Perseverance At Its Finest

Perseverance At Its Finest

How Library staff ensured uninterrupted access to services during the pandemic

Oftentimes, our response to adversity helps define us. Our commitment to achieving our goals outweighs any conflict of interest that may stand in our way. This is a story about just that—about how the Library was able to adjust to the “new normal,” which at UC San Diego and so many other campuses across the world took the form of fulltime remote learning, research and work.

As announcements of the campus closure were made in lockstep with local, state and national ordinances surrounding the pandemic, Library employees worked tirelessly behind the scenes to develop solutions to real, tangible problems that resulted from the closure of our library buildings.

We found ourselves asking questions like: How would we serve our students from afar? What kind of materials would we be able to share and how? Where would our students study? What staff absolutely need to be on-site to keep our collections safe and well maintained? How would we schedule our on-site staff in the safest way possible?

Determined to find the answers, Library staff met regularly to discuss the best path forward. Leadership was demonstrated Library-wide, with each Program stepping up and taking ownership of their unique challenges.

Wastewater Detection Program

UC San Diego’s response to the pandemic has been celebrated nationwide in higher education and has served as an example for others. Our researchers and staff have been instrumental in creating innovative ways to keep the campus community safe and out of harm’s way. One such way they did so was by creating the Wastewater Detection Program. A cross-campus collaboration, this program analyzes wastewater from various buildings on campus in search of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, also known as COVID-19. With this early detection system in place, the university has been able to identify and focus on specific buildings where the virus was found.

But how did this program come to fruition? In part, by the help of the Library’s Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Librarian Amy Work.

Shortly after the campus closure, Work was contacted by Diana Henderson, associate campus space analyst at Campus Planning. Henderson was interested in gathering information about GIS tools that could be leveraged to support the emerging Wastewater Detection Program.

“When we were in the early stages of program creation, we had a vision but lacked the technical know-how in terms of software that could be used to support our cause,” Henderson shared. “Amy came in and provided the guidance we needed to drive this project forward, which ultimately helped keep our students, faculty and staff safer during the pandemic. I am very grateful for her enthusiasm and willingness to share information with us. We couldn’t have done it without her.”

Work acted fast. She pulled together information that Henderson and team could use to inform the development of the program. Esri’s ArcGIS Dashboard (photo above) and Survey123 were among the first pieces of software Work recommended for this program—they both had viable geographical tracking capabilities that would nicely complement Campus Planning’s effort to trace the virus in wastewater outflow on campus.

The Wastewater Detection Program is now considered to be one of the most useful programs as a part of UC San Diego’s Return to Learn strategy, which emerged as a result of the pandemic.

“I am grateful to have had the opportunity to contribute to this most important program on campus,” said Work. “It’s not every day you have the opportunity to make an impact of this magnitude during such a troublesome time for the university, our city and the world. I want to thank Campus Planning for contacting the Library and approaching me. My contributions to this project will definitely go down as one of the highlights of my career!”

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to contribute to this most important program on campus. It’s not every day you have the opportunity to make an impact of this magnitude during such a troublesome time for the university, our city and the world.

Archiving Websites

Archiving websites, it’s a thing. And doing so during the pandemic has kept Digital Archivist Tori Maches very busy.

UC San Diego, as well as the San Diego community at large, has launched several websites throughout the pandemic in an effort to share key updates with their respective audiences. At UC San Diego, our main focus has been to inform the Triton community about campus’s innovative and proactive Return to Learn program.

But what happens when websites are no longer needed or the content is transitioned to a new web property? They are placed in Maches’ hands for archival purposes. As sections of a website are changed or perhaps removed entirely over time,

Maches archives them in the Library’s digital collections, taking stock of what was done and when from a digital communications standpoint. Regular archiving of the same websites allows researchers to see how campus’s and the county’s pandemic response has evolved.

With web archiving, you can take a snapshot of a website’s look, feel and content, thereby providing future researchers with the ability to review the snapshot at any time, even after the original website has been taken down or changed. Web archives can also be used as datasets for analysis, to evaluate success or to better understand a timeline of events.

“This work is important because it helps us capture information that was shared online during the pandemic and make it readily available, no matter its publication status,” Maches said. “These websites are historical material that can and will be used by researchers in the future to study how campus and San Diego at large responded to the pandemic.”

Since 2007, the Library has been actively archiving web content and has amassed nearly nine terabytes of data. We use Internet Archive’s “Archive-It” service, which includes a public portal providing access to our web archive collections. Our collections are incredibly diverse and range from various campus departments to specific subject areas like Chinese studies, local government and Latin American studies.

Contactless Curbside Pickup Service

To help students maintain access to the Library’s vast collections and resources, the Spaces, Lending and Access (SLA) team worked quickly to launch the contactless Curbside Pickup Service.

Initially, the team had been fulfilling borrowing requests from the Hopkins turnaround and the front entrance of Geisel Library (for pedestrians and cyclists), but after receiving several requests for longer service hours and additional parking, the Library partnered with Transportation Services to offer a more robust option at Campus Curbside, their new consolidated pickup site at the former Osler Commuter and Visitor Information Center.

“It has been our pleasure to partner with the Library to provide Tritons with a more accessible and convenient way to pick up their borrowed items,” said Josh Kavanagh, executive director of Transportation at UC San Diego. “Combining pickup for Transportation, the Bookstore, the Library and other campus partners in one location made access easier for both campus residents and commuters. The Library was among our earliest partners in Campus Curbside and was instrumental in the initiative’s success. Their collaboration made it that much easier to support our community during the pandemic.”

The Library was among our earliest partners in Campus Curbside and was instrumental in the initiative’s success. Their collaboration made it much easier to support our community

Requested items are checked out remotely and made available for curbside pickup Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. After the remote checkout takes place, each borrower receives an email notification letting them know their item(s) are available for pickup, usually within two business days.

Returning borrowed items is just as easy. UC San Diego affiliates simply place the items in the drive-up book returns at the Hopkins turnaround or in the book returns near the Geisel entrance. From there, the items are put through quarantine protocols to ensure the safety of our staff in processing returns.

In an effort to optimize the program, SLA put out a survey for our community to share their experiences in using this service. Results of the survey will drive how the team continues this offering in the coming months.

These projects are just a few examples of how Library staff rose to the occasion and helped the Triton community maintain access to our materials and services during the pandemic. We encourage you to visit lib.ucsd.edu/ remoteservices to view all of the ways in which students, faculty, staff and other patrons were able to continue their research and studies during our closure.