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Social Work Education
The International Journal
ISSN: 0261-5479 (Print) 1470-1227 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cswe20
Belonging to the library: humanising the space for
social work education
Robin Sen, Nora McClelland & Beverley Jowett
To cite this article: Robin Sen, Nora McClelland & Beverley Jowett (2016) Belonging to the library:
humanising the space for social work education, Social Work Education, 35:8, 892-904, DOI:
10.1080/02615479.2016.1211098
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2016.1211098
Published online: 29 Jul 2016.
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Social Work Education, 2016
VOL. 35, NO. 8, 892–904
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2016.1211098
Belonging to the library: humanising the space for social work
education
Robin Sen, Nora McClelland and Beverley Jowett
Department of Sociological Studies Elmfield, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
ABSTRACT
This article describes the running of four Living Libraries on a UK
postgraduate social work course. A Living Library is a metaphoric
remodelling of a conventional library where people, as authors of
their experiences, provide specialist knowledge based on authorial
areas of expertise. In the Living Libraries discussed here, ‘Living
Books’ carried stories of social work—their narratives were of lived
experiences as people using social care services; as carers in personal
relationships with others who use social care services; or, as social
work practitioners.The focus of this article is on those Living Libraries
involving the participation of the first two of these groups. Drawing
on social psychology, phenomenology and human geography, we
propose that a Living Library can act as a connective space within
social work education by engendering a discursive forum where
all participants—people with experiences of services, students,
practitioners and social work educators—are given both the freedom
and obligation to talk openly about their differential experiences, fears
and hopes for social work. Through this process, opportunities are
created to consider how improvements that meet all stakeholders’
interests may be achieved.
Introduction
In this article, we describe the running of four Living Libraries on a UK postgraduate MA
in social work course. Two of the libraries were thought of as ‘generalist’ where people with
experience of social work services1
in any capacity were invited to take part, and two were
‘specialist’ libraries, themed around particular experience—in these instances newly qualified
social workers (NQSWs) and young people with experiences of social care services:
• Library 1, Generalist Living Library I, September 2014
• Library 2, Generalist Living Library II, October 2015
• Library 3, Specialist Living Library, The Experience of The First Year in Social Work
Practice, June 2015
• Library 4, Specialist Living Library, Young Person’s Living Library, October 2015
KEYWORDS
Anti-discriminatory
practice; user perspectives;
partnership; reflection;
critical theories; Living
Library; inclusion; exclusion
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
CONTACT  Robin Sen  r.n.sen@sheffield.ac.uk
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Social Work Education   893
While we draw on our experience of running all four libraries, the focus here will be on
Libraries 1 and 4. We outline a vision for the Living Library as a connective space within
social work education where students join people with various experiences of practice to
hear different stories of social work. By exploring these narratives, participants can develop
more nuanced constructions of relationships in social work that can start to accommodate
the needs of different partners, including the professional responsibilities of social workers
and the interests of people using social work services. The article starts by providing an
overview of what a Living Library is. It then explores the rationale for developing a Living
Library in the university setting for social work, drawing on ideas from social psychology,
phenomenology and human geography. Thirdly, the running of the Living Libraries is examined
in more detail. Finally, the operation of the libraries is reviewed, drawing on participant
feedback, and some future possible developments are considered. A short film was made
about Living Library 4 which is available online alongside some other materials relating to
the different Living Libraries which have been run (The Living Library Repository, 2016,
http://www.shef.ac.uk/socstudies/prospt/ppt/masocialwork/livinglibrary).
An overhead still of the library
A Living Library is a metaphoric remodelling of a conventional library where people, as
authors of their experiences, provide specialist knowledge based on authorial areas of expertise.
In our Living Libraries, Living Books all carry stories of social work—their narratives
are of lived expertise as people using social care services; as carers in personal relationships
with others who use social care services; or, as social work practitioners. Just like a
conventional library, students may borrow a Living Book to read for a period of time, but
in the Living Library reading is confined by the time and space of the classroom. As the
author, the Living Book decides on their book title, has control over the content of their
book and decides which chapters of their book they will share and discuss with their student
Readers. Reading is a small-group interaction in the Living Library: Readers listen
and talk with their Living Book, and in talking Readers also share their stories about their
own experiences of social work with their book. The story exchange in a Living Library is
comparable to a book-club meeting with the author who, after reading a chapter of their
book aloud, opens up a discussion about their book with the audience. In turn, the audience
share their stories about their reading the book and discuss what meaning the issues raised
have for them. Before a Living Library closes, there is always an open plenary space where
Readers and Living Books share their learning from their experience with everyone who
has participated in the library.
