Cultivating a Culture of Care: Trauma-Informed Librarianship: Start Here
Who is This Guide For?
The audience includes library employees in a variety of settings including, higher education institutions, K-12, public libraries, and special libraries. Each page highlights one of the six principles of SAMHSA's trauma informed care approach. You will see important questions to ask yourself when practicing trauma informed work. Resources for each principle are linked on the pages. We invite you to contact us for more information.
Purpose: The goals of this guide are to provide:
• Information for library practitioners on how trauma impacts patrons and colleagues and why it is necessary to use a trauma-informed approach in our work.
• Resources library practitioners can adopt and use to create a trauma-informed approach at their institutions.
Building a Self-Care Action Plan
Keep this in mind as you engage in this work. Without self-care, you may experience burnout, compassion fatigue, and other negative effects. A self-care plan can help you balance mental, physical, and emotional needs.
Associate Professor & Head of Information Studies
Culture of Care & Trauma-Informed Librarianship
Libraries are noble, humble yet monumental institutions that serve all of humanity without favor but with gracious finesse in one capacity or another. Social responsibility sprouting from the need to foster informed citizenry creates the forcefield of empowering energy and studied practices that embody the voluminous resources and services that libraries offer and provide.
In fact, certain public health particulars of global significance further magnified and facilitates the renewed foci on community, scholarly engagement, access to useful, essential information, safety, accommodative space for business, culture, or entertainment to meet the evolving needs of patrons and library users. Quintessentially, a rededicated Culture of Care emerged which predates the dawn of Trauma-Informed Librarianship.
The question is: What is Trauma-Informed Librarianship (TIL)? It is a framework that embodies caring labor which is operationalized intentionally. Grounded in a philosophy of empathy and altruism, TIL could be perceived as the responsiveness to an awareness of the impact of trauma. It is applicable to the work performed in libraries by professionals, practitioners and library workers who are encouraged to heed the nuances of compassion satisfaction. Moreso, because the emphasis is centered on well-being: the psychological, physical, and emotional safety for everybody.
Emotional equilibrium is core to aligning library practices with trauma-informed care. “Whether through institutional policy or individual efforts, a growing number of libraries are incorporating the principles of trauma-informed librarianship into their practices. At the same time, they are paying increased attention to how myriad challenges—in the library and the wider world—adversely impact the mental and emotional wellness of those who are doing the work” (Dudak, 2023).
Reference:
Dudak, L. (2023). WORKING TOWARD WELLNESS: As awareness increases about the need to address personal challenges both inside and out of the library, staff and practitioners--from leaders to frontline workers--are sharing their experiences, observations, and views around trauma-informed librarianship. Library Journal, 148(2), 36-40.
