Social Services in Public Libraries

This presentation, based on an IMLS-funded project, reports on how public library administrators, adult services librarians, and youth librarians see the role of librarians in the provision of social services information. To this end, a survey was conducted to learn first-hand how libraries are responding to their communities’ social services information needs, how public librarians feel about performing this work, how they compare professional librarianship to the profession of social work, and their attitudes toward responding to the social services information needs in their communities. The overarching goal of this work is to canvass librarians to assist the profession in decisions about the scope of public librarianship in the face of increased social services-related needs in communities.