Bibliotherapy, as a part of expressive therapy, involves the systematic use of books to help people cope with mental, physical, emotional, or social problems. It has been widely recognized as an approach that holds great promise in helping librarians to better address emotional, behavioural and social concerns of various groups of people. The benefits of bibliotherapeutic services such as reading groups, expanded readers' advisory, books-on-prescription and information-on-prescription services as well as various outreach programs are well documented in the library literature. On the other hand, health professionals who work in cooperation with educators and librarians share medical records on the healing and consoling power of books.The paper will explore the role of bibliotherapy in a library setting and identify particular bibliotherapeutic schemes to be used when serving people affected by HIV/AIDS. The paper will provide an overview of the library project developed to address educational and recreational needs of the African people living with HIV/AIDS. The project was successfully implemented at the Nkosi's Haven Library in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2010. Although the project targeted all the residents of Nkosi's Haven, the paper will focus mostly on the part of the program developed for children and young adults. The paper will identify psychological and social factors that affect the targeted group of children within the African environment. Particularly, it will highlight a negative effect that stigmatization around the disease has on the lives of the HIV-infected individuals and their families. Within this context, bibliotherapy is seen as an effective way of reaching out and breaking the isolation of people, especially children living with HIV/AIDS. The paper will describe specific activities strategically chosen for the bibliotherapy sessions to provide a channel through which the participants of the program could analyze their behaviours or situations and address their concerns. It will also provide a list of books selected for the targeted group of children and young adults. The paper will highlight the great potential of bibliotherapy in addressing the needs of vulnerable people and thus justify the importance of implementing bibliotherapy within the library setting.

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Within the context of benefits of a healthy workplace, bibliotherapy is seen as an effective way of promoting health and wellness to hospital employees. The paper will present a detailed description of an innovative informational and recreational bibliotherapy-based reading program for healthcare providers developed and implemented by a Health Sciences library, in collaboration with the Occupational Health department. The methodology involved an extensive review of the bibliotherapy research and best practices in the UK and North America. The mechanics, benefits, and challenges of the program will be discussed. The program evaluation included an internal survey to the hospital employees. The evaluation results show that the bibliotherapy program has provided a new venue to address work-related stress and promote health, well-being, and resilience within the organization. Moreover, it helped to expand opportunities for collaborative projects and partnerships for the library as well as increase visibility of the library within the organization.