We are ready to launch the City Library Collective's Whole Person Librarianship (WPL) project. Every staff member is invited to participate, but only Pubic Service Staff (ADS, YFS, Circ, Outreach) are required to participate in this training.
You've heard me talk about WPL for many months now, and most of you took a Community Assessment Survey that identified what social service needs we witness in our daily interactions in the library and sometimes on our lawns and in our parking lots. To quickly summarize, WPL is the overlap of librarian work and social work, where library staff go the extra mile not only to point patrons needing help in the right direction, but to more effectively interact with people affected by trauma and provide more holistic guidance than a simple phone number or website would provide.
Our goals for this project are:
1. Provide training and support to our front line staff who face behavioral challenges and complex psychological conditions when working with the public. We want you to feel prepared and confident on the job and safer as a result.
2. Call the police less often. Not all issues can be resolved without the help of the police, but with some concentrated training in trauma and social service techniques, we may be able to create better outcomes for us and for the people we meet.
3. Determine whether future KPL staffing should include trained social workers.
To help us understand the principles of Whole Person Librarianship, 11 libraries in Wisconsin known as the City Library Collective have contracted with Sara Zettervall, author of Whole Person Librarianship: A Social Work Approach to Patron Services. Sara has recorded a kickoff introduction to WPL and will interact with us later in April to customize training just for KPL. Here's the launch page provided by Sara with all the links you'll need for her training portion.
Here's how our project will work:
1. You will receive a short 5 question survey to help our team understand staff's current understanding and opinions on incorporating social work methods into library work. The survey is anonymous- please answer honestly without shame.
2. Staff will watch Sara's kickoff webinar. The training is divided into 3 short segments, each less than 30 minutes. Staff will be asked to view the full webinar before April 5th.
3. Sara will conduct a live online question and answer segment for all staff at all 11 CLC libraries as a follow up to the information provided in the webinar on April 5th at 9am.
4. Sara will interview each library individually to understand our current local training needs or address our questions.
5. Sara will provide specific training to groups of 3 libraries whose local needs match.
So what am I asking from you?
If you are a member of the Public Services Team, please begin engaging right away with this training. I admit the timeline is very short, something our team could not avoid because of the grant requirements. So if you're working this weekend and find yourself in a spot where you have some time to watch the webinar, please do. It's recorded so you can stop and start it repeatedly. You won't receive the survey until next week, so it will be out of order, but I would rather you had a chance to watch the webinar in time for the April 5th session.
If you can participate in the April 5th session, I hope you do. If you cannot, please jot down your questions and send them to me or to Linda and we will ask them for you during Sara's Q&A.
If you are not part of the Public Service Team and feel you'd like to know more about WPL, please feel free to participate! All of us can benefit from this information.
Thanks, Everyone!
Barb
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