Young people in contemporary schools face significant challenges to their health and wellbeing. Up to this point, while there has been some understanding of the role that school libraries and their staff can play in fostering student wellbeing, lack of supporting research made it hard to advocate in this space.

The 2024 International School Library Workforce Survey took up this challenge, capturing data on school libraries as wellbeing-supportive spaces from 971 respondents in 63 countries. These findings have recently been published open access in the high-quality international peer-reviewed IFLA journal so that school library professionals worldwide can use these credible findings to support their advocacy in local contexts.

This ASLA keynote is the first time that the wellbeing related findings from this project have been publicly shared in a keynote.

Findings show that the school library is commonly used as a safe space in contemporary schools, sometimes the only designated safe space within the school. As such, decisions that limit access to libraries and reduce their staffing and resourcing may have unintended impact on the wellbeing of the student community, and particularly vulnerable students who rely on the school library as a place of sanctuary. Findings also suggest that many school libraries are already struggling with current staffing and resourcing levels and limited opening times, so this is not a hypothetical risk.

You’ll hear what school library professionals from around the world had to say about the value of their library as wellbeing resource, and the challenges that they face.