And one more thing before we begin. There is a learner guide posted to today's event page. This is a resource that Sara and Mary have created. It's something we encourage you to customize you'd like you or your team to explore, this is the perfect tool for you to integrate. So know this is there for you and we'll remind you as we leave as well. All right. Let's go ahead and get our recording started. I'm really excited about today's session. It's something I've been looking forward to for a very long time. I'm so grateful to Sara Zettervall who comes to us from the Hennepin county library. And Mary. And I'm going to pass it on to them. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Jennifer. This is Sara starting out here. I just wanted to build on what Jennifer said about this being a safe space for us to have some personal conversations, if we choose. And just say that the grounding assumptions we bring into these conversations are we practice forgiveness of ourselves and others. We're all trying our best to do this work. And it's okay to make mistakes. So we hope you will join us in bringing your whole self to this discussion. So a little more about us, we are very good friends. So we are smiling. We are holding our book contract. We have been working together on this since 2012. And those might or might not be gin and tonics we're holding. So there's a link to our web site right there. We'll have that again at the end. It's in your materials. You don't need to worry about keeping track of it right now. The term whole person librarianship really comes from social workers talking about serving the whole person. So for us, there are two pieces to it. One is us keeping track of collaborations happening in a variety of library settings. Mostly in public libraries. I see a lot of you look like you are from public libraries. I like to say this is work for public service librarians. Who do public service work and some of them are involved in making these kinds of connections as well. So that map that you see, it's just a screen shot. But if this is something you feel like investigating further afterwards, that is a map that shows where we know of the collaborations happening right now. And when we started doing this, there were really just a handful. They were springing up so fast, I'm sure there are a ton we don't even know about. So we love to get suggestions for libraries to add to that map as well. But today, we're really going to focus on the second piece of whole person test. To how we do our library practice. >> Sorry. This is Mary. I was clicking on the wrong unmute button. But anyway, yes, I will just share with you very briefly what the structure is for this webinar. Certainly, a lot of topics we could be covering. And there are resources in the learning guide for further in-depth development. We're going to look at the core values of social work and similarly those align with the values and ethics of librarianship. Then we're going to take two concepts from social work and talk about what they mean and how we can apply those to a library setting. And those are the person in the environment and cultural humility. Then we will share resources and take additional questions. We will pause for questions for you. Certainly, you don't have to respond to them right away. We have our own responses for them that we will share with you. If you do have particular experiences or questions, thoughts, please do share them with us. So first question is what do you hope to get from this webinar? I've shared with you a little bit about what we're hoping to present to you. We'd love to hear that. And we will try to address those. >> And while we're watching those come in, I'll just say, I'm always aware of the fact there's so much we can do within an hour. So we are happy to follow up on. And I know that Jennifer and her folks are going to be keeping track of that as well. So we have strategies on how to make these connections. Ideas for reaching out to community organizations. How to make the case they are core values. Schools and tools to help them enter our library. We are introducing some sort of conceptual ideas. And we will talk about direct application as well. You'll be able to take these perspectives back into your daily work and get something new. Did you have anything you wanted to add? >> I just wanted to add that when we're doing this work, we think about public libraries specifically. And we are sitting in a lovely public library right now, we recognize that they are happening in a lot of different places. So I notice some of the comments coming from people working in academic libraries. We have both developed strong relationships with the librarians designed to work with social work students with their research helping students on campus. Commuter campuses that may not have as many resources. Helping them connect with those particular resources. So we welcome all of you to this webinar. While our examples may be in the public library setting, we have been thinking more broadly as well. >> So I'm going to touch briefly on the core values. Come from both our associations. We have writing on our web site that explores crosswalk between library ethics as well. But this is to show we have a number of core values in common. Social work has social justice. Competence in social work. We have education in lifelong learning and professionalism. So we have the things special to us as librarians. The information management that we do and social work is focused on the person. So this is where we look to our inter-personal side of the library work