ACRL announces the publication of Student Wellness and Academic Libraries: Case Studies and Activities for Promoting Health and Success, edited by Sara Holder and Amber Lannon, a collection of case studies, commentary, and research on student wellness initiatives in academic libraries.
Learn more about Student Wellness and Academic Libraries in this excerpt from the introduction, licensed under a CC BY-SA.
Join editors and authors of the book for an ACRL webcast on “Student Wellness and Libraries” on December 8, 2020.
Why Is Student Mental Health Support Important to the Academic Library Community?
Strategic planning is a relatively new activity in the history of academic libraries. For a long time, academic libraries assumed that their place as an essential support for teaching and research was a given and didn’t feel the need to link their plans to institutional goals. Over the past decade, there has been a rise in formal strategic planning in academic libraries. While there is a lot of variation in how they undertake planning, libraries are increasingly being asked to link their goals to institutional plans and are making greater efforts to assess the impact of their activities in order to demonstrate their value. Planning has become an important part of academic library management. Most, if not all, institutional plans include strategic initiatives aimed at becoming more student-centered and improving or building upon supports for student success. Increasingly, institutional plans also have initiatives specifically related to student wellness and student mental health. Thus, an academic library’s strategic plan that is aligned with the university plan will also include initiatives on student success and possibly student wellness.
Support for student wellness in academic libraries is not only about planning. It’s also reflective of societal trends and trends in the use of academic libraries. In society there is an increased interest in physical and mental health as the rates of obesity, suicide, and mental health issues are increasing in all age groups and impacting health care and the workforce. These new services are part of an evolution that has taken place as the use of academic libraries has changed. As the information needs of many students and faculty are now met almost entirely with online subscriptions, libraries have experienced a dramatic decrease in the use of their print collections and in library visits by faculty. At the same time, many libraries have experienced an increase in visits by students. With more students in the library and less demand on their time from faculty, librarians are finding more opportunities to support students and are developing a better understanding of student needs.
Many university libraries across North America are expanding their service offerings to include student wellness initiatives or are making their space available to other campus entities to provide wellness support. While some of these activities have a long history in libraries, there has been a noticeable upsurge in the number and range of initiatives as mental health issues and awareness of mental health challenges on campus have increased. Because this is a growing area of library work, the editors felt it would benefit the profession to gather multiple perspectives on wellness programming and discussions of current activities in one volume. A call went out to librarians for case studies, commentary, and research on student wellness initiatives in academic libraries, which resulted in a broad range of chapters. Some explore one initiative in detail, and others look at a variety of activities and how they fit within a strategy; some focus on particular aspect of wellness, and others on a particular at-risk group.
Chapter 1 examines a sample of Canadian and US library websites and social media posts to develop a big-picture view of how active academic libraries are in offering wellness initiatives. The author differentiated between activities delivered by library staff and activities simply offered in the library. The activities are grouped by theme, and library website addresses are included so that readers can connect back to the specific case with ease. This chapter helps situate the chapters that follow within the broader landscape of wellness programming in academic libraries and also serves as a guide for librarians tasked with leading these efforts in their own libraries.
Chapters 2 and 3 reframe peer support and research consultation services in the context of mental health initiatives. Chapter 2 focuses on the University of British Columbia’s management library, where the Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) program has become one of the most heavily attended cocurricular support programs. The authors explore what factors influence students’ motivation to attend and their satisfaction with the program. Then they use the secondary literature to link the positive relationship between the student’s academic success and their psychological and physical well-being. Chapter 3 looks at the role of the frontline library employee in reference interactions and how, in addition to providing information and guidance, they can build relationships and make emotional connections. The author also examines how reference instruction sessions can reduce stress for students by helping them understand the research process. Though the librarian-counselor role is not a new one, this chapter situates that idea as it has evolved over the years.
