"Librarians, too, are often exposed to trauma."

February 19, 2020 9:29 AM

As Compassion Fatigue Takes its Toll, Schools and Public Libraries Take Steps to Support Librarians (School Library Journal): "Caring for others is often part of the job of being a school and youth librarian. In librarianship, as in some other professions such as nursing, there’s growing awareness that this caregiving is a form of work layered on top of other job responsibilities. It’s emotional labor, and when librarians are overworked and drained from dealing with others’ needs and not having time for their own, it can lead to what researchers call compassion fatigue. ¶ Librarians are often counseled at professional conferences, on blogs, and on social media that to ward off compassion fatigue, they must practice self-care: go for a walk during lunch hour, take a five-minute meditation break, drink enough water. Although these tips are useful on an individual level, not everyone is able to take advantage of them, and to some, they seem like Band-Aid suggestions that don’t address the underlying causes of burnout. However, some schools and public libraries are taking compassion fatigue seriously and using effective strategies to support their staff and insulate them from burnout."

Via Literary Hub

posted by not_the_water (22 comments total)

This seems like a useful term for anyone dealing with any sort of customer service that involves helping people.

Fuck does that get exhausting.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:51 AM on February 19, 2020 [11 favorites]

Librarians are social workers. It's time to drop the pretense and staff libraries with actual social workers as well as librarians.
posted by ocschwar at 10:02 AM on February 19, 2020 [28 favorites]

@HalpernAlex: We have reference librarians, collections librarians, lots of other different specialties, but we still have to outsource serving our most vulnerable, marginalized, and underserved patrons.

It's time for public libraries to begin embracing the idea of human services librarians.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:52 AM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

The San Francisco main library has a full time social worker on the staff.
posted by njohnson23 at 11:38 AM on February 19, 2020 [7 favorites]

she tells her staff that they should avoid burnout and give 80 percent of themselves—not 100 percent—at work.

“When the time comes you have to step up…you’ve got it. You’re not already at 100 percent and now have to give 110 percent,” Williamson says. “Boundaries aren’t about pushing other people away; it’s about protecting your own energy. It’s the distance at which you can love yourself and still love someone else.”

what a novel concept. it should be applied everywhere.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 11:54 AM on February 19, 2020 [17 favorites]

Not long ago, in a public library not far from me, a patron died by suicide in a way that was both dramatic and traumatic. It was a library branch where I had, several months earlier, applied for a job and gotten two interviews before being turned down. I was sad about not getting that job for a long time, but it's one of the few things in my life that genuinely seems providential because if I had been a witness to that, it would have fucked me up.

I've been to so many staff trainings and staff workshops where the people in charge refused to acknowledge that if you witness a suicide, if you're getting stalked or sexually harassed, if you have to deal with secondary trauma from people dealing with desperate poverty or addiction, there is no amount of self-care that will make a meaningful difference in a person's life. There are library-level things you can do (hiring social workers, training staff in de-escalation and conflict resolution, but also supporting staff when they report harassment, empowering staff to say "no" and "that's inappropriate" instead of dying on the hill of "the customer is always right"). I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about my Previous Library System, but when I was being harassed by a patron, they transferred me to a different library for long enough for my harasser to (mostly) get bored, and I was so grateful for that. But I still had to get therapy to get basic training in how to be nice to three hundred people a day and retain your sanity.

But the larger-scale stuff - library staff are exposed to trauma because a lot of people are poor, a lot of people are dealing with addictions, a lot of people don't have health insurance, a lot of people are dealing with mental health challenges. If we defund mental health services, services to the homeless, food stamps, housing assistance, welfare, (etc., etc.) we can't then be surprised that libraries are absorbing the brunt of that - and it seems equally bad to say "Ah, let's make libraries better at absorbing all the world's social problems" or to say "Libraries should just be for nice middle-class people again."
posted by Jeanne at 11:59 AM on February 19, 2020 [26 favorites]