The library metaphor works well as it identifies a place that most of us are familiar with.
A recent report on the library service in England described libraries as providing safe places
for literacy and learning (Sieghart, 2013, p. 5). In the USA, libraries are recognised by the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as essential community organisations.
When a disaster happens in a community people take shelter, seek advice and exchange
stories in the public library. Narratives of what happened—sense making around profoundly
difficult experiences—are developed within the library space which thereby serves as one
where people ‘reinforce social bonds and … establish norms of helping, cooperation, and
reciprocity’ (Veil & Bishop, 2014, pp. 18, 44). As with all metaphors, there are limits to
the fit of the comparison. Birdi, Wilson, and Cocker (2008) provide a salutary insight that
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894    R. Sen et al.
as much as community libraries are inclusive in policy and strategy, this can mask more
socially exclusionary practices. However, the strength of the metaphor lies precisely in the
normative assertion that the library can be a powerful place of communal meaning that we
can all join and belong in together.
Libraries are also central places of learning in universities, repositories of knowledge,
stored in books and other media, which any member can access. In the Living Library,
expert knowledge is ‘stored’ in the stories of lived experiences told by the Living Books.
Students access this specialist knowledge through reading with the Living Books in the
Living Library space. Living Books do not substitute for academic or other practice-based
sources of information, but they are accorded similar status to the academic texts and
journals that social work educators direct students to read during the programme. The
Living Library provides an additional repository of knowledge that broadens and enriches
the range of knowledge available for students to read and learn from.
Within the library vaults: the challenge of the other
The original Living Library (The Human Library) was designed in Denmark as a means
through which stereotypes and prejudices that undermine people’s capacity to connect
with fellow human beings could be openly examined and challenged (Abergel, Rothemund,
Titley, & Wootsch, 2005). The core assumptions underpinning a Living Library are that
when people meet and talk with each other they confront the beliefs or fears they have
about the other. Their face-to-face encounter provides them with knowledge and greater
understanding, which increases their capacity to empathise with others (Abergel et al.,
2005). These ideas are rooted in the classic social psychology theory (Allport, 1954) which
indicates that to have best effect the encounter needs to be experienced as real: participants
in the Living Library are not role playing, they are together in the Library as themselves,
and they are engaged together in a shared purposeful activity.
In considering the rationale for a Living Library, we also draw on Levinas’ (1969) claims
regarding the privileged opportunity which the face-to-face encounter with another human
being presents. Away from the co-present encounter Levinas (1969) argues our conception
of ‘the Other’ may be reduced by positioning them as objects within our own framework
of understanding, necessarily delimiting their otherness. The intensity—the pleasure, the
simultaneous proximity and distance, sometimes the sheer awkwardness—of the face-toface
encounter demand a recognition of the alterity of the other, and from this also a
recognition of our ethical obligations to them as a being separate from and different to us
(Levinas, 1969). Some connection may be seen between this strand of Levinas’ work and
Merleau-Ponty’s (1962/2013 edition) focus on the embodied nature of human experience.
Critiquing the traditional dualist separation between mind and body, particularly the exaltation
of cognitive thought, Merleau-Ponty asserts that the body is the means through we are,
act and know the world. For Merleau-Ponty (1962/2013), therefore, embodied experience
is the basis for our engagement in the world and for reflective thought. For Levinas (1969),
the face-to-face encounter is the basis for our engagement in the world, where the face may
be viewed as the ‘corporeal emblem of the other’ (Waldenfels, 2002, p. 63). While there is an
ongoing debate as to how far communication mediated by digital technology may simulate
or replace face-to-face communication (Sen, 2015), the Living Library is unashamedly
premised on the power of the co-present, embodied, encounter with another being who is
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Social Work Education   895
different to us and from whom we are ethically obliged to learn. The Living Library places
a demand on Readers to recognise, explore and reflect on the otherness of both the Living
Books they encounter and their fellow Readers. Through this, it reinforces their obligations
to take account of the insights of the lived experiences of social work practice which Living
Books and fellow Readers hold.