that we do to learn from social work there. One thing that I just want to remind everyone of as we go through this is that we are not saying that librarians should become social workers. And one thing that is really important to remember in all of this is be intentional about the boundaries you set for yourself in this work. The analogy I like to make is if a patron comes to you and says I want to learn how to make cookies, and I've never done that before, you can get cookbooks for them. You can direct them to YouTube videos. What happens in their own kitchen SXEN the results they get are not up to you. They can come back and say that didn't work for me and you can try other things. But that's a simple example of the boundary which is so hard to set which is facing somebody who has a high need situation. That's something important to keep in mind. >> Great. Yeah. Pinterest fail on that last slide there. One of the key constructs, structures are things we talk about that is understanding the person in their environment. And the person in their environment means that we look at the behavior the way they are acting not just based on what might be going on with them. But based on the environment. And I talk to my students all the time about this idea that if you don't understand what's going on, it's because you don't have the entire story. So the second half of the cookies and say I followed the recipe exactly the way you did, the way it was written. And it's our job to figure out what went wrong. What part of that process may have -- maybe they mixed up baking soda with bake powder. Or maybe they didn't have milk and substituted water. So this really informs all of our practice. And social workers are not only engaging with people one on one. But we're also engaging with communities and with systems to try and ensure that the community that's around people, the policies that we are implementing are just fair. And give people the best chance to make the best cookies, if possible. Examples from social work is assessment is a really fancy word for trying to get more of the story. At least in best practice, we don't have a client walk in the door and say here are my goals for you. We start by talking to them, learning their story, relationship building, trying to build trust with them. And trying to understand what are the influences -- what are the environments they are surrounded by. And looking at issues of power and privilege and race. And trying to knit together all of the different components so we can start to have a better picture of what is going on with someone. And we try to do this before we come up with a solution. So understanding what the problem is, what the issue is for the person across the table from us or next to us. Before we start to offer our expertise or our advice. And we'll talk more about being the expert. But really that person and environment and understanding none of us come into a place without a lot of factors, a lot of ingredients going into the mix. And that we may not be seeing all of that in the final presentation. >> And I'm going to jump in and comment on I like what Jennifer put in the comments just like a reference interview. So true. And I think it's something that we really need to remember entering into broader community conversations as well. And I think this will probably come up a little more later on. But just remembering to listen and to not bring any agenda along. So this is an example of one of our questions we're going to pause for. Something you might need a minute. I'm going to give an example. Helped me give better service. I was working in the back. And one of my colleagues came out and said to me can you come out and talk to this woman. She's trying to use one of our scanners and just won't listen to us. And she's just being rude. And I did. I went out and asked her what she was doing, where she had started. And those questions to get a sense of where she was. And she was trying to scan about 30 pages into a flatbed scanner, which is not the best -- not the most time efficient way. But it came out as she was talking that she was feeling pressed for time. Because she was going to need to leave town to go to a funeral. So as soon as I knew that, this explains why she can't hear any of the recommendations we're making right now. Her mind and body are flooded by the situation she is in. So that allowed me to step back as the person working with her and think really what she needs right now is not problem solving so much as just some emotional support to get through the moment. So, for me, that was a good example of knowing the context helping. So we have a couple comments here. Homeless patrons putting out a list of free church meals. That's great. I think one of the things that's so nice about that is a lot of the time, that's the thing people might be sensitive about asking for help with it. So having it in a really accessible spot where they don't necessarily have to talk to somebody is really good. >> Sara, I'll just jump in too and say that's part of why we've gotten so excited about the idea of collaboration. The library offers an incredibly stigma-free environment. And most people know if you are walking into a homeless shelter or social services agency, they know what you are going in there for. And that can be incredibly humiliating. So to have a space that might be providing resources and services for people without having to reveal the reasons is powerful for what we call our clients and librarians call patrons. >> I saw a comment come through that said many come in because they are