https:\/\/wholepersonlibrarianship.com\/about-2\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a fast-paced digital world focused on immediate services, sometimes we overlook how valuable connections to people can be. However, this week’s materials highlighted one of the library’s most important resources: the community. While libraries often focus on preserving and providing access to information resources, this week’s materials highlighted that one of the library’s most important resources is the community itself. As librarians, we also want to take care of our resources. One topic I have been learning about outside of this course is the whole-person librarianship movement, which uses concepts from social work such as cultural humility and person-in-environment to help librarians connect to diverse patrons (Zettevall, n.d.). Rather than viewing people as just their behaviors, the whole-person perspective involves recognizing individuals as culminations of experiences within an environment (often within biased systems), personal connections to others, and various aspects of well-being. Many of these ideas have been echoed in this week’s readings. Particularly, during his presentation at the 2016 UX in Libraries conference, Lauersen (2018) mentioned Maslow\u2019s hierarchy of needs in the context of inclusion. Humans have basic needs such as food, water, shelter, and safety. There is also a higher need to feel a sense of belonging that libraries try to meet, but it cannot be met until the basic necessities are taken care of. These concepts are not just theoretical. In my own library work, I have seen how addressing basic needs can support broader goals of inclusion and community engagement. The library branch I work at provides a limited number of daily snack packs and hygiene kits for adults upon request. This helps meet one of the basic physiological needs that, when unmet, serve as a barrier to realizing the higher-level needs libraries typically address. Anyone above the age of 18 can request a pack or kit at any time, whether they are unhoused, experiencing a medical issue, or are just hungry and do not feel like leaving the library to find food. We do have an additional partnership with a local food bank to run Kids Cafe, which is more regulated and operates within a specific time frame. We also provide water bottles during the summer in addition to a drinking fountain. As for rest, we no longer ask patrons to leave for sleeping. Rather, we leave them be as long as they’re breathing normally (though we may wake them up to ask them to move to a more comfortable spot if they are at a computer). Making room in the library for these services has helped in so many ways. It has made it possible for individuals to stay longer at the library and engage in programming, or to simply keep returning to what they know is a safe place. Note: I am not implying that libraries should take over the roles of shelters, food banks, and other social services, but that libraries can help bridge gaps between these services and the patrons who need them. Healthy boundaries between what the library provides and what other social services provide are important to ensure that libraries can still operate as libraries! A library cannot be truly person-centered without an empathetic, whole-person approach. Communities are made up of people with rich and diverse lived experiences, but individuals cannot fully participate, create, or connect when their basic needs remain unmet. By helping bridge gaps between essential services and the people who need them, libraries can foster stronger, more engaged communities. References Lauersen, C. (2018, June 7). Do you want to dance? Inclusion and belonging in libraries and beyond. https:\/\/christianlauersen.net\/2018\/06\/07\/inclusion-and-belonging-in-libraries-and-beyond\/ Zettervall, S. (n.d.). About. Whole Person Librarianship. Accessed June 28, 2026, from https:\/\/wholepersonlibrarianship.com\/about-2\/.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":827,"featured_media":43,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11,9,13],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reflection-blogging","tag-hyperlinked-communities","tag-user-centered","tag-whole-person"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/studyinthehyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/studyinthehyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/studyinthehyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/studyinthehyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/827"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/studyinthehyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/studyinthehyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/studyinthehyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions\/45"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/studyinthehyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/studyinthehyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/studyinthehyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/studyinthehyperlinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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