The initial suggestion of running a Living Library on our course was made by a person
with experience of services who was assisting us to review the MA course. We were concerned
to examine how particular formulations of the involvement of people with experience
of services could create barriers to envisioning the multitude of different partnership
arrangements there might be between people who use and provide services in social work.
Too often this involvement can be limited by oversimplified constructions that constrain
the interactions that people with experience of services and students have in the classroom.
We want our students to be curious and to develop a range of skills for communication
and critical thinking. But, in the classroom, our shared experience had been that students
listened politely and rarely questioned, or got into meaningful discussion, with people with
experience of services about their own understandings of social work, particularly when
it appeared these might hold alternative constructions of what social workers’ roles and
responsibilities should be. It was as if the stories of people with experience of services were
sacrosanct in the classroom.
We agree with many, like Gupta and Blewett (2008, p. 469), that people with experience
of social work services are ‘essential ingredients’ for social work education but it does seem
that we only talk about their involvement as teachers for social work in classroom settings
(learning about practice). Explicit recognition of their role as teachers in practice placements
is missing in the literature and research in this area (Anghel & Ramon, 2009; Beresford
& Croft, 2004; Robinson & Webber, 2013; Sadd, 2011). We have also noticed students’
acknowledgement of this role is often missing in their discussions about practice-based
experiences where discourse is principally about learning to ‘do’ social work. Students’ focus
in placement tends to be on establishing a professional identity and developing knowledge
of the roles and responsibilities they will have as social workers (doing practice). Concern
to achieve a professional social work identity seems to obscure the educative role people
with experience of services actively play in students’ practice, and their contribution to
students’ learning becomes primarily defined in relation to social workers’ doing of the
practice. This separation erects a barrier to the development of meaningful partnerships
with people with experience of services. As alternative, primarily employer-based, training
models for social work are privileged in England through Government sponsorship, there
is a challenge for universities to maintain a connective space for social work education. If
teaching about social work goes on in the academy and learning to do social work goes on
in practice placement then the university space for social work education needs to better
connect these two domains. The involvement of people with experience of services is central
to this ambition.
How to develop the authentic involvement of people with experience of services is a
constant challenge. Fox (2011) considers if and how people with experience of services
can be treated as equals in the academic community whilst also having their needs considered.
To form meaningful partnerships for practice, we all need to be freed up to articulate
our own views of what social work is, and might be, and examine the differences—the
‘otherness’ (Levinas, 1969)—there may be between us as potential partners. As Jenkins
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896    R. Sen et al.
(2008, p. 102) implies identity entails establishing the things that might separate us as well
as the commonalities that can unite us, for ‘defining us involves defining […] thems’. The
Living Library attempts to achieve this by establishing a connective space, to which we now
turn in more detail.
Spanning boundaries in and out of the university: the library as connective
space
Research from human geography highlights how space can undermine or enhance particular
inequalities through the ways in which people who occupy it are identified, and the
status they are accorded within a given space according to that identity (Valentine, 2007).
A core transformative aim of the Living Library is as a space which develops the possibility
of different, multiple, constructions of the identities and relationships social workers
and people who use social work services have. Discursive exchange in the Living Library
also helps us to think about how these identities and relationships span the boundaries of
the spaces which social work occupies. To take an illustration, some of our students bring
prior or current experiences of using services to the libraries, while some with experience
of using social work services who have been involved in teaching on our course also carry
experience as social work practitioners. Over and above these particular instances of multiple
role identities, the Living Library can provide a connective space by engendering a
discursive forum where ‘we’—people with experiences of services, students, practitioners,
social work tutors—are given both the freedom and obligation to talk openly about our
differential experiences, fears and hopes for social work. Through this process, opportunities
are created to consider how improvements that meet all stakeholders’ interests may—or
may not—be achieved. While participants have different roles as Living Books, Readers
and Librarians (social work tutors) all are accorded equal status. This is underpinned by
an interdependence and interconnectedness for the purpose of knowledge production
and exchange within the Living Library space: Readers need Books, Books need Readers,
Libraries require Librarians and Librarians need good Books and enthusiastic Readers. This
embodied interconnectedness is comparable to social work practice where there is an interdependence
between the people who use social work services and the people who provide
them. Indeed, the relational co-construction of knowledge in the Library resonates with
the (re)turn to relational engagement and embodied ways of knowing within contemporary
social work practice (Broadhurst & Mason, 2014).