hesitant to approach the department. And I just want to mention some of you weren't here. Post to all participants. >> Thank you. And thank you all for sharing. I know we don't have time to comment on everything. We are watching these comments go by and we'll try to touch on some of these things as they come up and are relevant to our conversation. So just to give examples of how a person in an environment thinking has already come into play, one example -- so IMLS funding has been big in our news circles recently with the threats to federal funding. Our Washington office advocates for that funding because they understand the context of libraries across the country that need that extra boost of support from time to time. In particular, there's that federal funding for public internet access in rural areas. So understanding the context of that environment boosts the work that we do. Another example is libraries providing lunch in the summer. A lot of libraries will offer lunch to kids who get free or reduced price lunch during the school year. And we do this as compliment to our summer learning and summer reading programs. We understand that kids can't learn as well when they are hungry. Thinking back to when the Affordable Care Act started, we had president Obama asking libraries to support enrollment. Because of the understanding libraries are places that are stigma free and often a first point of contact. And services for patrons experiencing homelessness. I think one thing that I particularly have learned from doing that work is when people rely on public transportation, can be difficult for them to make a particular appointment time. So we really try to bring that to the patrons where they are already when they are in the library. And that goes back to the information posted by the coffee pot we talked about as well. >> Can I just interrupt real quick and point out that I'm reading some of the comments here. And one of the participants talked about summer lunch sites. I mentioned at the beginning that in social work, we're oftentimes paying attention to the micro and the macro environment. We have people coming in that might be using the food programs. But that there is a growing need in this community of people who are hungry. And sometimes the people making the decisions are funding for your libraries or social services don't have these stories. They don't know about these things. So both librarians and social workers working directly with people can another avenue for the service or doing social justice work is to bring these stories to decision makers to find people who can take this information in a way that will make good programs and good policies. I know you are going to talk about library environment. This particular comment really helped me make that connection between the practice work. >> Yes. And, of course, that is a great transition to this slide. So thinking at that level just as people are influenced by their context. The library as an institution is part of a larger set of systems as well. And this is going back to the idea of you are not responsible for how the cookie comes out. It's helpful to remember the library has a place in this overall system. So this is just an example of what might also be called a continuum of care. So we understand and helpful to understand what all the pieces are that go into helping people. We have a particular role and responsibility in that. So very important for our social work colleagues whether we have invited them specifically to work in our libraries or not. Quite a lot of social workers that will find their clients or meet with them in the library. As needed, we hand off to social service providers. They can provide case management and referrals connecting to the organizations that help people with things like housing. People get integrated into the community and may come back to the library in their new context. So, actually, before we start to talk about cultural humility, Jennifer, I just wanted to pause here and see if there are any questions that you saw come through or any sort of overall concepts that we should address at this point? >> There was a lot, definitely, that came through with those examples of how people are being whole person librarians in their communities. I think the other thing that just came to mind as I was seeing, which I love the idea of the continuum of care. Continuum is one of my all time favorite words. Is if people don't feel like they have the connections , that was one of the things that came up as you all climbed in. It's recognizing that if you don't have that relationship with the social service organizations or as coordinated relationship as you hope to have, that maybe skips a couple steps in this process. If you don't have that yet. But that is something that will be addressed in a little bit. But I always feel like giving credit. I know we don't necessarily have the capacity to be the social workers in our community. But seeing your examples really shows how you are bringing that kind of service in how you are providing those services. I know that came up as something people wanted to talk about. And really that relationship that you might be building in your community with other agencies and organizations to share the learning that you are doing today will help them -- it's kind of like having Mary and Sara come at it from their two angles. This will give you the tools to give you the language for them to know that, yeah, I'm getting a little bit more of an understanding of what social work principles are. So this is just a great step in that