Abstract: 【Purpose/significance】In the context of risk society, the high complexity and uncertainty of society make security an impor⁃tant issue that needs renewed attention from library academia and the profession. Continued development of library security capabili⁃ties becomes the logical destination for addressing security risks.【Method/process】On the basis of revealing the challenges posed by the characteristics of risk in the context of risk society to library security management process, library security competency and librar⁃ians' security knowledge, this paper deconstructs three directions of library security capability development and forms a new view of li⁃brary security capability.【Result/conclusion】Based on this perspective, this paper uses Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a metaphor,
emergency-regular dimension and basic-higher-order dimension as the analysis framework, and divides library safety capability into five levels, with library safety management, emergency services, patron safety literacy cultivation, community resilience enhancement and public science practice as the core contents, and constructs the "Library Safety Capability Hierarchy" model.【Innovation/limita⁃tion】The Library Security Capability Hierarchy can provide valuable reference for libraries to develop security capabilities and mea⁃sure to some extent the maturity and growth of libraries in security capabilities.