It would be naïve to think that membership of the Library space overcomes the multiple
layers of social exclusion those with experience of services encounter within and outside the
academy (see Warren & Boxall, 2009). However, nor is the accessing of social space trivial,
both reflecting social relations and helping produce/reproduce them in ways that help or
hinder how different people interact and influencing how they identify themselves and
others (Hopkins, 2011; Valentine, 2007). The running of the libraries has made us consider
how the university space can be more genuinely opened up to those with experience of services.
Some Living Books have told us that they felt they did not previously have permission
to enter the university buildings where we have held the Living Libraries. Our university,
like many others, was set up by community subscription so that people in the community
could benefit through the different ways—educational, cultural and economic—a university
can contribute to community life. The buildings are key landmarks in the community
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Social Work Education   897
landscape. Many applicants to our programme have told us how the university architecture,
the buildings they walked past as children, influenced their aspirations to study here. Yet,
though these buildings might meaningfully be said to belong to the community, the pulls
of the university teaching and research excellence agendas are exclusionary, delimiting
membership to those who may be deemed to ‘excel’ in given ways. While the narratives of
those with experience of services may be reified during teaching inputs in the university
classroom, outside of these selective times the university space can reinforce their exclusion.
For this reason, several social work education projects have chosen to instead work in the
community settings where service users live (see Duffy & Hayes, 2012).
Our choice to undertake the Living Libraries within the university is deliberate—we
wanted to recognise the university as part of the place where people live and grow up, and
therefore part of their identity (Valentine, 2007). We have envisaged the Living Libraries as
spaces which are meaningfully shared by different stakeholders who are connected through
a relationship of mutual interest and investment in social work education. This has brought
us to consider how open the university space is to those with experiences of services beyond
the temporal and spatial boundaries of the Living Libraries themselves. Although a small
symbol of our wish to open up our own university space, we were able to facilitate university
library access for two people who wanted to use them, following their participation as
Living Books. One later told us of her surprise and pleasure when, reading in one of the
university libraries, she was recognised by a social work student she had previously met in
the Living Library and, just as two people meeting might do, they had a conversation. The
experience is related here to represent the way in which the Living Library may be part
of a process of opening up the borders of social work education: it can create possibilities
for multidimensional experiences of fellow human beings that go beyond the restricted
constructions we might hold of each other arising from the single role identity bestowed
through provision or receipt of social work services.
Glancing inside the library doors
Library 1 was a full-day event involving, at different points in the day, students joining the
course and students starting their second year following completion of a first period of
assessed practice. Living Books were recruited by email circulated through a range of different
networks and follow-up telephone conversations. The opportunity to narrate experiences
of social work in person clearly appealed as we had a good response (see Book Titles below),
including people who had not, to our knowledge, ever previously been involved in social
work education. The format appears to be one through which we might therefore foster
greater inclusion and diversity in our partnerships with people. Living Books who participated
had a range of expertise through experiences of mental distress, learning difficulties,
physical disabilities, non-verbal communication, surviving childhood trauma, life at older
age, foster care and caring for a partner through terminal illness. It was made explicit to all
members of the Living Library that it was a place where every Living Book had full control
over the story they wished to share, their book title, and the time they wanted to spend
in the library. Some people chose to bring supporters with them, some decided to spend
a half day and others a whole day. Living Books also had the freedom to restrict Readers’
questions to certain areas of their experience if they wished, though most felt comfortable
responding to all that were posed. We are aware that a Living Library requires Living Books
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898    R. Sen et al.
to narrate personal, and often difficult, experiences to groups of people they do not know.
Amongst other things, this could reawaken feelings associated with those experiences. We
are mindful of providing appropriate support to Living Books before a Library so they are
aware of what to expect during an event. We also ensure we ‘check in’ with Living Books
soon after a Library to get a sense of how they experienced it. However, we have also taken
a deliberate stance that we do not vet Living Books. The decision on whether to participate
is left to a Living Book to take, sometimes in discussion between them and their supporters.