direction. >> Thanks. I just wanted to really quickly respond to a question that came in while you were talking there about are we allowed to call social services to come and talk to the person who is homeless in the library? First, I would say just to be careful. This is not necessarily saying that this is your particular situation. The person who brought that up. But just, in general, we need to be careful about the assumptions we make. So you might not want to help with this. If you do know for sure that somebody is struggling with finding a place to say. If you just find out what organizations are experiencing homelessness. Go and meet and talk with them. A lot of times organizations will have outreach workers who are there to do this very kind of thing. So if you don't have something like that going on in your library, yes, there are resources and folks you can call. >> Yeah. You hit it on the head. That may not be something that can be fixed or solved. But like Jennifer was saying, it's a great way to start building those relationships. And so calling your homeless shelters or your social service agencies and talking about department of human services could come and offer on dealing with homelessness or the National Association for mental illness coming in and doing a presentation about mental illness. And when I was talking about sharing those stories, going to a city Council meeting or your own representative for your area and asking them to come. Or talk with your staff. Or whatever it might be. Starting to initiate those relationships is absolutely key to doing any of this work. So if nobody interrupts me, I'm going to keep talking. And talk about the cultural humility. And I think most of us are familiar with cultural competence. It takes us a step beyond. And this is turning us from focusing on the other. The homeless person to the patron with problems and starting to reflect upon ourselves and what our perceptions are and how we're bringing that with us into our work. And this concept because we're all about collaboration, we're borrowing this lovely concept from the medical profession. And it was really developed by two nurses working in a public hospital in the Los Angeles area in the mid 90s. And remember the Rodney King beating by the police. So there was a lot of diversity training going on during that time. And we weren't seeing the outcomes we would hope to see when people are starting to become more culturally sensitive to diversity issues to it being very present in the media. So this idea of cultural humility focuses -- oftentimes, when I talk about the check box approach. I've had my training working with African Americans and Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans. So now I know everything there is to know about those cultures. Instead, culture from our own perspective and it's a life-long learning. And we can never be competent for any particular person's culture. Rather than it being a set knowledge, it's something that's always evolving and changing with every interaction that we have with our patrons. It also has this piece as institutional accountability. And that goes back to what I was talking about before. We can be sensitive and have humility and empathy and yet if our institutions are not supporting us, it's going to be very difficult for us to practice in that way. We have a video and it has the two nurses and they are talking about how they developed this concept. And one of the stories they tell in the video and I'll try to get all the details right. But basically, it's an African American nurse who is working with Hispanic patient. And the resident on call comes in to check on his patient and the patient is moaning and seems to be in a lot of pain. And the doctor says to the nurse I think we need to order some more pain medication. And the nurse says no because I attended diversity training and Hispanic Americans tend to overstate their emotions and the pain they are in. So I don't think he's really in as much pain as he's exhibiting. And that's an example of diversity training not having the intended affect of making us more sensitive to different ways in the world but making us think we know how other people are. And how they are seeing the world without ever having to ask them or engage in any kind of conversation. I think we are at an advantage as librarians and social workers. Certainly, our training has taught us how to be better listeners and how to glean information that we need. We have to recognize we still have our own biases and perspectives that influence the way that we approach our work. So we need to continually check ourselves. And one way we do this is through supervision. We are required to move from one level of licensure to another. Like 4,000 hours. And that doesn't mean somebody's looking over our shoulder. We are engaging in conversations about the way we are interacting with our clients or communities. And have somebody offering us good advice and sounding board so that we can be checking that. And we also say that the client is the expert in their own life. And so they know what's happened and what they need in terms of the experiences that they've had. And so we look to them to provide that for us as well. And the third bullet point on here is moving away from this idea of the checklist in our education and both historic and current issues of privilege and discrimination that the people we're serving have gone through and coming to us with. >> And Mary, I'm just going to jump in there with going back for a minute to your point about supervision. I think one