Research on Moral Injury: Academic Library Workers in Children's Literature Spaces

[Jessica Condlin]

Dear Colleagues, 

Given the current sociocultural and political landscape, we invite academic library workers with responsibilities related to children's literature collections in the United States to respond to the Moral Injury: Academic Library Workers in Children's Literature Spaces survey that seeks to uncover potentially morally injurious events and reveal the impact it is having on their professional and/or personal lives.

Potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs) are life experiences which might result in or cause moral injury or moral distress. According to VanderWeele and Wortham (2025):

• Moral distress is "distress that arises because personal experience disrupts or threatens: (a) one’s sense of the goodness of oneself, of others, of institutions, or of what are understood to be higher powers, or (b) one’s beliefs or intuitions about right and wrong, or good and evil."
• Moral Injury is moral distress which "becomes sufficiently persistent."
  
  

This will encompass 1) your personal morals as well as beliefs of right and wrong, and 2) your interpretation of the morals and values of the library profession. 

Access the survey: https://illinoisstate.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cZo0G1xdWqOdSlw 

Should you choose to participate in this study, you will be asked to answer questions aligned with a moral injury events scale and then be given the opportunity to elaborate on or describe the impact based on your level of comfort.

If you know of an academic library worker who might be interested in sharing their experience, please feel free to forward the survey. The survey will remain open until Friday, May 1st 2026.

Questions or concerns may be directed to Caitlin Stewart at cjs...@ilstu.edu. This study is conducted by academic librarians from Illinois State University, Northern Illinois University, New York University, and Indiana University.