In Library 1, all the Living Books were authored by adults. Our reflections on this led
to Library 4. We recognised that young people with experience of services are often poorly
represented within our university space, as they tend to be within social work education
more generally. There are complex dynamics affecting which social groups access particular
spaces (Valentine, 2007) but a very practical barrier to younger young people’s engagement
with the university space is the overlap between the university teaching calendar and school
or college timetables. Consequently, we arranged to run Library 4 in the school half-term
week and worked with a local partner organisation to identify young people with experiences
of social work who might wish to take part. We were conscious of the potential
spatial dynamics of young people accessing an unfamiliar place (Hopkins, 2011): some
young people who were interested in participating might have reservations about being in
a space traditionally restricted to adults, particularly perhaps those who did not see themselves
going to university or have family members who had done so. We therefore chose to
limit this library to our second-year students and two of us met with the young people a
week before the event in a space familiar to them, a venue used by the organisation we were
working with. This meeting allowed us to explain how the process of ‘authoring’ a Living
Book could work and provide a short embodied example of a Living Library exchange in
which one of us (RS) was the Living Book, and the other (NM) the curious Reader.
In the Living Library, student Readers are allocated into small reading groups of between
four and seven students, with reading group exchanges taking between 45 minutes and an
hour each time. The interaction in reading groups may be thought of as student-led small
group teaching (Dennick & Exley, 2004) guided by a Living Book. Tutors’ primary role is
to ensure each reading group is set up and working, and to facilitate the plenary session at
the end of the Living Library. Students know they must complete reflective tasks after the
exchanges and this may help structure their questions, but discussions are also fluid and
open-ended, facilitating the exploration of different perspectives. In Library 1, we gave students
a particular focus according to their stage of learning on the programme. First years
were asked to think about what people who have experience of using services find helpful
and unhelpful about social workers and to later record their reflections. Second years were
asked to undertake and present a ‘Living Book review’ to their Living Book at the plenary
session at the end of the day. The plenary sessions add a workshop element (Dennick &
Exley, 2004) to the small group collaboration evident in reading groups, facilitating the
sharing of learning between all Library participants.
In Library 1, we also asked second-year students to create something tangible and personal
to give to their Living Book—a letter, picture, piece of creative writing or whatever
else they decided was most appropriate. We construed this as a gift created and given by the
students to the Living Books in return for the gift of knowledge the Living Books had given
them, reflecting the ethos of exchange and reciprocity within the Library. We felt we could
enhance the reciprocal exchange further and so, in Library 4, we arranged an undergraduate
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Social Work Education   899
student-led tour of the university for the young people taking part in the Living Library.
The tour highlighted the university space as one they might choose to access afterwards,
either as local residents or as potential future students. As another aspect of the exchange,
after the young people had presented their experiences as Living Books, some of our MA
students became Living Books, articulating their own narratives in choosing to study social
work, with both fellow students and the young people as Readers within the small reading
groups. The library thereby constituted a knowledge exchange where social work students
learned from young people’s experiences of services, and young people had the opportunity
to develop insights into why someone might choose to pursue a career in social work, and
how life experience might have influenced that decision.
The voluntary exchange of experience was one of the essential principles of the original
Human Library: participation is a gift from which both Living Books and Readers derive
benefit (The Human Library, 2015). While our course normally offers payment to people
with experience of services for their involvement in teaching, we have explicitly not done
so for participation in Living Libraries for this reason. We have offered any financial support
that was needed to facilitate participation—mainly transport costs (taxis, bus fares,
petrol and parking) and the payment of costs for any support Living Books required to
attend. We were also committed to making the libraries welcoming and hospitable spaces,
so refreshments have been available throughout the days. In Library 1, due to budgetary
constraints, refreshments were only available to Living Books and we excluded students.
During discussions with Living Books afterwards, it dawned on us that, to our embarrassment,
this created a division which was contrary to the spirit of equality and interconnectedness
within the Living Library. We managed to access funds to offer refreshments to all
in Libraries 2 and 3 and in Library 4 we adopted the practice of ‘Jacob’s Joints’, whereby
tutors and students each brought some food in to share for lunch and everyone—the young
people, their supporters, tutors, social work students and undergraduate students who had
led the university tour—ate together before the Living Library commenced.
Book titles from Living Libraries 1 and 4 are given below by means of an illustration. It
should be borne in mind that some titles may give an indication of what the stories might
be about while others do not:
Living Book titles Living Library 1
• Life after trauma
• My marbles and how I lost them. Volume two: The wilderness years. Containing special
Limited Edition bonus chapters
• I’m a lunatic
• Right then! what’s next?
• A person centred life
• Recovery: Fighting back
• Saved from closure
• Living with anxiety
• Living with disability in a normal world
• If I were a book
• Leap of faith
• My life as a carer
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900    R. Sen et al.
