From Crip Time to Care Time: How Library Administrators Can Support Professional Development of Disabled Employees

Building on our 2025 In the Library with the Lead Pipe article “Cripping Conferences”, this piece moves from naming the problem to offering solutions to library administrators. Disabled library workers face significant barriers to professional development, including the financial cost of attendance, the physical and mental toll of navigating inaccessible spaces, and the conflict between crip time and the neoliberal clock time that governs academic and library culture. While accommodations are needed, they are not enough; we need to interrogate the systems that exclude disabled employees. Written by two disabled LIS scholars, this piece offers library administrators practical guidance, from immediate actions to the longer-term culture shifts that our profession needs. We do not offer a checklist; instead, we offer a starting place, believing that when libraries genuinely invest in disabled workers rather than merely accommodate them, the whole profession benefits.