Whole Person Librarianship

This book is about the intersection of librarianship and social work, and what collaboration between librarians and social workers can look like or produce. Many of the examples are about social workers having staff positions in public libraries and working with homeless people, but it's clear that the collaboration can take many other forms. The book emphasizes the value of listening to people and taking your cue from them about what services they need.

The book provides background information about the differences in training between librarians and social workers, as well as their commonalities. There is an accompanying web site at wholepersonlibrarianship.com, with a few resources for connecting with others, however, the blog hasn't been updated since February 2022. There is also a substantial amount of back matter to the book: 6 appendices, a bibliography, and an index.

If connections between social services and libraries is a topic of interest to you, this is a well-written, substantive, and practical book. I recommend it!