Living Book titles from Living Library 4
Authored by young people
• Uncertainty and Joy
• Live and Let Live
• For Those Who Care
• Diaries of a Self-Confessed Moron
• Changes and Shape Shifters
• An Old Shoe & a Used Tampon: Diaries of a Boss Ass Bitch
• Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover
Authored by social work students
• 360°: Turning (−) into (+)
• 4’s the Charm
• Great Expectations
• Choices
• Why am I here?
• A Series of Unfortunate Events … Ends in a Rainbow
• Forgiveness
• Behind enemy lines
• Social Work? You must be crazy!
Several Living Book authors chose titles that appear to play with negatives stereotypes and
labelling they had encountered. The possibility of ‘non-derogatory in-group use’ of language
as a progressive form of re-appropriation has been documented (Croom, 2013). But, such
language can also serve as a source of tension and discomfort when its use extends across
the boundaries of a given ‘in-group’ and ‘out-group’, and because it seems to jar with values
which social work education seeks to promote around the challenging of discriminatory
labelling. Such potential tensions, though, precisely illustrate the expectation to engage in
dialogical exchange which the Living Library provokes. Questions around the differential use
of language, and the experiential basis for it, can start to be explored and unpicked. Though
this is not without its challenges for all involved, it is part of what makes the embodied
encounters in the Living Library meaningful, real and developmental.
Surveying the library
We did not set out to undertake a formal evaluation of the libraries. Rather, we took stock
of their operation by primarily considering information that was already available to us.
This consisted of the following:
• Feedback from those with experiences of services or their supporters shortly after the
Libraries on their experience of being a Living Book in Libraries 1, 2 and 4 (n = 13).2
• A review of students’ mandatory written reflections on Libraries 1, 2, and 4 undertaken
shortly after the Libraries (n = 204).
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Social Work Education   901
Additionally, six months after Library 1 and two months after Library 4, we made a
request to students to provide us with:
• Any further reflections they had on the impact of the libraries, if they wished to provide
them. We received a modest number of responses to the request (n = 21/152).
A thematic analysis of the comments and reflections was undertaken (Braun & Clarke,
2006) and brief excerpts are used below to illustrate three core themes. Permission to use
comments was provided by their authors. Though there were some suggestions for improvement
(see below), their overwhelming tenor suggested the Living Library experience had
been developmental for Living Books and Readers. The Living Libraries are nonetheless
a small part of the curriculum and, in the absence of more robust longitudinal data, we
acknowledge that is no certainty such feedback has translated into better practice, and consequently,
better outcomes for the people our students will work with. While, as Carpenter
(2011) argues, this final consideration is the ultimate arbiter of social work education,
the challenges in clearly establishing that any educational input has indubitably met it are
manifold, and educators often have to gauge whether teaching will positively affect students’
future practice on less than full information. Alongside our own insights from running the
events, the comments and reflections collected on the Living Library experience do sustain
a reasoned belief that it carries the potential to positively influence participants’ approaches
to social work practice.
The first theme, from the feedback from Living Books and their supporters, was a view
that narrating experiences in the Library had made a difference. This was in two ways—
Living Books felt that students Readers valued and respected their stories, and connected
to this, that the exchanges were thereby influencing future practice:
Pleasure to be involved, I prefer smaller groups of students ... more chance of good interaction,
and from a service user viewpoint, you get a better feel for how they are in and around the
people they will be working with. It’s not just the professional that is assessing things, service
users also do it to a lesser degree, “Can I work with this person, do I feel comfortable, and
more to the point, can I trust them?” (Living Book, Library 1).
It’s definitely worth taking part as these people are going to be the social workers of the future,
it is the perfect medium in which to articulate your concerns to shape social work practice in
the coming years. (Living Book, Library 4).
For student Readers, the power of accessing direct narratives about good and poor social
work practice resonated strongly. The embodied face-to-face encounter with the other
(Levinas, 1969; Merleau-Ponty, 1962/2013) meant the messages conveyed were persuasive
and compelling:
Continuity and consistency are vital. You are a stranger going into someone’s home, you must
build a relationship with them. You are dealing with human beings, not the problem on its
own. (1st Year Reader, Library 2, Immediate feedback on one thing they had learnt from a
Living Book).
Being able to ask the foster carer’s honest opinion was the most valuable experience. Normally
when working with service users it’s not always appropriate to question them in such depth or
with such freedom! (1st Year Reader, Library 1, Immediate Feedback).