really nice example is San Francisco public library was the first to hire a full-time social worker. And her name is Leah Esgara. And as a social worker in the library oversees a group of outreach workers who circulate and provide that one on one contact with patrons. What she does is bring everyone together at the beginning of each shift and particularly at the end. And this is where they provide a really nice example of taking time to reflect on challenging experiences. So at the end of every shift, understanding that their time has been spent on all sorts of inter-personal interaction. She talks with the workers about what they ran into. They problem solve together. They can talk about just putting any difficult interactions that they had out there so that they are able to leave those behind before they go home. And this gets into something that's reflective practice. But it's just a really -- I think, if we can make time for these sorts of things, giving people an opportunity to process can be really helpful. >> Thank you. I had forgotten that. That's the thing in a lot of these trainings we often forget to tell people. When we're talking about doing supervision and doing relationship building, those things take a lot of time. And we're already so busy and don't have a capacity to do all the great things we know we should do. Which goes back to I'm not a social worker in that it doesn't take as much our time to have relationships with the people in the community that can help us meet those needs and provide us the kinds of supervision opportunities. So, again, if we go back to that circle, that continuum that Sara talked about, handing off to the social service provider means having developed a relationship with the social service provider. While it may feel time consuming, the payoff in the end makes it a worthy investment but we can't underestimate the amount of time it takes to do many of the things we're talking about. >> Thanks, Mary. Just to move on here a little bit. In terms of how we apply this in libraries. I think it's about the approach you take, not necessarily the road you take. They provide two sides of a complete picture where you can collect data. You can learn about your surroundings. It's fact based and external to you. The position that you take as we're going out in the community. I think we've really started to see this a lot more as a best practice in how we do community engagement. I really want to emphasize that being in the community without an agenda is a really important way to practice cultural humidity. So we're all strapped for time and what are the outcomes you expect to have at the end of this? I would really encourage just holding off on that for a minute so you can go and talk to the people to help. What their challenges are. Be there with them. And think about how then once you know what the needs are, how you can bring your specific expertise to be of help. So some examples I think that are good examples of cultural humility approach working in libraries already, one great example is teen advisory groups. We're encouraged to approach that with that attitude I was talking about in the previous slide. Where we listen to what they need. I saw somebody earlier working with people on the autism spectrum. I think a great example from the work I've been doing is we decided to see what more the library could do. So what we did is went to parents and we talked to them and asked them questions about the challenges that they face going out in public. And really just try to get a sense of what -- so then come back and take our perspective on that. So one example of something that came out is that we now have the figit kits and have toys to help kids focus in the library. Another example is holding the library space you have. If you have a lot of Muslims in your community, that need is there and they are praying several times a day and don't have a place to go for it. I'm really excited there's an opportunity center in east African neighborhood that just opened. And we have foot washing basins in the bathrooms for people to use when they come in. So that's a really cool thing that we can do. So another question. When has learning something new shifted your perspective or approach. So that's where Mary and I started out. >> So the first experience we had was where these things started coming together for us was Sarah was leading a Somali girl's book club. So she said I think it would be important if social issues may come up in terms of the books you are reading and the discussions you have. I think it would be important that you have a social worker with you that might be able to address that for make sure the girls have appropriate resources if necessary. >> So I'm going to jump in here and give myself a little ego stroke. It was actually my idea to include you. Not my supervisor's idea. >> Oh, well, great. See, it's funny how the stories look different. What we did was planned our book club and we knew it was during the summer. And we knew that rearview mirror amadan was occurring. So we wanted to be respectful of that. And talked with the people working at the center. So we knew we needed to have the book club done by sundown. You fast until sundown and then eat a large meal. So we thought we were being culturally sensitive and planned our book from 5 to 7 and 6 to 8. The sun doesn't go down in Minnesota about 9 or 9:30. So we went forward. And what happened is they eat at sundown. Many of the girls are involved in the preparation of the food that the family eats. So they were having to leave early to make the meal