Empowerment, Resilience, and Collaboration: Examining Librarians' Readiness for Interdisciplinary Interventions

Background and Purpose. The primary role of public librarians is to meet patrons’ information needs; however, public librarians are increasingly asked to meet patrons’ psychosocial needs as well (e.g., social services, community resources). Yet many public librarians feel unprepared to fill this new role. To accommodate this shift in library services, many libraries are collaborating with social workers to better serve patrons, libraries, and the vulnerable groups that they encounter. However, the success of library-social work collaborations hinges on public librarians’ receptivity to collaboration and ability to adapt. For collaborations to succeed, librarians must be prepared and open to engagement. Thus, this study examines whether public librarians’ modifiable attributes, like psychological empowerment and career resilience, along with their wellbeing impacted their openness to an upcoming library-social work collaboration. which contribute to or protect against experiences of burnout and openness to libraries’ roles in interdisciplinary collaborations and interventions.

Methods. In this quantitative study, we surveyed staff at five public libraries in a Midwestern state in November 2022, two months before a social work intervention in their respective libraries. Public library staff (n=84) received a Qualtrics link to the survey (response rate=54%, n=45). The survey measured respondents’ psychological empowerment, career resilience, burnout, and openness to interdisciplinary interventions in the library. To measure these, we used modified versions of several scales including the Psychological Empowerment Scale (α =.55; Spreitzer, 1995), Career Commitment Questionnaire (α =.90; Carson, 1991), Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (client-related subscale; α =.85; Kristenson et al., 2005), and the TAPP-C Adopter Characteristics Questionnaire (α =.69; Henderson, 2003).

We hypothesized that psychological empowerment and career resilience would predict burnout, and that respondents’ career resilience would mediate the relationship between psychological empowerment and burnout. We also hypothesized that burnout would be negatively associated with openness to social work collaboration. Data was analyzed using OLS regression.

Results. In support of our first hypothesis, both psychological empowerment (β: -12.51, p<.05) and career resilience (β: -8.40, p<.05) independently predicted burnout. Additionally, our results indicate that career resilience mediates the relationship between psychological empowerment and burnout. We found no support for our hypothesis that burnout would predict openness to social work collaboration. In a post-hoc exploratory analysis, we also found a positive association between psychological empowerment and openness to interdisciplinary collaboration (β: .49, p<.05; while controlling for resilience and burnout).

Conclusions and implications. Overall, the results of this study suggest that librarians in the sample are well-adapted to current activities in the library and open to social work interventions. Results also suggest that career resilience plays a role in the relationship between psychological empowerment and burnout, and that career resilience may protect against burnout. Findings highlight the role of modifiable attributes in librarians’ openness to collaboration and tolerance for organizational change. Implications include that taking steps to improve career resilience and psychological empowerment may help library administrators and social workers prepare librarians for future interventions.