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Christine Oliver is the Chair of the RDA Board. She sits on the RDA Board as the representative of the Canadian Federation of Library Associations. She is a member of the IFLA Bibliographic Conceptual Models Review Group (formerly the FRBR Review Group) and a member of the IFLA Standing Committee on Subject Analysis and Access. She has been involved with the development of cataloging standards for over 20 years. She was the Chair of the Canadian Committee on Cataloguing during the development of RDA and was a member of international working groups that contributed to the development and implementation of RDA. She is the author of Introducing RDA: a guide to the basics after 3R, published in 2021 (a revision of the original book published in 2010). She works at the University of Ottawa Library in the role of Head, Metadata, and Processing. Why RDA? Organizing Bibliographic Information in the 21st CenturyAbstract RDA, Resource Description and Access, is an international metadata standard designed to enable the discovery of library and cultural heritage resources in both traditional and linked data environments. RDA presents a new way of thinking about bibliographic information. RDA takes the focus of creating metadata to fulfill a user’s needs during the resource discovery process. It also breaks down strings of bibliographic information into entities and elements so that this information can be reliably processed as data by computers. RDA is based on a theoretical framework aligned with the internationally accepted bibliographic conceptual model, IFLA LRM; it is designed as a standard for the digital environment, and it is developed as a global standard appropriate for use in many contexts. The scope of RDA has been broadening in response to international interest in the standard. The content of the standard is designed to be flexible, to offer choices, and accommodate diverse practices. It has been deliberately designed to support use by an international audience. Using the same international standard also increases data interoperability around the globe. The governance structure has also been revised to support increased international participation in RDA development. This presentation gives an overview of key features of RDA and outlines its impact on the usability and visibility of library bibliographic data. While many still operate in traditional cataloging environments, RDA prepares us for the future environments in which libraries will function. |
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Lorcan Dempsey coordinates strategic planning and oversees the Membership and Research Division at OCLC. He has worked for library and educational organizations in Ireland, the UK, and the US. His influence on national policy and library directions is widely recognized. In 2010 he received the National Federation of Advanced Information Services' (NFAIS) highest award, The Miles Conrad Award. He is an honorary Doctor of the Open University in the UK and has twice received an ALCTS Presidential Citation for his work with OCLC colleagues. Lorcan began his career in public libraries in his native Dublin, Ireland. Before moving to OCLC, he managed the UK higher education national investment in information services for Jisc. He is a member of the Cambridge University Library Visiting Committee. Lorcan has a BA and MLIS from University College Dublin. Metadata DirectionsAbstract Metadata assume growing importance as our environments become more digital and automated. Metadata is the intelligence in the system which allows us to work with resources without having advanced knowledge of their existence or characteristics. This presentation will briefly explore how our metadata apparatus is evolving to better support activity in this environment. It will talk about a move towards linked data and entification, about how we need to pluralize our vocabularies to better represent diverse experiences and memories, and about how the uses to which we put metadata are multiplying. We have used metadata to organize resources and for discovery. We now want to make data work harder in a variety of ways. |
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Before that, Aliya Saidembayeva worked at the National Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan (NLRK) (Almaty) where her professional career was up from an editor of the 1st category and a bibliographer of the 1st category to Head of the Retrospective Bibliography Group of the National Bibliography Service (2005-2012) and Head of the National Bibliography Service (2012-2020). She is an author of a number of publications in conference proceedings and professional journals, and an author-compiler, co-author, editor of 60 scientific auxiliary bibliographies, reference manuals, current literature indexes, as well as abstract journals of the NLRK. She was the specialist who first began to master and maintain the technology of authority files in the country and developed software requirements for 2 modules: "Generation of records for Authoritative files database" and" Formation of bibliographic records for publications in different languages (Kazakh, Arabic, Latin, and Cyrillic." Elected as a member of the Standing Committee of the IFLA Bibliography Section for 2017-1921 at the 83rd IFLA Congress (Poland, Wroclaw, 2017). She is a Laureate of the Fund of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the field of culture and art (2012) and holder of the honorary departmental insignia "Madeniet salasyk uzdigi" (2020). Aliya Saydembaeva graduated from Kazakh Women's Pedagogical Institute (1998) with a higher qualification librarian-bibliographer diploma. The Support of Pedagogical Science and Education by Scientific Information Resources: Experience of the Republican Scientific and Pedagogical Library of the Republic of KazakhstanThe presentation highlights the experience of the Republican Scientific and Pedagogical Library (RNPB) of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the field of organization of scientific information on pedagogy and education. In the country, RNPB is the only library that since 1989 has been publishing a national bibliography on topical issues of education. A distinctive feature of RNPB bibliographic publications is their complex content: in one guide for school libraries, there are working-outs on different subjects, topics, classes, age interests of learners of different types of educational institutions (primary, basic secondary, and general secondary schools). RNPB compiles recommended literature indexes for both schoolchildren and teachers. In addition to the current bibliography, the library publishes retrospective indexes of literature “Education and Pedagogy in Kazakhstan” in Kazakh and Russian languages with chronological coverage for 4-5 years. The historical bibliography is presented by “History of the Development of Education and Pedagogy in Kazakhstan”, which covers the period from the 19th to the 20th centuries and was published in Russian in 4 parts during 2009-2012. To organize the flow of primary and secondary scientific information, the RNPB creates and uses its own databases, collaborates with 15 university libraries, methodological centers of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the regions of the country, participates in the maintenance of the Republican Interuniversity Electronic Library (RMEB), which combines electronic educational resources of Kazakhstani higher educational institutions on the platform of the Kazakhstan Library and Information System (KABIS). The presentation also highlights directions of the current and planned activities of the library. |
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Mathilde Koskas is a Head of the Books section of the French National Bibliography (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département du Dépôt légal). She studied at the École nationale des Chartes (Archiviste-paléographe, 2007) and at the École nationale supérieure des sciences de l'information et des bibliothèques (ENSSIB) (Conservatrice des Bibliothèques, 2008) before joining the Bibliothèque nationale de France in 2008. She has been actively involved in IFLA since 2014, and is Chair of its Bibliography section and Secretary of its Division III (Library services) since 2019. Her work focuses on legal deposit and cataloguing of printed and electronic books, cataloguing standards and rules for National Bibliographies, and the online catalogues and services that give access to bibliographic and authority data. National Bibliographies and National Bibliographic Metadata in the Age of Mass InformationAbstract A presentation of the Bibliography section of IFLA : scope, activities, role in promoting National Bibliographies and national bibliographic metadata in this era of mass online information. National Bibliographies, as comprehensive, standardized, authoritative sources of information about the intellectual and cultural output of a country, have an important role to play today. This paper will outline the tools that the Bibliography section of IFLA makes available to agencies that wish to build or maintain strong National Bibliographies, that can contribute to access, selection and assessment of information. |
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Priscilla Pun Nga Ian works at the University of Macau Library as the Head of Technical Services. She received her master’s degree in business administration and bachelor’s degree in library science and economics. Her areas of expertise include collection development, resource sharing, and metadata management, information literacy, research support services, and etc. She is also the Chief Supervisor of the Macao Library and Information Management Association, executive member of Macau Documentation and Information Society, member of Center for Planning and Evaluation of Digital Resources of Library and Information Committee for Academic Libraries of Guangdong Province China, corresponding member of Cataloging Section IFLA. She has co-authored the book Transferring Information Literacy Practices (2019) and written a number of articles. Integrating and Leveraging Metadata in a Shared Environment: the University of Macau ExperienceAbstract Library cataloging and metadata have been evolving since mid-1990s with the emergence and development of the World Wide Web and communication technology. The purpose of the presentation is to have a brief review of the development history of the cataloging and metadata practices of the University of Macau (UM) Library, in order to demonstrate the transitive changes from traditional cataloging to the promotion and preparation for structured data management, from the static and single-source catalog to dynamic and multi-sources discovery platform. To enhance the value of the library’s bibliographic data is to share and re-use the data locally, regionally, and worldwide. Library cooperation and continuing education to the library staff are essential to this goal. A recent project entitled MALA Hub is introduced in the presentation as well. It is a region-wide academic resource-sharing project initiated and launched its first phase in 2019, with the sponsorship of Macau SAR Government. The purpose of the project is to pool together, disclose, and share with each other all kinds of resources available for the 9 library members of Macau Academic Library Alliance (MALA) in Macau, including physical pieces, consortium subscribed resources, the individual library paid resources, open-access resources, and in-house developed digital resources from the libraries and the community. In addition, derived from the MALA Hub by leveraging metadata integrated on the Hub, several topic-specific resource portals are suggested by the Government and the community. The first topic-specific portal, Portuguese Portal, covering all available resources in the Portuguese language has been launched at the end of 2019. More portals are planned to be done in the coming future, such as Macau Study Portal, Specialized Collections Portal, and so on. This project was implemented by adopting a commercial discovery platform. There are mainly three tiers in the framework of the project, namely, (1) Central Portal: integrating the resources and relevant metadata obtained from all the MALA members, open-access resources, etc. (2) Individual Portals: the local discovery systems for gathering and storing all the resources and relevant metadata from individual library members of MALA. Seven individual discovery platforms have been established and assigned to the seven individual libraries of MALA. (3) Topic-Specific Portals: by leveraging and defining particular criteria for the metadata consolidated from all the MALA members (including open access resources), topic-specific portals could be designed in a flexible way. Benefits and challenging issues in planning and implementing the project are discussed and a possible framework for effective metadata management and collaboration in a shared environment is being developed. |