The book continues with a number of chapters on initiatives aimed toward at-risk and under-resourced student populations. In chapter 4, we learn about efforts at the University of Washington Bothell and Cascadia College Campus Library to build a safe trans-inclusive library space. The authors describe staff training efforts and the implementation of the #IllGoWithYou project that, in the absence of an all-gender restroom, provides safe access for all library users to the restroom of their choosing. Chapter 5 explains how a Diversity and Inclusion Working Group was created to foster and cultivate an equitable library space that services students, faculty, and staff from varied backgrounds and experiences. The chapter describes several projects led by the working group, including the Human Library, a Diversity and Inclusion Zine workshop, and the development of LGBTQ and bilingual/bicultural children’s book collections.
Chapter 6 focuses on the University of Toronto Library, where a family-friendly study space was created to better meet the needs of student parents and to provide a welcoming environment for them and their children. This chapter also points to factors that show student parents are an underserved and invisible population in higher education. Chapter 7 explores the importance of wellness support for student library employees. While a wealth of resources exist on the training, hiring, and supervising of student library employees, librarians at the University of New Hampshire Library have developed a program that also provides student wellness support within the context of student library employment.
The next several chapters look at different types of wellness initiatives that can impact a broad range of students. Chapter 8 describes the process the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library used to develop its Reflection Rooms. There is a trend at universities and colleges across North America to provide these types of rooms (also called meditation rooms). This chapter explores the potential of these kinds of spaces to support students with mental health issues and neurodiversity conditions.
Digital wellness and well-being is the focus of chapter 9. There are increasing concerns that our digital lives and the issues that arise from them – information overload, distraction, privacy concerns, and online interpersonal interactions – are contributing to a higher incidence of mental health issues in broader society. This is particularly true among young adults whose digital devices are central to both their academic and their social lives. This chapter describes initiatives at Virginia Tech University Libraries, including a digital wellness activity created for a large campus-wide student health resource fair and cocurricular workshops on digital well-being.
At the Columbia Universities Libraries, student wellness is seen as a critical part of research support. Chapter 10 focuses on the use of design thinking principles to modify a reading room space with an aim of counteracting campus stress culture and improving student wellness. Chapter 11 provides a case study of the long-running therapy dog program at Montana State University, including a description of assessment showing the program’s effectiveness at reducing student stress. It also explains the distinctions between service animals, therapy animals, and comfort animals and the importance of policy development and staff training around allowing animals in the library.
The relationship between exercise and stress has long been an area of research in the prevention and management of mental health issues. University campuses have always provided opportunities for sport and physical activity; however, now libraries are offering yoga, treadmill desks, and bicycles. In most cases, librarians develop these initiatives in partnership with other campus entities. Chapter 12 provides a review of the literature about physical activity programs in libraries.
The last two chapters look at student wellness initiatives and collaborations within an academic library as part of a broader strategy. At Western University, the libraries play a key role in fostering mental health through a collaboration with Western’s Wellness Education Centre and Psychological Services with a variety of wellness initiatives. The chapter explores how to leverage partnerships, how to scale initiatives across a large library system, and how to adjust services once they are in place. One initiative in particular, the Weldon Library Wellness Station, is described in depth and provides a unique example of wellness programming in academic libraries. The final chapter focuses on a multiyear collaboration between the library and the campus wellness programs within the Office of Housing, Residential Living and Dining at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The authors describe their motivations for beginning the collaborations, explore the missions of the partner units and how they intersect, and discuss how the collaboration developed and the initiatives that resulted.
Academic libraries have always promoted student success through teaching and research support and through instruction in information literacy, a skill that is understood to be useful not just for academic success but also for life success. For college and university students, learning to live well and attend to their mental health are life skills they can and should develop during this time, and academic libraries are increasingly playing a role in this part of the student experience. We can expect to see new services and expertise developed by libraries as our profession rises to this challenge. By reading and learning from the experiences described in this collection, those that are charged with leading these efforts will gain valuable insight into ideas and directions the library can take in pursuit of that goal.