self care

Advocating for Mental Health Together: Why Library Professionals Should Be At The Forefront of Advocacy

This post comes from a guest poster, Alejandro Marquez. Alejandro is a Collection Development Librarian at the Auraria Library which serves the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and the Community College of Denver.

The academic library is open the most staffed hours of any public building on campus. We open early for students to use the computers, print papers, or use the photocopier before class. The library provides a clean and climate-controlled space for individuals to study and learn even on the weekends when other departments are closed. Individuals visit the library to ask for directions or help navigating the physical campus. Because we see a wide swath of students, community patrons, and individuals experiencing issues such as housing insecurity, food insecurity, we should be able to recognize the signs of mental health distress. Healthier patrons equals healthier interactions which mean less trauma for employees.

As a community hub of campus, libraries have a mission to advocate for their communities and the workers themselves. I see advocating for emotional well being as being tied in with librarianships’s values of promoting social justice. The role of library professionals is to support belonging, build trust, and relationships within the library and in the academic community. All of these actions support student retention and employee retention. A healthy student body and healthy workforce support student retention and staff retention.

The profession needs to go beyond the traditional approaches to thinking about our work to meet the needs of our community. Libraries have always supported the traditional concept of literacy and mental health literacy is just another variation of our core mission. Many library professionals are woefully under trained nor equipped to handle mental health and there needs to be an active investment of resources to ensure success.

There are high levels of burnout and low morale in library professionals and it is compounded by similar experiences of university students, staff, and faculty who they also interact with and serve. Library professionals experience difficult situations and pass it on to the people we help and our loved ones at home. Later, our loved ones pass it back to us and we take it back to work where we begin the cycle anew. It becomes a never ending draining cycle. There is a recognition that even mildly difficult interactions can compound over time and create secondary trauma.

It can become overwhelming to think where to start addressing the issues when there is an interconnectedness and an action and reaction between the corresponding entities. The theory that I like comes from the field of safety science called the swiss cheese model. James Reason, a professor at Manchester University, introduced this model in his book, Human Error. A block of swiss cheese is full of holes and when cut into slices the number of holes and size vary from one slice to another. These holes could represent shortcomings, weaknesses, hazards, or potential for failure. Each layer has holes and no layer is perfect. Since all the slices have holes in different places, stacking them up reduces the risk. The openings are covered by other slices. The strengths in some parts can negate weaknesses in others. With any complex issue, there is no magic bullet and it is rare that there is any one single root cause. It requires all of those things, not just one of those things. Small changes enacted by individuals or organizations can broaden the safety net.

The following levels of care are meant to be fluid and can bleed into one another. They are built on trust, commitment, and accountability. Each of us has a duty to care for ourselves and others. Not everyone is a manager but they can be a leader. Leadership at all levels is needed to address the issue and improve well being. This collective and coordinated action involves library professionals, the organization, and the entities that fund and support our work. This is a community problem and will only be solved with the help of everyone.

On the individual level, the more immediate environment encompasses relationships between coworkers, library members, and staff. Self care is the most commonly heard phrase in the mass media. It calls for individuals to take care of themselves after a stressful day due to personal or professional obligations. Common remedies are getting enough sleep, exercise, or enjoying an indulgence. This level of care assumes that the responsibilities were difficult but manageable. Audre Lorde’s essay, A Burst of Light, illustrates this idea: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” It is like they tell you on the airplane, put your mask on first. You are unable to help another patron or coworker unless you are well yourself. People often feel guilty about taking time for themselves. Your health is just as important as others.

Individual Level Questions

Are staff receiving training and feedback?
Are there sufficient professional development opportunities?
Is the workload manageable?
Are individuals treated with civility and respect?
Are patron and staff interactions warm and inviting?
Can people afford to make a living at the job or do they have to work two jobs?

Collective care is the duty to advocate for coworkers and the work being done in departments. It requires building a culture of care so no one slips through the cracks. It is our duty to champion their health and wellness as we are interdependently connected. It increases work and life balance that create stronger and stable dynamics within a unit.

Organizational care is one in which institutions have a robust medical and mental health plan for their employees. A good benefits package shows that organizations care about their workers. It can help with recruitment and retention. Flexibility in the work schedule allows workers to spend more time with their families which allows individuals to balance child care and other life commitments.

Departmental And Organization Level Questions

Are there supportive policies such as remote and flexible work schedules, COVID policies, diversity, pay equity?
Are there clear expectations and NOT vague workplace fit and professionalism standards?
Are we only valuing work that is easily measurable? What about emotional labor and diversity work?
Are there systems in place for hiring, pay, promotion, and retention?
Are we making sure that there is pay equity?
Is there adequate staffing and resources?

Societal care is a public that funds quality medical and mental health services for all individuals regardless of their ability to pay for it. This creates a healthier workforce and prevents future social costs. We saw during the pandemic that the most vulnerable communities were affected because they didn’t have healthcare nor paid time off. Physical and mental health shouldn’t come with any financially or culturally imposed moral failings or blame.

Socio-Political Level Questions

How does the profession advocate for government investment of time, money, and resources?
How do library workers promote critical thinking to counter the wave of anti-intellectualism?
How do individuals fund libraries as a social good?
How do institutions lower the cost of the masters of library science degree?
How do organizations retain BIPOC librarians?
How should libraries contribute to the larger societal conversations on racism, discrimination, and marginalization?

Overall, libraries need to be able to give employees the tools and confidence to try to meet these modern problems. These challenges create opportunities for change. We should treat this situation not as something to run away from but as a signal that there is something to understand.

Where Have I Been?

