (Provence et al, 2020;Wahler et al, 2019), examine specific training for library staff (Sharkey et al, 2021), or offer a broad review of such partnerships (Johnson, 2019). Soska and Navarro (2020) report the development of social work education partnerships with libraries as an emerging and important phenomenon, but do not address the experiences of interns and their work.…”