Forum: UN CSW70 NGO Forum Parallel Event

Speakers: Arlene Limas OLY, CEO of PAVE Prevention; 
Lauren Comito, Executive Director of Urban Librarians Unite
Geography: United States
Date: 10 March, 2026
Length: 90 minutes, online.  
For who: nyone interested in improving workplace safety in public libraries and/or interested in hearing from other people working in public libraries. Engaging.
Recording available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiOYclQiu_k

This was a Parallel Event for the NGO CSW (Committee on the Status of Women) Forum in March 2026.  Parallel events are hosted by civil society organizations, this one being hosted by PAVE and the Urban Librarians Unite. PAVE is an American social enterprise whose aim is to “create a healthier non-violent work environment through measured, supportive, proactive education”.  PAVE has worked with a few libraries in the USA; Urban Librarians Unite have been working to highlight trauma in libraries and their Trauma Report was discussed in an earlier TL;DR article. I discuss this later, but the binary lens, I assume, is because this was a UN affiliated event. Helen Turnbull of PAVE led the discussions. 

1.

The first section of the talk was with Lauren Comito from ULU. Some of the major points from this section include: 

1. ULU’s study confirmed what library workers know: we experience trauma, both directly and vicariously, at work. 
2. Library workers cannot fix the societal issues that are creating the trauma, but we can support each other. 
3. Workers are leaving library work. People are retiring early, it’s harder to recruit, and this is increasing the strain on workers and increasing the level of risk at work. The loss of older workers to early retirement means a lot of knowledge is being lost. 
4. There is an assumption that the people causing the trauma at libraries are having mental health issues or are unhoused. While there has been a drastic increase in medical and mental health emergencies at libraries, a lot of the disrespect and hostility comes from other women. 
5. It is not possible to create a space that is 100% safe. Workplaces need to identify what level of safety is acceptable. Incident responses and planning are a big part of developing safety, as are adequate staffing levels. 

2.

The second section was with Arlene Limas, CEO of PAVE Prevention. Some of the points that came up in this section include: 

1. Empowerment self-defence is a kind of self defence teaching that includes learning basic skills such as how to stand, but also includes helping people heal from experiences. 
2. Libraries can learn from looking at their incident reports and identifying opportunities to decrease risk. 
3. Security teams/safety teams can have a negative effect on workplace safety because: 
   1. safety skills (ie deescalation) can become siloed within the safety team; 
   2. an external security provider brings a second work culture to the workplace that may conflict with the library work culture; 
   3. the presence of security can escalate an incident. 

3.

The third section was a structured discussion . Points from this section include: 

1. Staff need to be given the permission to walk away when an interaction crosses boundaries. Many library workers have never had this articulated to them. 
2. There is a silo of information both within library systems, within communities, and between libraries. 
   1. There are no national statistics that track incidents at libraries
   2. Library workers use informal channels (ie Reddit) to communicate within systems and between systems

Because of these silos, library workplace safety needs to move from “isolated advocacy to collective action”. Some of the suggestions from this were:

1. Library workers and libraries need to share their stories so that the public understands what library work is and how it impacts workers.. 
2. We could work to establish what the basics of workplace safety are, similar to the [Joint Commission](https://www.jointcommission.org/en) used in health care in the US. 
3. We could work to establish ISO standards for libraries. 
4. On a community level, libraries can connect with other agencies within their communities to build up resources, advocacy, and support. 
5. We are in the course of a cultural change in library work and change is all of our jobs to do! 
6. Our communities need us!

Extras

Some fun things that came up that I want to include just because: 

• Joy is trauma prevention 
• What if we could fix it with balloons? (or a snack) 
• Gossip is information and important 

Somewhere in business land there is a line that if you leave a communications gap, it will be filled with gossip. And gossip is sometimes the only way workers can get information. 

Thoughts

Two thoughts I had were that this conversation could have been improved if it moved away from the gender binary and if it touched on race as a blind spot in libraries.  

Lauren Comito did clarify at the start that men who work in feminized professions are also subjected to hostility and violence in the workplace. I’d love for us to move away from the gender binary and start discussing workplace health and safety in the context of types of work so that we can have these conversations without excluding people. In my 25 years in libraries, I’ve worked with folks from all kinds of demographics and racial backgrounds, different gender identities and presentations, different sexual orientations, body types, physical abilities, language abilities, etc. We all experience the workplace and its hazards differently, and things like sex and gender, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical ability and even stature all impact how we are treated. Our life experiences, too, affect how we react to incidents, how we establish boundaries, and how these things impact us once the incident is over. 

One of the dirty secrets of libraries is that we are not diverse. We at The Library Worker will touch more on this in a future post, but for now, I think it’s important for people to understand that a lack of diversity directly affects a library’s ability to meet its communities’ needs, and being a library worker of colour means you end up experiencing negative behaviours that your white or white presenting colleagues don’t, and which might be invisible to them. It can be difficult experiencing additional micro and macro aggression from patrons as well as coworkers that don’t get taken seriously. Statistics from the Labor Bureau (American) were given during the talk—82.5% of library workers identify as women and 81.2% identify as white. Diversity is being targeted right now, and that means we need to talk about it. Most libraries (especially in Canada) often neglect diversifying out of ignorance or a lack of interest because of the homogeneity of library staff and managment. As I said, more on this to come, but I didn’t want it left unacknowledged. 

There are some great discussions in this presentation and I do recommend listening to or watching it. PAVE has other recordings on their YouTube channel; their De-escalation: Staying Grounded When Emotions Rise is recommended especially if your workplace does not provide library-specific de-escalation training. 

In solidarity, 

alissa