ALA President unveils enriched ALA-APA Workplace Wellness website

For Immediate Release
Mon, 07/09/2018

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Communications and Marketing Office

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CHICAGO — American Library Association (ALA) President Loida Garcia-Febo and members of the ALA Workplace Wellness Advisory Committee announce the relaunch of ALA-Allied Professional Association’s (ALA-APA) Workplace Wellness website. The site now includes additional health resources that benefit library workers in all types of working environments. The website reboot is part of Garcia-Febo’s commitment to support staff wellness and is made possible by the ALA Workplace Wellness Advisory Committee.

"I am happy to support ALA-APA and its Workplace Wellness website as part of my Presidential efforts,” said Garcia-Febo. “Wellness is of utmost importance to me and I hope that website resources will assist with library workers to engage in and celebrate workplace wellness!

“As a woman with deep interests in mental and physical health, and overall well-being of library workers, offering web resources established by ALA Past President Dr. Loriene Roy is an excellent first step in offering health resources and tools that will transform lives. I am looking forward to exploring other opportunities to enhance future wellness conference programming and introducing online events."

Originally created under ALA Past President Loriene Roy’s 2007-2008 Circle of Wellness Initiative, the Workplace Wellness website contained information regarding seven dimensions of wellness, covering emotional, environmental, intellectual, occupational, physical, spiritual and social wellness.

Recently, under the supervision of Garcia-Febo and the Workplace Wellness Advisory Committee, website content was greatly expanded with all members of the library community in mind. Updates include the addition of an eighth area of wellness that covers financial topics along with supplemental resources added to existing content. Content additions include “7 Tips to Help Deal with Stress at Work,” “Salary Negotiation Resources,” “Tips for Beating Procrastination” and “8 Tips for Fighting Back against Microaggressions.” Additional suggestions for further reading and outside sources also are included to further expand the reach and depth of the site.

The website also includes a handful of stories from ALA members about their own Wellness journeys. The Workplace Wellness Advisory Committee is looking for additional stories about personal successes, ongoing journeys, successful workplace programs or great wellness tools to help inspire others to plan for better wellness.  Library professionals may share their wellness stories via email by sending information to wellness@apa.org.

The Workplace Wellness Advisory Committee consists of ALA Past President Dr. Loriene Roy, Lydia Willoughby, Uta Hussong-Christian and University of Texas School of Information graduate student Ms. Leslie Flynn, who developed the updated website content and reorganized the site as part of an independent studies project. Other notable contributions include 2016 ALA Emerging Leaders cohorts such as Amanda Avery, Dory Cochran and Jennifer McElroy.

Additional information regarding the Workplace Wellness website is available at http://ala-apa.org/wellness/.  Library workers are encouraged to visit the site and to share their stories.

The ALA Allied Professional Association (ALA – APA) is a nonprofit organization chartered in the State of Illinois for promoting “the mutual professional interests of librarians and other library workers.” The ALA-APA is a companion organization to the American Library Association (ALA), an educational association chartered in the State of Massachusetts to “promote library service and librarianship.”