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Librarians have been urged to emphasize social justice and human rights issues in their library mission, but they may find themselves challenged to provide additional services, such as access to legal information for those who cannot afford an attorney. Social justice services in libraries are seldom adequately funded and providing services in this area is labor intensive. In addition, there is an emotional intensity in library services for social justice that is often not considered in the initial enthusiasm of providing services in this area. Yet there seems to be no limit to the need. An interesting and useful perspective on how a public agency such as a library responds in circumstances of limited resources and unlimited demand can be found in the book Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Service, by Michael Lipsky. In this perspective, lower level civil servants who interact directly with members of the general public exercise a level of discretion in the amount of services provided and how those services are administered. This chapter explores how this can generate tensions between more traditional library bureaucracy and social justice services, such as providing public access to justice resources in law libraries. However, the “street-level” response is evolving into a sustainability perspective as librarians embrace a more social justice–oriented outlook in library service planning.

Trauma-informed care as a concept came out of social service and mental health practice in 2009. Since then, it has been working into librarianship and library practice, first as an approach for public libraries to apply social work principles to their outreach and support of community members. Then it was applied to a broader array of libraries such as academic institutions as they worked to improve their services and offerings for members of their community. What has not yet been addressed broadly within the field of librarianship is trauma-informed leadership as a means of supporting library staff as they grapple with burnout, low morale, and vocational awe.

Academic libraries as workplaces have multiple attributes that contribute to toxicity or low psychological safety. Organizations with a lack of transparency and trust may result in library workers experiencing burnout and a lack of engagement. Creating and supporting healthy organizational cultures with open communication, collaboration, and mutuality is the ethical responsibility of managers. In institutions where there is inherited toxicity, library leaders can practice trauma-informed leadership to support individuals and build a healthier workplace culture.

While toxicity is not unique to academic libraries, large bureaucratic and hierarchical systems can be rife with issues that undermine psychological safety and engagement. This book chapter will examine trauma-informed leadership practices as applied by two leaders in their roles at various organizations and steps for leaders to transform their environments into high functioning, productive workplaces.

Recent research and scholarship explore and attempt to understand why certain modern library organizations and workplaces suffer from systemic dysfunction. There is evidence that a history of ineffectual library administration, poor leadership, and lack of communication creates an environment which breeds incivility and toxic behavior, including occurrences of mobbing, bullying, and harassment in certain library environments. Yet, it's been observed that despite these destructive behaviors and ensuing trauma, some library employees choose to remain employed in, and even increasingly committed to, these same dysfunctional workplaces. The application of organizational commitment models, such as Meyer and Allen's, as well as the findings of librarian turnover analysis account for the practical reasons why library employees remain in dysfunctional organizations; examples include fear of negative consequences associated with resignation or a sense of duty to one's patrons, organization, or profession. These models and studies, however, do not explain the paradox of increased employee commitment and loyalty to traumatic and dysfunctional library workplaces.

To understand this conflicting behavior, which has yet to be examined in library literature, the authors apply the concept of Corporate Stockholm Syndrome (CSS). CSS, a type of trauma bonding with origins in psychology and business, serves as a foundation to explain why library employees remain in workplaces in which they've experienced dysfunctional behavior and related trauma. Reviewing documented cases of library workplace incivility and trauma, the authors will apply the CSS framework as an explanation for the increased level of library employee commitment to dysfunctional workplaces.