The proportion of students who provided comments some months after the libraries was
small, and it is unclear how well they reflect the overall cohorts’ thoughts. In the comments
which were provided, however, the power of the first-hand narratives of social work practice
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902    R. Sen et al.
in the Living Library exchanges remained a salient theme. This suggested the possibility of
their enduring influence:
What has stayed with me is how people have been affected both positively and negatively by
social workers. I always knew this was the case, however hearing it first-hand has more of an
impact. (2nd Year Reader, Library 1, 6 Months After).
The Living Library was an exceptional opportunity to see how social workers were perceived
through the eyes of a young service user. The most significant learning point was to understand
how social workers’ dishonesty created feelings of distrust, anxiety and oppression (2nd Year
Reader, Library 4, 2 Months After).
There were also indications that some students carried learning from the Library exchanges
into their subsequent practice placements, providing illustrative support for the contention
that the Library can function as a connective space between the learning about and the
doing of social work:
My book’s belief that her being labelled as diagnosis X involved a barrier to good practice, in
that she was treated as a diagnosis, was interesting. Later informed my understanding of the
medical model being less person-centred. (1st Year Reader, Living Library 1, 6 Months After).
I asked [the foster carer] how she felt when she had brought up a girl from a matter of weeks
old and she was adopted when she was 18 months and the de-attachment not only for the child
but for the foster carer. This made me think about how parents dealt with the issue of loss when
their child has been taken away, and that there are no real services for that biological parent
once the child has been removed. (1st Year Reader, Living Library 1, 6 Months After).
Suggestions for improving the Living Library experience focussed on practical aspects of
their running. Getting the right physical space is a challenge. Feedback highlighted the
importance of a venue that allows for the intimacy required for sensitive small group work
and can also accommodate a larger plenary session and accessibility needs. It is a challenge
we have better met in the later libraries but given the demand for university space in peak
teaching times it remains an ongoing one. Some students indicated they wanted greater
freedom in Living Book selection, and the opportunity to read more Living Books. Following
Library 1, students have had the opportunity to read two Living Books and Readers’ access
to two different, sometimes differing, narratives on social work practice has been valuable,
requiring the navigation of a path to understanding them together. There are though
limitations to how much choice, and how many Living Books, we can offer Readers in one
Library session. We have discovered that conversations between students after the Library
are also a good means of sharing learning from the different reading experiences, as well as
a mechanism for supporting the translation of learning from the Library to practice. This
has brought focus onto developing exercises after a Living Library which encourage Readers
to share experiences between them, as well as reflect on them individually.
Architects’plans for new developments
We are currently developing an online ‘archive’ of the libraries. The archive does not seek to
directly record or replicate the Living Library exchanges themselves which are private and
dependent on embodied dialogic interaction. Rather, it has been conceived of as an eclectic
mix of objects which, between them, should provide a core record of each Library which
has taken place, as well as some additional insights into how particular libraries have run.
So far it consists of a record of each of the Book titles within every library there has been,
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Social Work Education   903
a video of footage from Library 4 and two audio interviews with Living Books undertaken
after Libraries 1 and 3.
We are seeking to establish partnerships to sustain the Living Library model and intend
to run Generalist Living Libraries as part of our student introduction programme each
year. Many of the Living Books from Library 1 returned for Library 2, which reflects their
commitment to conveying their experiences to student social workers, as well as their positive
experience of Library 1. At the same time, we want to ensure opportunities for new
Living Books to participate. We also want to develop further specialist Living Libraries
around particular service areas or groups of people using social care services, particularly
those with experience of services who may be less well represented within social work
education. Current embryonic thoughts are for libraries involving those with experiences
of mental distress, parents with experience of child protection services and young people
with disabilities.
If anyone is considering developing a Living Library, we would be happy to hear from you.
Notes
1. While ‘service users and carers’ is current mainstream terminology, we are aware of
grassroots discontent with the term ‘service user’. Therefore, where possible, we use ‘people
with experience of services’ or ‘people with expertise of services’ to refer collectively to both
‘service users’ and ‘carers’.
2. In addition to these 13, we received feedback from all the NQSWs who were Living Books
in Library 3 but, given the focus of the article, do not consider this here.
Acknowledgement
Thank you to all those whose have enriched our Living Libraries as Living Books and Readers.
Funding
This work was supported by a University of Sheffield Engaged Curriculum Award, 2014.
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