Optimizing Library Services — Academic Library Response to COVID-19 by Prof. Jennifer Joe (Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Engagement Librarian, University of Toledo, USA) <Jennifer.Joe@UToledo.Edu> Column Editors: Ms. Brittany Haynes (Editorial Assistant, IGI Global) <bhaynes@igi-global.com> and Ms. Lindsay Wertman (Managing Director, IGI Global) <lwertman@igi-global.com> www.igi-global.com Column Editors’ Note: This column features IGI Global contributor Prof. Jennifer Joe, Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Engagement Librarian at the University of Toledo, USA, co-editor of the publication Social Media for Communication and Instruction in Academic Libraries along with Prof. Elisabeth Knight, from Western Kentucky University, USA. — BH & LW
Introduction Serving patrons from a distance is nothing new. There is a large body of literature available showcasing the ways that colleges and universities have adjusted their approach to library services for the good of students who are off campus. The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) released the most recent Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services (which began as the 1990 ACRL Guidelines for Extended Campus Library Services) in 2016, and it states, “The originating institution is responsible for ensuring that the distance learning community has access to library materials equivalent to those provided in on-campus settings” (American Library Association, 2016, n.p.). While attempting to adhere to this guideline, modifications have mostly been small and appropriate in scope for the number of patrons they serve, which depends on the institution. Overall, however, a 2015 survey found that just 54.05% of institutions offer “special classes or training program[s] for distance learning students,” which means many face-to-face programs and methods have not been adapted for the online learner (Primary Research Group, 2015, p. 38). At the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio, USA, where I am the undergraduate engagement librarian, the institution went to a work-from-home plan beginning the week after our Spring Break (March 9-13, 2020). By the end of the week (March 20, 2020), library employees were all working remotely, and our building was closed. We only had a few basic services designed for distance students — electronic resources, LibGuides, reference chat, and email consultations. This abrupt departure from normal clearly required some changes in our approach toward our patrons.
We Are All Online Learning Librarians Even before the decision to shutter the library and the rest of the campus, the administration had decided to shift classes to the online environment. The initial decision was that this would happen on a temporary basis and then it would be reevaluated, but subsequent talks in the administration have resulted in classes being held online through the summer (Whiteside, 2020). Therefore, even before we were working from home, faculty and staff at the university had prepared to meet our students in the online environment. We had reviewed important LibGuide materials; made sure that students were aware that they could reach us via email, chat reference, and social media; and set up Against the Grain / June 2020
our office computers with web conferencing software so that we could conduct synchronous consultations to meet the needs of our patrons. Once we learned that the situation would be more permanent and that we would also be working from home, our preparations shifted slightly. First, we had to test that we had access to everything we would need from home. This gave us unique insight into the challenges that our students faced as they returned to their homes. Connection issues, redundant sign-in requests, and unintuitive paths to accessing materials were suddenly our problems, too. This confirmed what had already been reported in the general literature. For example, a study conducted by Mueller et al. found that of nine eBook platforms studied, no platform achieved a 100% success rate in more than two of the research tasks attempted, and some eBook platforms failed to achieve 100% in any task (2019). Our electronic resources librarian is working diligently to help us with these issues as we find them in our own resources, but some of them are systematic and are out of her control. Finally, some of us also made attempts to teach information literacy in the online environment. In addition to the three librarians who are also instructors at our university and were teaching credit-bearing courses online, I was able to teach a one-shot library session virtually through our learning management system. The class was a Pro Seminar in Anthropology and Sociology. Thanks to a good working relationship with the instructors of record, they felt comfortable allowing me to teach the class online synchronously on the same date that I would have been teaching it in person, March 30th, less than two weeks after the university had shifted to online work. It was optional for the students, but we had a good turnout, leading me to believe that it is something students would benefit from in the future. We also recorded the session for students who were unable to attend. This returns us to the report by Primary Research Group conducted in 2015; we have the technology and capabilities for more comprehensive distance learning efforts. Now that we have heightened demand, it would behoove us to conduct them.
We Are All Scholarly Communication Librarians At the University of Toledo, we have a scholarly communications librarian. Her job includes handling everything related to public access, data sharing, copyright, and the support of new scholarship. In normal times, her job gets many requests, but when one is trying to pivot to online in the middle of the semester, in the middle of an international emergency, these requests were not always going directly to her. Furthermore, if they had gone directly to her, she would have easily become overwhelmed. Therefore, many of us took it upon ourselves to help answer scholarly communications issues in our respective subject areas. I took a question from one of my liaison departments about continued on page 68
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
67
