Local Project: La Crosse PL – Resource Connection & Bridging Gaps!

La Crosse Public Library – La Crosse, Wisconsin
Author: Shanneon Grant, Director
Final Cost: $4,500

Library and Community Information

The Takeaways

• If we are prepared to assist with our patrons’ most basic immediate needs, we greatly increase the chance for better outcomes; not only with helping people connect with short-term and longer-term services in the community, but also with patron behaviors in the library. Sometimes it’s the smallest interaction; a conversation, a granola bar, making a phone call on someone’s behalf, helping with a job search, etc. These are achievable, no matter the size of your library or staff.
• It’s more encompassing than adopting social work principles or acquiring social work staff. We need to continually look at our policies, practices, and our organizational culture to ensure that we are truly meeting people where they are. It’s a growth in organizational mindset and modeling this for our community. It’s following through on the core value that libraries are for everyone.
• Helping our staff be as prepared as possible through training and sharing of experiences is so important. As we strive to embrace and serve our patrons as whole persons, we first need to model this and engage our staff.

The Project

Tell us a little about your library and where you are in resilience readiness, including applying aspects of social work in your operations. Are you a beginner, have some experience, or far along?

Our library has been evolving toward resilience readiness since just before the pandemic. We ended our contract with a security company and implemented “Patron Relations” staff who would be more approachable than a uniformed security person, build relationships with our patrons, and utilize training to better support the needs of our patrons experiencing trauma. In May of 2022, through city ARPA funding, we were able to hire a full time Community Resource Specialist with a Social Work background who serves as a resource for patrons and staff, so that is only enhancing our resilience readiness.

Describe your project! What did you do? Who was involved? What did it cost, in terms of both purchases and staff time?

Our local project enabled us to provide additional training to our social worker on staff, visits to other libraries with social workers on staff, as well as tools and resources that help bridge needs for those being served; including a cell phone and a year of service to connect with patrons, and transit tokens, gas cards, hygiene kits, and backpacks to help with immediate needs until folks can be connected to more assistance.

How did you decide to pursue this project? What needs did it address in your library and community? How did you discover these needs?

Because we were able to fund our social services position through other sources, this project provided much needed tools and supplies to help staff be successful serving immediate needs of those most impacted by the pandemic. We became aware of needs prior to the pandemic as the library saw an increase of patrons struggling with issues of mental health, as well as housing and food insecurity. Since the pandemic, our city has seen a 212% increase in our unhoused population.

What is the intended impact of your project, and how did/will you measure it?

In addition to connecting people to resources, both immediate and longer term, we wanted to provide resources and training for staff, as well as connect regionally and participate in a network with other social agencies in our community. We measure the impact not only through the number of people we are able to assist, but by our staff comfort level and a reduction of behavior incidents requiring police and paramedic intervention.

What challenges, seen and unforeseen, did you encounter? What strategies did you use to overcome these?

One challenge has been finding an efficient but affordable system to provide statistics that capture the impact. In addition to our behavior incident database, our staff keeps a daily log of interactions. Our social worker keeps records on an excel spreadsheet until we find a better solution. Additionally, there are still gaps in service in our area and a homeless coalition that is not cohesive or organized. We continue to organize with those organizations geographically closest to the library who see many of the same people.

Looking back, what might you do differently if you were to redo this project?

I would seek more supplemental in-person training for all staff in addition to the Whole Person Librarianship training.

What do you want other librarians to know about your project?

It’s not as intimidating as it sounds, and you are already doing this work in some capacity. Training your staff is critical, helping provide tools is always helpful but what is most impactful is training that results in staff self-reflection and a change of mindset regarding how we approach patrons and patrons in crisis. Adopting the concept of serving the whole person is so in sync with the core value of libraries to serve everyone. Whether you are serving at a library large or small, it goes back to meeting people where they are and providing connection to resources they need. Sometimes, it’s the small things that make a huge impact like having a ready to eat snack or a backpack to give them, so they don’t need to tote their things in a garbage bag. Sometimes, it is a larger investment of staff time to connect people to other resources or help them with job applications. Sometimes, it’s just that human connection that is a lifeline.

How have you incorporated concepts of community resilience into your library’s work? Have you found trainings like Ryan Dowd’s Homeless Training, Sara Zettervall’s Whole Person Librarianship, or others valuable? What have you found to be the most useful and how have you applied it in your specific community?

We have found both these trainings useful, particularly in shifting how we approach, build relationships, and deescalate. Some of our staff found the Whole Person Librarianship book somewhat academic but we focused on sharing big takeaways. We had a lot of great feedback on tools staff took away from Ryan Dowd’s training.