Personalized Solutions For Your Unique Needs
Libraries are facing increasing patron psychosocial needs and changing community pressures and demands, and these stressors are impacting library staff well-being, health, and job satisfaction. Some solutions to these issues include adding library-based social work or other social service collaborations, providing staff training on trauma-informed librarianship or other options for addressing changing patron needs, supporting management teams with implementing trauma-informed strategies throughout their library, and providing ongoing support for staff through group supervision, reflective practice groups, or other methods of peer support.
Beth Wahler, PhD, MSW brings her expertise in social work, library customer and staff needs, trauma-informed services, and social work/library collaborations to design personalized plans for meeting your library’s needs. Services include consultation about viable solutions for staff and patron needs, needs assessments, training and programming for staff and patrons, and program design for libraries ready to add a social service component to their organization.
Photo of Beth Wahler
Beth is a researcher, consultant, trainer, and scholar who studies library staff and customer/patron needs, trauma-informed librarianship, staff experiences of workplace violence and stress, staff readiness for social services in the library, library-based social work practicum placements, and other types of social work-informed library interventions and collaborations. She works with libraries of all sizes, from small or rural libraries to urban libraries, as well as both individual and large statewide or regional library organizations to understand staff experiences and challenges, customer needs, and strategies for supporting libraries in the valuable services they provide. Beth has conducted needs assessments of libraries across the United States, has developed and coordinated library-based social work collaborations, supervised library-based student practicum placements, and has provided multiple workshops internationally for library staff on customers’ psychosocial needs, trauma-informed librarianship, skill-building for managing challenging customer behavior, and social work collaborations for meeting those needs.
Beth earned her BS in psychology from the University of Evansville, and her MSW and PhD in social work from the University of Kentucky. She is currently affiliated research faculty at UNC Charlotte after leaving her role as Director of the School of Social Work to pursue her consulting business full-time. She has nearly 15 years of experience as a social work educator, researcher, and administrator. In addition, she has 14 years of previous practice experience working primarily with individuals who struggle with poverty-related needs, mental health challenges, substance use disorders, and intimate partner violence.
