Libraries and Homelessness: An Action Guide

Product Description

Address issues surrounding homelessness in the lives of your community members. Advocating a strategic approach, this book shows how to form a plan, secure funding and support, and create effective programs for adults, children, and youth who are experiencing homelessness. You’ll find guidance for creating partnerships, training staff, and advocating. Taking a holistic approach that will help you to better understand the experience of homelessness within the context of your library community, this book offers new strategies and tools for addressing the challenge of meeting the needs of the entire community, including those who are unstably housed. With basic facts, statistics, and conversations about homelessness, the author makes a case for why libraries should provide support, explains exactly which needs they may be able (or unable) to meet, and shows how this support can be a natural part of the library services you already provide. Topics discussed include trauma-informed care, harm reduction, and mental and physical health challenges; brief stories and concrete examples illustrate the principles and guidelines discussed. Citing innovative services such as Dallas Public Library’s “coffee and conversation” program and San Francisco Public Library’s social worker program, the book offers both food for thought and tools for action as public librarians strive to understand and meet the needs of a population that has traditionally been stereotyped and excluded.

Discusses specific short-term and long-term actions that libraries can take to better address the needs of community members who are experiencing homelessness
Outlines steps libraries can take to balance the needs of all library users
Shows how to identify and work with potential partners
Describes new ways libraries can and are addressing common barriers to library services for those experiencing homelessness

Review

“Essential for every library’s staff collection. An excellent resource not only for libraries but also for government, social service organizations, schools, and religious congregations.” ―
Library Journal

Review

“Winkelstein’s excellent book is a much-needed practical resource for the contemporary age to help libraries address challenges of homelessness in their diverse communities. The extensive and exciting coverage includes action-oriented strategies and planning tools that libraries can easily implement to become more inclusive and responsive to the needs of community members experiencing homelessness. The step-by-step easy-to-follow action guide operationalizes social justice head-on for libraries to extend themselves in support of a culturally misunderstood and stigmatized population.” —
Bharat Mehra, EBSCO Endowed Chair in Social Justice and Professor, School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alabama

About the Author

Julie Ann Winkelstein, PhD, MLIS, is an activist, writer, and teacher who worked as a public librarian for 20 years. She teaches a library school course on homelessness, poverty, and libraries at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.