Since 2008, ACRLog’s “First Year Academic Librarian (FYAL) Experience” series has annually featured 1-2 academic librarians in their first year on the job in an academic library. This new series, “Where Are They Now? Former FYALs Reflect,” features posts from past FYAL bloggers as they look back on their trajectories since their first year. This month, we welcome a post from Quetzalli Barrientos, Student Success Librarian at Tufts University.

Hello! I am so glad to be back at ACRLog. It has been a couple of years since I have written a post, but I always think back to my very first ACRLog post that I wrote in the Fall of 2015. That fall, I began my first professional librarian job as a resident librarian at a small, private university in Washington, D.C. I was new, eager, terrified, and more lost than I’d like to admit.

It has been five years and much has changed since then. I spent three years in D.C. and once my residency ended, I moved to Massachusetts. I started as the Arts and Humanities Research and Instruction Librarian at Tufts University. Recently, due to a reorganization at our library, I am now the Student Success Librarian. When thinking of what I would write for this post, I thought that maybe I would talk more about new job duties, expectations, projects, etc. However, the more I thought about it, the more I reflected on where I truly am as a librarian and as a person.

The past five years have been a continuous wave of changes, both exciting and hard. I’d like to say that the past five years have been amazing, but to be honest, it has been a struggle. While my work in D.C. led to my position at Tufts, the road was paved with stress, anxiety, and learning to maintain an actual work-life balance.

While as a resident librarian, I was overwhelmed with stress and a growing anxiety that I did not understand. While on the outside, one might think that I had it together, I did not. I overworked myself, I kept myself busy with conferences and presentations, and I navigated work-place politics that had a negative effect on my mental health and well-being. Since the end of my residency in 2018, I have learned invaluable skills. I want to share some of them:

I have learned to stand up for myself. For me, standing up for yourself is different than advocating for yourself. I learned early on in my residency that I would have to be the one to speak up about the type of work I wanted to do. Standing up for yourself meant respectfully speaking up when faced with conflicts within the organization or when disrespected, belittled, or treated in a condescending way. I am not someone who likes conflict or seeks out conflict, but over the years, I have finally learned to stand up for myself and use my voice to defend myself. That being said, I was also careful not to burn bridges. After all, the reality is that the library world is small and very chatty.

I have learned to say no to others and to myself. I often found myself taking on new projects and saying yes to everything, because I knew it would look good on my resume. While I don’t regret most of these experiences, it was hard for me to find a balance. Now that I find myself more settled in the work I want to be doing, I am a little more particular about what I spend my time on. I give myself time to decide if I want to take on a big project and try to be more realistic about workload or other events.

I have discovered and rediscovered passions. I have discovered that I love liaison librarianship and teaching subject-specific library instruction sessions. At Tufts, I was liaison to the history department and while it was intimidating at first, I learned to love it. I loved working with the history faculty, learning about their research/scholarship, and I loved working with history students. I continue to teach first-year writing library sessions and continue to experiment with active learning activities and assessment. While sometimes it gets repetitive, it is the freshman students who make it worth it. Every fall semester, I look forward to their new faces and excitement.

Something I am still working on:

Taking care of my mental health will always be ongoing, but I am happy and on the right track. I realized a while ago that my trouble with mental health was also related to work and when I moved to Massachusetts, I was determined to change that. I had to be intentional about forming a good work/life balance for myself. I made my mental health and well-being my number one priority, not only for my sake, but for the sake of my partner, relationships with colleagues, and friends.

In conclusion, I look back at my position as a resident librarian and for the most part, I am fond of it. I met colleagues who have become close friends and am part of a community of resident librarians (past and present) that uplift me and everyone else. I am excited about my work and I hope that wherever you are in your career, that you care for yourself and know that I am rooting for you.

On the Mend: Falling Into and Out of Overwork

I’d meant to write this post earlier in the week. Actually I’d meant to write an entirely different post earlier in the week. But after weeks of avoiding the winter cold going around at the end of last semester, and weeks of colder than usual temperatures where I live, last week my time was up. I’m fortunate that I don’t tend to get sick all that often, and fortunate to have paid sick time, too. Which I needed last week for multiple days of bundling up in blankets with congestion, fever, coughing, and aches.

I’m mostly better this week though still playing catchup from having been out. So I want to write a bit about self care and overwork and libraries. We’ve written about the importance of self care on ACRLog in the past. Quetzalli’s post a couple of years ago highlighted both the need for self care and some of her own strategies. And Ian’s post from a bit earlier reminds us that just as we may be dealing with issues that are invisible from the outside, so too are other folks, and it’s important to practice self care and have a generous heart (a lovely term).

I am not always the best at self care. Historically, I’ve sometimes struggled to use my sick days (when I’ve had them) for anything but the very worst illness. Some of this is my own internal work mindset — I’ve worked in academia for a long time, and the siren song of just one more project/article to read/grant or conference to apply for can be tough for me to resist. I’ve tried to be much more intentional about self care in the past few years. Some of this is a natural side effect of getting older, but also because I do feel that self care is important for everyone, as much as I still sometimes struggle myself. I need to use my sick days when I’m sick, not only because it’s better for me to rest and recuperate (and keep my contagions to myself), but also because I want to be sure that my coworkers feel comfortable using their sick days, too. A sick boss is not the best boss, on multiple levels.

Last week Abby wrote about vocational awe and our professional identity as librarians, discussing Fobazi Ettarh’s terrific recent article in which she defines and explores vocational awe in libraries (a term she developed). Fobazi and Abby both point out that vocational awe can lead to overwork and burnout in libraries, and I agree. Vocational awe contributes to making it hard for me to use my sick days. I’m working on it. I’ve been thinking a bit about bibliographic emergencies — the library is not a hospital, and there are thankfully very few situations or issues that cannot wait while someone takes a sick day. Our work is important, but it’s also important to put our own masks on first before helping others.