Encouraging the Humanization of Patrons Experiencing Homelessness: A Case Study of the Role of the US Public Library Social Worker

Abstract

At times, public library staff are overwhelmed with the needs of patrons experiencing homelessness that may go beyond the scope of their training. As a response, some libraries are hiring social workers. However, little is known about the role of the public library social worker. To address this gap, open-ended interviews and brief quantitative surveys of five public library social workers were conducted to explore the role of the public library social worker in its broad context as well as the specific context of patrons experiencing homelessness. Using a holistic and multiple case study design, a cross-case analysis was conducted. Findings include the conditions of social work practice within a library, the social worker’s tools of engagement, the types of social work practice within a library, and their role in equipping library staff to have increasingly humanizing interactions with patrons experiencing homelessness.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 33 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.