This page aims to document the history of the Help Yourself Campaign and provide a research and praxis overview for library professionals. 

Mission

The Help Yourself Campaign (HYC) provides UNT students with access to books and digital resources that support education, wellness, and self-exploration on health, identity, and social topics that may be hard to discuss openly. The HYC Coordinator, Brea Henson, collaborates with Student Support Offices and faculty to support UNT Values, UNT Wellness, and UNT Holistic Care goals.

Vision

The Help Yourself Campaign (HYC) envisions a UNT where every student feels empowered to seek knowledge, healing, and personal growth through accessible, inclusive resources—fostering a culture of self-awareness, wellness, and lifelong learning in a supportive academic environment.

Praxis Philosophy

The Help Yourself Campaign (HYC) believes that access to information is a vital component of personal and academic well-being. The HYC is committed to providing inclusive, nonjudgmental resources that empower UNT students to explore complex topics related to health, identity, and wellness at their own pace. HYC praxis is rooted in respect for individual experiences, the promotion of self-guided learning, and the use of bibliotherapy as a meaningful tool for reflection, healing, and growth. We strive to create a safe and supportive space where all students feel seen, supported, and encouraged to help themselves through whole-person and whole-campus praxi.

The HYC understands that if students are unable to achieve holistic wellness, then their academic pursuits and success suffer. Based on research and praxis, the HYC is committed to a whole-campus approach to UNT wellness. 

Praxis vs practice: What is a praxis?

Praxis and practice stem from similar concepts of doing or taking action on something. Practice is a more general term that relates to any routine action. Praxis is more specific and requires grounding an action in a framework. Praxis is an applied method, theory, pedagogy, or a mixture of frameworks. Praxi are essential in educational settings, including libraries of all types. As an academic librarian with a MA in Comparative Literature (basically a degree in continental philosophy) and MLS (with an emphasis in research and teaching), Brea Henson uses whole-person and whole-campus praxi.

The HYC services takes a whole-person praxis to service.

Whole-person praxis comes out of the whole-person librarianship model that is used in public libraries. This praxis model is used by public librarians to engage in social work or collaborate with social workers to provide holistic care to library patrons. Whole-person praxis requires librarians and social workers to examine the needs of a whole person to provide complete holistic care that the patron may need in order to thrive in all social, informational, financial, and wellness area of their life. 

Since 2014, public libraries have employed social workers, trained (funding permitted) librarians and library employees, or sought volunteers to provide whole-person praxis to their patrons.

In some academic libraries, the term "whole-student" is used to shift this praxis to address the holistic social, information/academic, financial, and wellness needs of students, and factors into this model, the unique environment and vulnerability of the student experience and college life for the emerging adult age group and non-traditional students. 

The HYC takes a whole-campus praxis to service.

The whole-campus (aka whole-university) model stems from the whole-student model and emphasises that it takes all employees of a university or college to address the whole-person needs of students. It also argues that service cannot be siloed and that employees need to be able to provide as much holistic care as possible: it takes a whole campus to provide holistic care to all students.

For academic libraries, this means that librarians and library employees need to be able to address aspects beyond the academic well-being of students, as well as their information needs in other wellness areas. This can mean providing information or referrals to non-academic departments like student support offices, providing access to non-academic collections like fiction and self-help materials, and inviting professionals from student support offices into the library or engaging with these providers in some way. The whole-campus model also highlights the risks of emotional labor and burnout and the need to campuses to provide adequate care to employees.

The HYC offers bibliotherapy and self-help resources.

Through carefully reviewed materials, the HYC provides recommended reading by counselors, social workers, and health/wellness practitioners at UNT. The American Library Assocaition defines bibliotherapy as "the use of selected reading materials as therapeutic adjuvants in medicine and psychiatry; also guidance in the solution of personal problems through directed reading (AHIL Quarterly, Summer 1966, p. 18)."  The HYC also highlights other self-help and supplemental readings to educate and comfort, which information professionals have carefully reviewed and vetted. 

The HYC cannot offer counseling, legal, financial, or medical advice. The HYC aims to connect students with care professionals, along with library materials. 

The HYC Coordinator is the library liaison for the Dean of Students Office, the Counseling and Testing Office, and the Student Health and Wellness Center. These offices are essential partners to the HYC and are often the first offices that students are referred to, depending on their needs. 

