COVID-19 RESPONSE
These additional services were launched in Spring 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent closure of our physical location. Library services rapidly transitioned from an environment where 15% of our patron interactions were remote (February 2020) to one where 100% of our interactions were. The following services helped staff to support our patrons in this new environment:
VIRTUAL STUDY HALL
In April 2020 staff launched a virtual study hall on Zoom, which offered 12 hours each week of background sounds & images along with a few chat messages from a session coordinator. These sessions help to motivate students in the same way that a physical library does. The library will continue to promote its study hall through the summer and fall of 2020.
VIRTUAL WORKSHOPS
During the closure of the physical library, all instruction has been offered online. Eighteen sessions were held between mid-March and the end of June, 2020 with a total of 208 attendees. Seven of these sessions were scheduled on-demand.
COURSE RESERVES
While the status of the library for the Fall semester remains up in the air, we reached out to faculty via their liaison librarians to find out the required textbooks as early as possible. In addition to determining access options for existing ebook versions, we continue to look at potential options to provide legal access to scans of chapters or entire books, as our platforms allow. We are also encouraging faculty conversations with their “home campus” libraries, to determine if they can procure ebook copies of texts.
REOPENING PLANS
The library worked closely with other USG staff to plan the specifics of campus reopening in Fall 2020. Staff gathered weekly in Return to Campus Task Force subcommittee meetings, recommending levels of service, and estimating the personnel and material requirements to implement campus services. Plans for re-opening the library emphasized logistics and protocols, with policies and procedures outlined around three scenarios: fully remote operations, limited in-person operations, and full operations.
ACCESS TO TEXTBOOKS
As the library transitioned to exclusively digital access in late March 2020, ensuring our patrons’ access to library resources required both stop-gap measures and long-term planning. In the Spring of 2020, library staff were available to locate electronic course resources for USG students and faculty and answered 59 requests from late March through the end of June. We created a research guide to aid in discovery of online resources, including textbooks that publishers had made freely available through the end of the spring semester due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as how to search for open educational resources (OER). In preparation for potential disruptions in the future, we evaluated open educational resources (OER) that could support the academic programs at Shady Grove, and librarians supported faculty and program directors as they planned curriculum for future semesters.