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

(Paperback)

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Creating a Person-Centered Library provides a comprehensive overview of various services, programs, and collaborations to help libraries serve high-need patrons as well as strategies for supporting staff working with these individuals. While public libraries are struggling to address growing numbers of high-need 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.

Author Bio

Elizabeth A. Wahler is Professor and Director of the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA. Sarah C. Johnson is an adjunct lecturer at the School of Information Studies at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, USA and adjunct reference and instruction librarian at Cincinnati State University, USA.