Carrying the Work Without Carrying the Weight
Session Description
A guided conversation on how stress and emotional labor show up across all library settings and how we can respond with practical, scalable strategies. Together we’ll name current challenges and share actionable tools, examples, and peer-tested approaches. Participants will leave with tools and ideas that we will find together that they can adapt and apply right away to strengthen themselves, their teams, and their workplaces.
Presenter: Leah T. Dudak
Leah T. Dudak is a former librarian and current Ph.D. candidate at Syracuse University’s Information School. Dudak’s research looks at public libraries and the trauma that library staff encounter giving attention to supporting library workers, systemic issues contributing to trauma, trauma-informed care, and librarianship. She also pays attention to the embodied and gendered experience of library work. For methods, Dudak pulls on feminist qualitative methods, adding in art as method and knowledge making. She views her work situated in feminist, disability, and artistic lenses. She currently works with Urban Librarians Unite as their research assistant, helping with the 2022 trauma study along with the forthcoming peer support network. She holds an MLIS from the University of Illinois.