or weren't able to come. They were in the middle of the preparations with the meal. So we went forward and the girls that were there were amazing. And we can take with us into our future planning and program development. Is that how you remember it, Sara? >> Yeah. We had great conversations at the book clubs we did have there. Even though, the girl's club leader said to me it will be fine to have those discussions before sundown, well, yeah. I don't know. I think that's a good example of just sometimes you have to learn from the experience of being there. And being willing to mess up a little bit. So there's been on-going conversation in the comments about prayer spaces. So this is something that came up in the work I was talking about for families with kids on the autism spectrum. It's helpful to them to have a space to have the kid into and decompress. So we talked about making sure people understand it's an okay use to let the family reserve when they can take the kid inside. You don't necessarily have to have a room that says this is a prayer room. If you can share with your staff to help them know as a quiet space that could be used for prayer. And potentially put that into your guidelines for using the room. That's something that is a pretty quick fix that you can make without having to do a whole lot of work on it. >> Yeah. I'd also just like to say too that in the making the prayer spaces, it doesn't have to be specifically for Muslims wanting to pray. That's the great thing when we are diverse and open minded in the kinds of adjustments we make. We find out that it might appeal to people in situations that we hadn't thought about. So I think about I could use that as a nursing room. Or the buttons that help open the door for people with wheelchairs also happen to help me when I have way too much stuff in my hands or the larger bathrooms that are handicap accessible are really nice for those that have two or three little children in tow. So there are often really cool unintended consequences of serving the needs of a group of people or particular issue we're trying to address. >> So there's a whole other webinar out there somewhere on how fantastic universal design is. But we're getting close to our end here. I'm going to quickly point out resources for learning more. A lot of this is listed on the web site for the webinar. So you can go back to that. I really want to encourage all of you to join our community of practice on the whole person librarian web site. You go into the site and ask to join. This is a really unique space for librarians and social workers to come together and continue these kinds of conversations and learn from each other about the ways we're dealing with the situations and building these collaborations. There's some other stuff on the web site as well. This is not a paid advertisement. But free online course and series of courses in social work is worth checking out if it's something you want to learn more about. Mary and I are going to be hosting a panel there on this topic where we'll really focus on how these things -- how these relationships are built. And Mary, this is yours. >> Sorry. Forgot to unmute. We talked about connecting with your local social service agencies. Talking to your closest university or college. As a social work educator and internship director. I have gotten request to have social workers come in and do internships there. And community outreach or training. That also could be an entire webinar. I'm happy to talk with people. And partnerships on our web site. >> Yep. We are always happy to talk more about that sort of thing. And our research and book. We are doing a survey. This is different from the evaluation form you are going to get from Jennifer. It's a survey for us to find out what people are know and what would be useful and doing this work and sharing things. It's also a great self assessment tool for you to go in. You can see in there which pieces of this you might not know much about. So I see that some people are diving out. Looks like it's 2:57 according to my clock. So yes, post survey link that will be shared. Also in the learner guide we have on our web site. So in the last couple minutes , we can take any closing questions. >> I just had a couple thoughts. There was some conversation around policies and you were talking about reaching out into the community and understanding the specific scenarios. That maybe have created tense situations in their libraries. This idea of whole community, we talked about building the relationships with police and fire and social workers knowing how as a community we talk about reflection. Communication between all of those providers. And begin to create whole person policies and responses. And being able to share in the learning. And so many of the people talk about the process of learning. Being an on going process. That we're constantly learning in this process and it is a constant cycle of reflection. So I was so excited to see people's examples and recognizing this is hard work. And you are committed to learning is such a wonderful thing. So I really want to thank both of you for all your great work. And how excited to be on the beginning of your book process and look forward to continuing to learn. And thank you to the participants to bringing so much as well. >> Thanks, everyone. >> Have a great afternoon. >> Thanks to our captioner as well. And I will be sending you a survey as well. And Mary and Sara we'll appreciate your feedback and it also helps us in on-going decisions around our program. Thank you so much to everyone. Bye.