A friend who's a librarian recently transferred to the inter-library loan department because working the desk at a branch in our neighborhood was just crushing her. It was a rare week when she didn't have to administer Narcan to a patron who was ODing and it just got too much for her to cope with.
posted by octothorpe at 1:03 PM on February 19, 2020 [6 favorites]

I often think about how stressful it must be for the librarians who are basically on the front lines of America's ongoing social collapse. I imagine some public librarians must see multiple bathroom ODs over the course of a month. Even in the private sector--about 15 years, two separate patrons committed suicide by jumping in NYU's Bobst library, which, if you know Bobst's layout, you know means straight-up action/horror movie material. It's good if these problems are being more broadly recognized.
posted by praemunire at 1:17 PM on February 19, 2020 [4 favorites]

I once walked into the restroom at a branch of the SF Public Library and someone who was in one of the stall's phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing, non stop. I got a sudden feeling maybe the person was ODing. I didn't have any naloxone on me and my dog was tied up outside by herself (bad owner, I know.) I let the front desk staff know my concerns and the nonchalance of the librarian's "okay, we will get right to it" spooked and then saddened the hell out of me. It was clear this was not at all an unusual thing, even in this leafy residential library branch I was in.

There was a post the other month about the diseases of despair ravaging America and I remember posting "Mourning in America." as a comment . . . because that's absolutely how I feel on a regular basis living in SF. In my current job as a substance use counselor I work with folks from all walks of life. I had a guy who works for a government agency that is in frequent contact with SF's homeless population (but not a social worker or any human services type worker). Anyway, the trauma of seeing long-time homeless people in the neighborhoods he works in has impacted this man pretty badly - he describes his work in a way similar to being on a battlefield with human beings dying all around him. This is just a regular guy, working a standard job, with no training or initial expectation he would be dealing with this level of human misery and systemic dysfunction. I'm not sure where I'm going with all this other than to say I hope we can all get our collective shit together and do something about all this. . . we need to stop thinking that other people's problems are just "other people's problems" and allow ourselves to understand how we are all in this together.
posted by flamk at 1:54 PM on February 19, 2020 [11 favorites]

The one concern I have about my wife going back into teahcing (because she's a great teacher even if she doesn't think so) is it puts her back in the firing line for some of the same stuff. I think her new school will be better for her,, but there will be different challenges. Can't imagine my grandmother the librarian dealing with this sort of stuff even though her part of New Hampshire has been ravaged by poverty and drug use in the days since she passed.
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:29 PM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

Relevant link to burnout in general.

This does sound like what my library-working friends tell me. And I second the "this is any job involving helping people" stuff. However, all the "self-care" I do doesn't relieve the overall stress. You can take your hand out of the gom jabbar for fifteen minutes to take a break, but you're still going to have to stick it back in when you go back to work, right?
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:45 PM on February 19, 2020 [10 favorites]

So basically we need to get drug addicts, homeless people and mentally Ill people out of libraries? That sounds an entirely sensible and reasonable policy that most people would support.
posted by alasdair at 2:53 PM on February 19, 2020

But the larger-scale stuff - library staff are exposed to trauma because a lot of people are poor, a lot of people are dealing with addictions, a lot of people don't have health insurance, a lot of people are dealing with mental health challenges. If we defund mental health services, services to the homeless, food stamps, housing assistance, welfare, (etc., etc.) we can't then be surprised that libraries are absorbing the brunt of that - and it seems equally bad to say "Ah, let's make libraries better at absorbing all the world's social problems" -- Jeanne

My wife works at a pharmacy and they're absorbing a fair chunk of this stuff too. The descriptions of emotional labour and compassion fatigue are pretty accurate for her job too. Her most recent act of self-care has been to voluntarily reduce her working hours by 25%, which she's badly conflicted about. To a certain extent, everyone is picking up the shortfall from cuts to public funding and the contracting economy, some roles more than others. Learning to deflect and cope, while important, will not resolve the problem. This is something that only gets resolved , or if you like caused, at a government (economic and social) policy level.
posted by krisjohn at 2:57 PM on February 19, 2020 [3 favorites]

So basically we need to get drug addicts, homeless people and mentally Ill people out of libraries? That sounds an entirely sensible and reasonable policy that most people would support.

