Category: Editorial

Within the last couple of weeks, I've done an informal survey of LIS faculty interests across our most reputable PhD programs, based on how they present themselves in online profiles. To summarize my impression: virtually everyone outside of youth services  (and to some extent archives, but that has always been its own world) is focused… Continue reading Putting the Social in Social Science

Last week, I suggested that turning to a model of how social workers interact with clients might be useful for librarians who work with homeless patrons. In a related post today, I want to continue thinking about how looking to the relationship between social workers and their clients might reinforce particular values already important in… Continue reading Librarians : Patrons :: Social Workers : Clients (Part 2 of 2)

The university library where I currently work is embedded in a neighborhood with a significant Somali immigrant population--the same neighborhood, in fact, where Mary and I held the book club last year. This neighborhood, Cedar-Riverside, is fairly close to two public libraries, but there isn't one within safe walking distance, so there has been a… Continue reading A Report from the Trenches

One of my interests in this project of examining the intersections of social work and librarianship is to consider how librarians might more visibly champion the public good like social workers do. This post considers two ways that librarians tend to devalue their own work in this vein: first, highlighting libraries as institutions rather than… Continue reading Ethical Librarians and the Public Good

by Mary Nienow, MSW, Clinical Director and Instructor of Internship, University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire As I was procrastinating in the writing of this blog entry on what social workers can teach librarians, I received call from a public library asking for my help. With the advent of the Affordable Care Act (i.e. Obamacare),… Continue reading Public Librarians and Health Care: A Social Work Perspective

While public libraries are clearly at the forefront of most considerations of the overlap between social work and librarianship, we are also interested in thinking beyond the on-the-ground issues faced by public librarians in providing social services referrals and information. As Sara Z. mentioned in her post, Whole Person Librarianship, this blog is part of… Continue reading Social Work and Academic Libraries

If there's one thing I remember learning in reference class - besides that print reference is complex, and our librarian forebears were amazing to work it - it's never to give medical advice to patrons. We were all taught to draw a clear line between sharing medical information resources and making recommendations about taking medical… Continue reading “I’m not a doctor, so I can’t advise you on that”

In this post, I'd like to suggest a spectrum of collaboration between librarians and social workers. In addition to addressing why there is a need for librarians to work with social workers and vice versa, we also want to acknowledge that there are a number of ways that this kind of intersection might work to… Continue reading Spectrum of Collaboration