Connecting with Co-workers to Build Trust

Abstract

I read Denise Brush’s “Trust in Academic Libraries: How to Build Connections between New Co-workers,” in the April 2024 issue of College & Research Libraries News. Many of her points resonated with my own experiences working in my institution’s library. Trust has become a recurrent theme—across many professions’ organizational cultures—since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Trust can erode when there is a lack of connection with other library staff, new or veteran. The library is constantly growing, changing, or adapting to sync with the institutional community’s research and instructional needs, current and anticipatory; and new colleagues—across various departments—arrive as steadily long-time library staff retire, or seek new opportunities. Such constant change and growth can make it challenging to build connections with new employees.