Safety and Security in Libraries: Bibliography

This workbook from the PLA Social Worker Task Force (SWTF) provides a collection of powerful tools to add to your customer service toolbox. It's filled with prompts, exercises, and best practices that shed light on how trauma can affect people, helping you build confidence in your ability to support your library's patrons.

Though originating in the fields of health and social services, trauma-informed care is a framework that holds great promise for application to library work. Empathetic service, positive patron encounters, and a more trusting workplace are only a few of the benefits that this approach offers. Library administrators, directors, and reference and user services staff will all benefit from learning the six key principles of trauma-informed care outlined in this book.

This book demonstrates that libraries can maintain their best traditions of openness and public access by creating an unobtrusive yet effective security plan.

This book is intended specifically to address security in special collection libraries. While other topics are touched upon, the key focus of this volume is on the prevention of theft of rare materials.

See Chapter 7: Library Security and Safety in Building Design and Construction, which "examines a variety of threats to safety and security and describes how building design, coupled with staff training, can be used to ameliorate threats to library users, staff, collections, and equipment."

New technologies for service delivery have ushered in new venues for frustration. To help librarians know how to react in the face of patron anger, 25 coping strategies are described. This book shows how effective staff training and intentional behaviors can positively affect patron behavior, minimize altercations, and ease the stress of public services staff.

Libraries need to be open and inviting, yet safe for patrons, staff, and collections. How can you ensure your library is both accessible and secure? Security planning, part of disaster response and continuous operations planning, is the key to proactively addressing potential safety issues.

When emergencies escalate, knowing what to do in advance is the key. Libraries that are equipped with ready contact information, talking points, and spokespeople at hand, are prepared to limit damage from big events or ensure small problems don't escalate.

This book portrays 40 security and safety issues that may arise in libraries. Each case is presented within a fictional but plausible library situation. The case studies are accompanied by discussion questions.