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Ana Maria B. Fresnido currently serves as a Librarian at the De La Salle University Libraries, where she was also Director from 2006 to 2017. She has presented numerous papers in conferences here and abroad and has published papers in local and international journals. She is an active member of professional organizations like the Philippine Librarians Association (PLAI) and the Philippine Association of Academic/Research Libraries (PAARL). Likewise, she actively serves as a member of the Commission on Higher Education-Region Quality Assessment Team (CHED-RQAT). Resource Description and Organization: The Case of an Academic Library in the PhilippinesAbstract Organization of information resources is one of the basic business processes carried out by libraries and archives. Such allows users to effectively and efficiently navigate the system to generate relevant search results. Data production usually follows international standards (e.g., MARC (machine-readable cataloging), AACR (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules) or RDA (Resource Description and Access)), to make it easy to exchange records between systems. This study looked into the experience of an academic library in the Philippines in organizing and describing information sources, particularly its journey towards transitioning from AACR2 to RDA. The development of its institutional repository is likewise discussed, recounting the initiatives, strategies, and challenges encountered along the way. The case study design was used; with data gathered from first-hand experience, interviews and document analysis. Recommendations are forwarded to help direct policies and encourage support and participation from stakeholders. |
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Timothy A. Thompson is the Librarian for Applied Metadata Research at the Yale University Library. As a metadata practitioner, his work focuses on the implementation of linked data standards and technologies in academic libraries. He currently cochairs the Linked Data Advisory Committee of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC). Since 2016, he has also been involved in efforts to develop a BIBFRAME ontology extension for the description of art and rare materials (known as ARM). Implementing BIBFRAME in a Pilot Project at the Yale University LibraryAbstract In the context of academic libraries in the United States, efforts to move from the MARC 21 formats to standards based on linked open data are currently underway. From 2018 to 2020, librarians at the Yale University Library took part in a larger initiative called Linked Data for Production, and they carried out a pilot project to implement the Library of Congress BIBFRAME standard for original resource description. BIBFRAME is an extensible standard that can accommodate specialized description via domain-specific vocabularies such as the Art and Rare Materials (ARM) extension ontology. At Yale, a team of 20 staff members was trained to use the Sinopia Linked Data Editor, a new cataloging tool being developed at Stanford University. A total of 200 items were cataloged before the project was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. During the relatively short period spent cataloging, it took nearly twice as long to catalog resources in Sinopia as it typically might in a traditional MARC cataloging environment. Academic libraries are still in the early stages of this transition, and additional investments in training and technology are needed in order for it to proceed successfully. |
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Mark Anthony A. Santos is a graduate of New England College with a degree of Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 2009. He then earned his undergraduate degree in library and information science in the University of the East in April 2012 and received his master’s degree in library and information science from the same university in December 2014. He is the current president of the Philippine Association of Teachers of Library and Information Science, Inc. and a regular member of the Philippine Librarians Association, Inc. and Medical and Health Librarians Association of the Philippines. His interests and specializations in librarianship include cataloguing and classification, clinical librarianship, hospital librarianship, health sciences information resources and services, and education for health sciences librarianship. He previously worked as a clinical librarian of the neurocritical care unit of St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City, library assistant and as library consultant at St. Luke’s College of Medicine. At present, he is a faculty member and the system administrator of the School of Library and Information Studies of the University of the Philippines Diliman. He is also an associate editor of the Philippine Journal of Librarianship and Information Studies (formerly the Journal of Philippine Librarianship). Official or Original: Implementing Resource Description and Access (RDA) in Academic Libraries after the 3R ProjectAbstract Since 2010, Resource Description and Access (RDA) has been used by many libraries around the world for the description of information resources. As of May 2021, two versions of RDA are available for use: the “original” and the “official” versions. With the release of the “official” version of RDA on December 15, 2020, libraries currently utilizing RDA will be expected to undergo the necessary preparations to transition to the “official” version of RDA. Implementation dates of the “official” version of RDA is up to the libraries and communities, as recommended by the RDA Steering Committee. While the “original” version of RDA will still be available during this transition period, eventually it will no longer be accessible interactively. This paper presents a brief overview of the current status of implementation of RDA and recommendations for transition to the “official” version of RDA. |
