LIS Mental Health Week first took place in January 2016, spurred by Cecily Walker’s blog post suggesting there was a need to acknowledge that library and archives workers experience mental illness. Since 2016 the LIS Mental Health project has included multiple avenues for people to share their experiences and thoughts. We’ve nurtured community and provided an open and welcoming space to talk and share experiences with mental illness through blog posts, Twitter chats, and six issues of the Reserve and Renew zine, raising almost $6,000 in donations for mental health charities.
We’re announcing a hiatus of the LIS Mental Health project beginning in May 2023. The slow decay of Twitter has made it difficult to bring our professional and personal selves to conversations with a wide reach; it’s also been more challenging to share the word about small passion projects like this one. We hope that the project will be revived at some point in the future, and we’d love to provide space and infrastructure for any DIY efforts to promote mental health in our field. Please get in touch at reserveandrenew@gmail.com with any ideas; we would be thrilled to partner with you. We’re planning on keeping the website and list of resources available indefinitely. Thank you to everyone who has participated in the LIS Mental Health project with us!