WPL at ALA in San Francisco!

And we have a conversation starter at ALA in San Francisco! Right now it’s just me and Mary, but you know I’m going to invite everyone I can think of who has some involvement in this work to participate, and hopefully we can build a panel. When the scheduler is up, I’ll share a link to that.

…And Social Justice for All: How Can Librarians and Social Workers Collaborate?

Monday, June 29, 2015

9:15-10:00am

Location TBA

Here in the nation’s first city to hire a full-time social worker for its central public library, you’ll hear a lot about serving our least advantaged patrons. But we and our social work colleagues have a shared history of commitment to social justice as well as much to learn from each other in theory and practice. Does your library system connect directly with social services? How do you make social justice part of your daily work? Bring learnings from your work life and from conference sessions to this open conversation with a public librarian and social worker.

Sara Zettervall is a librarian at Hennepin County Library (Minneapolis, MN), sharing her time between a local branch library and Community Connections, which provides system-wide community engagement support. She co-founded a blog, Whole Person Librarianship (https://mlismsw.wordpress.com), to explore the intersection of librarianship and social work, and has since been invited to present on the topic in MLIS programs and write about it for Public Libraries magazine. She was a 2014 ALA Emerging Leader. Sara has worked in academic, public, and school library settings and hold both an MLIS and an MFA.

Mary Nienow is a PhD candidate in Social Work at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, where she also earned her MSW. She specializes in macro practice, having over a decade of experience in research, teaching, advocacy, program coordination, policy development and analysis in public and private organizations. Mary was previously the internship director at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and she has been involved in Whole Person Librarianship from its inception.