'Frontline', 'Crisis' and Other Terms That Don’t Seem to Have Anything to do With Libraries
We have already touched on how the perception of public libraries differs between a worker’s perspective and the academic or general public’s perspective.
To illustrate this, a part of the library worker’s day contends with the lack of access to basic services such as washrooms, showers and laundry. This can mean library workers not having access to appropriate facilities to deal with being exposed to biological or chemical contamination, but it is also connected to vulnerable patrons who do not have access to appropriate resources and needing to address the impact that has on service and the library environment. Vulnerable patrons can have significantly reduced immunity for a variety of health-related reasons such as methamphetamine use or sleeping rough. This means that library workers can be exposed to transmissible diseases such at TB, infections or lack of hygiene; it also means they need to be able to connect vulnerable patrons with appropriate resources or enforce necessary restrictions on accessing library spaces. We’re addressing the risk of bloodborne pathogens or asking people to come back later due to their strong odor.
This doesn’t mean in libraries storytimes, book recommendations and weeding no longer happen. They absolutely do, and how everything plays out in a physical space becomes the library worker’s reality. The library patron who doesn’t know where to get a safe and closeby free shower also wants to read a magazine on stamp collecting.
For many years, the only discourse on how to navigate these issues focused on teaching library workers empathy. Library workers, predominantly female, are being asked to be more empathetic: try to see it from the other person’s perspective! As a middle class person, you lack lived experience with poverty, addiction, homelessness and discrimination.
If you have connected with the fundamental concept of The Library Worker, then you know you have plenty of experience with living on the margins. Workers, labourers, and organizers are largely past empathy-driven service models. We are focused on action, building mutual aid, building resources, and documenting our process.
In order to do this, we need tools. There exists across Canada two bodies that address workplace safety: Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) and Workers Compensation Board (WCB). OHS deals with risks at the workplace and WCB addresses injuries sustained while working.
Later on, we plan an in-depth series on OH&S and Libraries breaking down different OH&S components and how they intersect with library work. For now, here are three ideas to open with, in brief:
- Violence in the workplace: when you can’t eliminate, reduce the risk
- Isolation in library work
- Survivalism, the emergency state, and working in crisis
1.
Occupational Health and Safety can be used to analyze and build a system that reduces the likelihood of injuries and violence in the workplace. It is also a tool that is staff-centered. The policies and regulations were developed in response to worker injuries and deaths, so it does two important things: It asks what happened to cause the injury, and it says the person who was injured is not at fault.
There are however forces in opposition to a staff-centered approach. The governing body that supplies these tools and monitors workplaces for compliance may apply fines. Maybe: While OH&S can be staff-focussed, enforcement tools such as fines levied against workers, work culture that stigmatizes reporting, or even a lack of knowledge of worker rights under OH&S legislation can undermine the usefulness of OH&S. Likewise, OH&S legislation is provincially mandated in Canada, and changes in government can see a weakening or strengthening of that legislation. An excellent example is Alberta and the changes to OH&S legislation between New Democratic Party governments and United Conservative Party governments.
These worker safety tools have close ties to advocacy, union work, and activism. Worker safety can be about the risk to an individual, but is not a catch-all that has the power to eliminate a risk. OH&S can be weaponized like any other system against an individual or workplace.
A workplace violence prevention program could include these processes:
- Injury investigations
- Worksite inspections
- Documentation of incidents
- Violence Risk Assessments
Ultimately it’s a tool that does have limitations and often is rigid in its form--there are an abundance of forms in OH&S. But it provides a space for documentation and when you’re working in crisis, memory can fail us. It can also be frustratingly slow to implement in cases where the OH&S Committee is used to gate keep or be purposefully obscure. However, having documentation also means you can look back and mark your progress and celebrate your wins.
2.
Societal Isolation as it plays out in public libraries has been observed by many people--really anyone who walks in our doors and proclaims “this is a shelter for homeless people”. Other terms include the third space, palaces for the people or the living room of the community.
It is one thing to observe library spaces and connect them with personal ideals about democratic public spaces and childhood memories. It’s something else entirely to spend thousands of hours inside a public library, and to see unaffordability and the digital divide increase over time.
There have been attempts to implement solutions. Libraries are historically known for their punishment-driven service models. Return something late, pay late fees. Damage a book, get scolded by a librarian. Talk too loudly, get hushed. Over the past few decades, we’re seeing the introduction of community-led models, strategic plans that address social isolation, discourse on loneliness, and using technology to bridge the divide.
Those terms and concepts feel sanitized and at arms length to how social isolation presents as a real, live human in front of you, asking for help with: evictions, food insecurity, poor vision, legal advocacy, filing taxes, utility bills, or expired identification. Loneliness in the library space is another way of saying people are struggling to survive and are constantly fighting administrative barriers and rising costs.
This includes library workers who are also being evicted, paying out of pocket for prescription glasses, despairing in grocery stores because romaine lettuce hearts are 7.99, working six days a week and still in debt, and knowing our wages are falling behind inflation. It’s the blind leading the blind, sometimes literally.
3.
The following talks about the difficult things library workers experience, and you may want to skip this section. It needs stating because we have to bear witness.
The emergency state is another way of talking about burnout, a term so overused we would rather talk about the word itself than its effect.
Recently, we connected with a library worker who gave us permission to share their experience. If these experiences sound familiar to you, that should not be surprising since so many other people are going through something similar.
This person works in an eastern province and has recently been diagnosed with PTSD, resulting in a long term leave from their public service role. They work with a population who have historically and are currently still being discriminated against in Canada.
In the last year,
- Funding for newcomers had been cut, leading to a significant loss of programs and the closures of several local community organizations. This has resulted in an increased workload for library workers as people needing help are redirected to the library.
- The worker witnessed the death of a patron they knew well and saw everyday and was significantly impacted by both the loss and hearing about it by coming across a memorial poster.
- A patron came into the library in distress after an assault that occurred outside the library, however they refused emergency services. The library worker would have previously called a mental health crisis response team, however this was a program recently cut.
- A patron got involved in a physical altercation and as a result, a relatively new and young worker was injured.
The feeling of helplessness, despair, frustration and grief were the causes for their leave from work.
There is definitely a correlation between the conditions of this kind of work and the state of crisis workers experience. There is intense pressure from the lack of resources in our communities along with the increasing demand from all sides to do more with less to fill the gap.
This project will not coin a new term about your work or charge a monthly subscription fee to deliver a suite of online webinars. We have to start at the beginning, which is to say you are seen, this is a platform for and by us, and what you experience is real and factual.
Also, none of this is inevitable and this does not have to be the way it is.