These offices provide collection development recommendations, inspire new topic pages for the library guide, refer students to HYC resources (library guide and collections), and collaborate on outreach events. They also recommend off-campus service provides that take UNT student insurance, provide low-cost service, or free service for situations that are beyond the scope of what the campus offices can provide. These Denton and DFW providers are listed on the "List of Local & National Resources" page."

In addition to these key student support offices, each library guide page directs students to other student support offices across campus that are available to students for specific needs in that area.

Over the summer semesters, HYC Coordinator, Brea Henson, seeks input from UNT Student Support Offices to order books that these offices recommend to students for self-help and bibliotherapy. Thorugh the fall and spring semesters, Henson orders additional self-help books in the topic areas that she finds through publisher catalogs and book review sites.

During the 2023-2024 academic years, Henson collaborated with a former Collection Management Librarian to increase the holdings of the sex and reproductive education materials in the collection. 

During the 2024-2025, Henson collaborated with the Collection Analysis Unit within the UNT Libraries' Collection Development Department to analyze call ranges and holdings of the HYC Collection. This collection analysis also provided an analysis with the Mental Health collection. 

In the upcoming 2025-2026 academic year, Henson will be conducting IRB-approved research HYC collection checkouts.

Active Outreach: Tablings & Resource Fairs

During the fall and spring semesters, the HYC Coordinator, Brea Henson, conducts 5 outreach tablings* each semester to provide information about the HYC and student support offices on campus. These tablings are held between October and November (typically the week before midterms to the second to last week of the semester) for 2-3 hours per session. On good weather days, Henson conducts the tabling outside of Willis Library to increase access to students going into the library and traveling to classes. If no sessions are cancelled throughout the academic year, Henson completes 10 tablings and 20-30 hours of work with direct contact with students. Each table session averages 20-50 students per session, or 200-500 students per academic year.

In addition to solo HYC tabling, Henson is invited to collaborate with the

• CARE Team (Dean of Students),
• Counseling and Testing,
• Student Health and Wellness Center, and
• Survivor Advocate Office (Dean of Students)

on events. These events are often resource fairs like the annual Health and Wellness Expo. These events are held near the Hurley end of the Library Mall or on the South Lawn for 2-4 hours and average 150-200 students per event. 

Post-COVID-19 Lockdowns, Henson has completed over 30 tablings, had over 55 hours of contact time with students, and served over 978 students.

*Tablings--an outreach method where a table is set up to highlight a service, provide information, greet stakeholders, and be a welcoming library representative to alleviate library-related anxiety. 

What is provided at a tabling event?

• Information card with QR code to HYC library guide
• HYC exclusive library buttons
• Instructions on finding HYC signage in the stacks
• Candy
• Handouts about student support offices
• Handouts about other library initiatives that support students socially
• Handouts about wellness events on campus

NOTE: Henson, nor any outreach assistants, does not provide counseling services to students. Students may divulge information about themselves and situations needing intervention at tablings. Henson makes appropriate referrals to student support offices based on the information shared.

Henson completes regular intervention training with the Survivor Advocate Office, Counseling and Testing Office, Denton MHMR, and other non-profits in Denton to address crises like sexual assault and suicide risk. 

Passive Outreach: Signage in the Stacks

Both Willis Library and Sycamore Library have magnetic signs that are incorporated into the stacks. Each sign corresponds with some of the keywords or subject headings and call number ranges that relate to the topic. The sign is placed on the row of the first call range that is associated with the topic. Each sign has 3-4 keywords or subject headings and the call numbers for them, the name of the most relevant student support office and their phone number, and QR code that can take patrons to the library guide

The stacks at Sycamore Library are thinner and cannot accommodate the signs. Instead, these signs are placed on the back of metal study carrels. 

At Willis Library, the signs are placed at the end of the stacks facing toward the center aisle.

Henson is in the process of completing an assessment of the HYC to gauge its effectiveness and reach. This assessment will take multiple years to complete as the research team is small, and Henson has instructional duties along with her outreach duties. Below is the tentative timeline for the research:

• 2024-2025 AY*: HYC Collection Assessment and Enhancement
• Summer 2025: Data gathering and review of outreach and libguide use; TB reported
• 2025-2026: Survey checkouts (IRB-approved) and survey student support office referrals (IRB-approved); TB reported
• 2026-2027: Survey the profession for instances of similar initiatives in academic libraries; TB reported
• 2027-2028: publication or dissertation

During this timeframe, Henson will pursue a PhD in Higher Education with a concentration in Library Science and additional coursework in Social Work.

*AY--academic year

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