Local Project: Oshkosh PL – Serving Patrons with Whole Person Librarianship

Oshkosh Public Library – Oshkosh, Wisconsin
Author: Lisa Voss, Assistant Director of Library Development
Final Cost: $3,000

Library and Community Information

The Takeaways

• Staff learned how social work concepts relate to better serving patron needs.
• Oshkosh Public Library is incorporating WPL into a new customer service model.
• Staff became more informed about local agencies/organizations that could serve as resources for staff and provide assistance to patrons.

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?

Oshkosh Public library is at the beginning of this journey. The concepts behind WPL have been introduced and we are starting to build stronger relationships with local agencies/organizations that could help us to navigate complex patron needs. A staff committee is working to integrate WPL practices into a new customer service model for the library, including service standards, language for position descriptions and support documentation for reference and staff training.

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

Oshkosh Public Library’s project focused on staff training, building community relationships and formally integrating WPL concepts into customer service practice. Most staff went through training in WPL, including an initial recorded training package and live virtual training with WPL consultant Sara Zettervall. WPL books were purchased for staff reference. Many staff have attended Lunch & Learn sessions about local community agencies, where staff could meet agency contacts, ask them questions, determine how to best connect patrons with their services and learn what support these professionals might be able to offer staff. The focus on WPL helped to bolster a new relationship with the local warming shelter, leading to a Comfort Cabinet of basic needs items being housed at the library and shelter staff holding office hours one day per week here.

A staff committee is working on a new customer service model for the library that will incorporate WPL principles. At this time, staff are encouraged to include any WPL techniques used in dealing with a patron if the interaction results in an incident report.

OPL also provided incident data; participated in staff pre- and post-project surveys; and distributed a community survey. These activities will be included in a data dashboard and the website/toolkit being developed by WiLS.

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

Like many libraries we are seeing more patrons facing challenges including homelessness, food insecurity, mental health issues and substance abuse. Staff witness the impact of these challenges daily and it is documented in our incident reports. Reports from various community agencies, as well as regular community scans done by the library offer data that supports the prevalence of these same challenges throughout the Oshkosh community and beyond. Library staff need to be ready to handle related situations that occur in the library, as well as try to connect patrons with community services that could help.

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

There were a few intended impacts:

• Staff will be better prepared to assess the often complex needs of our patrons and whenever possible achieve a “warm handoff” to services and resources that can help.
• Clear service expectations and measurements will be integrated into OPL’s new customer service model.
  Staff will employ WPL and similar tools in daily patron interactions and when faced with more serious incidents in the library.
• Staff report increased confidence in their ability to handle situations involving patrons with psychosocial needs.

Measurement: We are currently working on how we will measure impact. Options include incident reports filed and referrals to community agencies/organizations.

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

It became obvious early on that we need to develop clear expectations and service standards for staff. This is being addressed in the development of our new customer service model.

Additional training will also be needed to refine the skills needed to practice WPL. This can be achieved with online training; in department meetings; via our annual evaluation process; at our annual Staff Development Day; and in the adoption of reflective practice.

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

N/A

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

Setting clear expectations for staff and formalizing them in policy is important. Staff have different views about social work practices being part of their work and this not only provides clarity for individual staff; it also helps the organization to move forward in unison.

Don’t underestimate the need for ongoing training and staff support. In addition to constantly improving performance, it also offers opportunities to get feedback from staff and refine practices that could help to improve service.

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?

OPL implemented Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports about seven years ago to offer consistency with our local school district in setting expectations and managing behavior at the library. This has made it easier for staff to communicate expectations to patrons; offered opportunities to highlight positive behaviors and reduced incident reports.

Public services staff at OPL have been participating in Ryan Dowd training for the past several years. His methods are highlighted in staff communication; used when evaluating patron incidents (were practices applied; how could we do better in the future); and correlations between the principles of PBIS and Dowd’s teachings are highlighted in a staff blog.

The staff committee charged with developing a new customer service model is integrating concepts from Sara Zettervall’s book and her training.

Additional information

See examples of communications used by Oshkosh Public Library with internal and external stakeholders during the ARPA Grant Project:

• Oshkosh Public Library: Communications with Staff about Whole Person Librarianship