Currently the Acting Chief of the San Francisco Public Library Main Library, Karen Strauss has been an outreach librarian and manager on a senior services bookmobile; launched a program of volunteers taking library materials to patrons homebound with HIV/AIDS; and coordinated the operations of the Library’s community services directory. She chronicled the San Francisco Public Library’s development of their Books by Mail program in the January 2003 issue of Public Libraries.Along with her colleagues, Strauss’s efforts to provide social services to homeless SFPL patrons developed into a partnership with the San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH) and resulted in placing members of DPH’s Homeless Outreach Team in the Main Library in 2006. In 2009, SFPL and DPH placed the nation’s first psychiatric social worker full-time in a public library. The program has received national and international attention in the library community and beyond and has proved to be a model on which other libraries have created their own programs. Along with her SFPL colleagues - including Social Worker Leah Esguerra - Strauss has presented at ALA, PLA and led staff development training for the Pacific Library Partnership of Northern California upon which this Infopeople webinar is based.