This isn't a policy it's multiple diffrent goals. All of those goals have policies that we know would work to achieve them. They include free universal health care, free universal mental health care, multiple free safe injection sites. Social housing without preconditions to being housed. All of the above are achievable but not without raising taxes on wealth. The other huge problem is we love to shame people about drugs and mental health and homelessness and none of the above policies allow us to shame so we won't do them.
posted by Uncle at 3:24 PM on February 19, 2020 [12 favorites]

So basically we need to get drug addicts, homeless people and mentally Ill people out of libraries?

In the long run, we need to figure out how to connect these people with the services they need more effectively so that they look for them where their needs can be best met, which in many cases won't be the library. I love hanging out in libraries, but I wouldn't trade my apartment for normal hours at the NYPL. In the short run, we need to figure out how better to support library staff in provision of services they were never trained for and may not necessarily be the best providers of. Being good at helping people with limited education or computer literacy find and apply for jobs online may not necessarily go together with being good at managing a person in florid psychosis.
posted by praemunire at 3:45 PM on February 19, 2020 [6 favorites]

alasdair: "So basically we need to get drug addicts, homeless people and mentally Ill people out of libraries? That sounds an entirely sensible and reasonable policy that most people would support."

I hope that you're not advocating just kicking them out. They're there because they don't have anywhere else to go.
posted by octothorpe at 5:37 PM on February 19, 2020 [8 favorites]

This kind of burnout hits librarians who don’t deal with life and death issues, too. I work at the reference desk at a mid-sized suburban library and I get home and just need to go lie down in the dark until I can be social again. There’s something about the approachability you have to project and the empathy you need to muster up for every interaction. I often have the same conversation multiple times a day and I need to be present for each one. Most of my regular patrons are older, and I spend a lot of time helping folks to reset Facebook passwords, and it frustrates me, but I need to put on the helpful librarian face. There are some patrons who need so much from me that I look for ways to avoid them when I see them come in. None of these patrons are bad people. I know they’re not trying to make me anxious. But it can be utterly exhausting.
I also work with teens and they are the opposite. They exhaust me in a positive way. I always feel better after a teen program.
posted by Biblio at 6:28 PM on February 19, 2020 [15 favorites]

One of the things that makes it harder for librarians is if their degree curriculum doesn't support any sort of education on this matter. Mine sure didn't, and when we tried to set up a program on how to deal with quote-endquote problem patrons--one program, with no support from the faculty or administration--it was a fiasco. Library school, for all of the good instructors and content that it had, mostly dealt with tidy academic subjects, not with the often chaotic and messy business of serving any and every sort of patron who might walk through the door. And that was way before the opioid overdose epidemic of the current day.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:12 PM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

Yes, I no longer do front desk work (technical services nowadays) but even in academic libraries, my colleagues have to deal with students who are going through major life events/illness/mental health and are in crisis and often these crisis points come when the library is open but student services (who only work 9-5) are not, leaving colleagues to try and sort out something for someone who has come to the one place they can think of that is open at the time when they need help most.

There wasn't anything in my degree about this (and a lot of my affected colleagues are library assistants so no degree required) and I don't think there is anything internal either.
posted by halcyonday at 4:20 AM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

I didn't learn any of this stuff in grad school. I DID, however, get to take a Teen Mental Health First Aid seminar that really helped.
posted by Biblio at 12:57 PM on February 20, 2020

I just feel like there is SO MUCH emotional labor that we're required to do these days, even in jobs where you didn't think that was going to be A Thing. I never wanted to be a "firefighter" or have to take training in how to deal with mentally ill young adults, but here I am. I can't seem to find any other jobs that don't require that, either.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:46 PM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

To make it all even worse librarians do not get paid nearly enough for the work they do. I just retired from an academic reference librarian position at a small public university in a southern state. The stress of being broke combined with the stress of the job wore me down. So now I'm a really broke retired librarian.
posted by mareli at 4:19 AM on February 21, 2020