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Dr. Andrey Filchenko obtained his Doctorate in Linguistics in 2007 and a Master of Arts degree in 2004 from William Marsh Rice University of Houston. He also has a “Kandidat Nauk in Philology“ degree awarded in 2002 by the Mari El State University in Russia. Before coming to Nazarbayev University, Dr. Filchenko was an associate professor, a senior research fellow, and a research department coordinator at universities in Tomsk, Russia; visiting professor in Hamburg, Germany; and a visiting researcher in Bellingham, USA; Tokyo, Japan; Vienna, Austria; Leipzig, Germany; Helsinki, Finland; Edinburgh, UK; Budapest, Hungary. Dr. Filchenko does research and teaches in the areas of Anthropological Linguistics, Field Methods & Language Documentation, Linguistic Typology, Cognitive Linguistics. Dr. Filchenko’s research is focused on the languages and cultures of indigenous people of Siberia in a wide areal context of Eurasia. He has led a set of projects and authored several publications on various aspects of indigenous languages and traditional culture of Uralic and Turkic people in Siberia with interest in the typology, history, evolution, areal contact, and change of languages/cultures at a local scale. Documentation of Endangered Languages as the Contemporary Practice of Preserving Intangible Cultural Heritage in EurasiaAbstract Based on contemporary estimates, between 50% and 80% of the world’s linguistic diversity will disappear during the 21st century, meaning that out of estimated 6500 languages currently spoken in the world over 3500 will seize to use. While every language manifests a unique wealth of human knowledge accumulated over millennia, sadly, multiple languages in Central and Northern Eurasia are at risk. More often than not, these languages and language varieties are little known outside their immediate communities and less studied by the academic community, which exacerbates the problem even further. Contemporary methodologically and technologically advanced language documentation serves to establish the connection between the intangible and tangible. Modern electronic libraries and archives that result from such documentation projects, including those developed at NU SSH department of LLL, aim to address the problem of preserving the linguistic and cultural diversity of Eurasia. The information and data that these projects produce offer an important empirical contribution to a number of debates pertaining to the history, evolution, variation, and change in the languages and cultures of the region. The experience of these projects is also useful in providing evidence in the discussion of the role of digital technologies in minority language/culture maintenance and revival, as well as in developing best practices for mitigating language endangerment. While these projects naturally focused on collecting primary language and culture data in relevant communities, their important component has also been digital archiving of legacy materials associated with a range of technical, methodological, and ethical issues and their impacts on language/culture endangerment and vitality. |
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Lee Cheng Ean is the University Librarian of the National University of Singapore. She started her career as a Trainee Librarian in 1981 and graduated with a Master’s in Library and Information Science from Loughborough University, UK in 1984. Her vast experience gained from years of working in acquisitions, circulation, serials management, provided her with a strong foundation to build teams that practice continual process improvement and service excellence. She oversees NUS Libraries which comprises eight physical libraries complemented with a high-quality digital library. Throughout her career, she had the opportunity to write manuals, implement new systems, lead changes, improve service quality and mentor junior colleagues and rejuvenate 3 libraries to infuse spaces with technology to support the digital environment. She is passionate about building a strong library team and brand, capable of transforming services and spaces to overcome the challenges to support the University’s mission to educate, inspire and transform. To gain experience and to share her knowledge, Ean participates actively in external alliances. She is the inaugural chair of the Singapore Alliance of University Libraries and the current chair of the Pacific Rim Research Libraries Alliance. She has also been invited to join several library advisory boards, such as the Cambridge Global Library Advisory Board. Making the Invisible Visible: Digital Collections and Curation at National University of Singapore LibrariesAbstract Special Collections at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Libraries was established in 2016 with the mission to digitally showcase the many rare and distinctive titles in the NUS Libraries that until now have remained hidden in its large store of materials. Our vision is to be the research hub for Southeast Asian resources. Therefore, we are particularly focusing on digitizing materials on Singapore and Southeast Asia, which include our Singapore-Malaysia Collection, Southeast Asian Chinese Collection, Rare Books Collection and Private Papers Collection. Digital Gems (https://digitalgems.nus.edu.sg/ ) is the result of our ongoing effort to showcase our unique and rare materials via open access. By putting these resources online for easy access, we hope researchers will use them in new ways to develop new ideas and projects in their various fields of study. This presentation will introduce our digitization program and selected collections in Digital Gems. It will highlight our accelerated efforts in digitizing historical sources on Southeast Asia as well as our latest collaborations with researchers and institutions in expanding our digital collections. Our active data-sharing effort to local and international repositories to expose our digital collections to researchers will also be covered in this presentation. |
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George Andrew (Andy) Spencer has been the Bibliographer for Slavic, East European, and Central Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since April 2002. In June 2012 Middle Eastern Studies as well as Collection Coordinator for Islamic Studies were added to his responsibilities. In 2020 he was awarded the “Distinguished” prefix to his position title, becoming Distinguished Bibliographer for Slavic, East European, Central Asian, and Middle Eastern Studies. He has served as chair of the Slavic and East European Materials Project of the Center for Research Libraries and is currently serving on the Collection Development subcommittee of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies - Committee on Library and Information Resources, as well as served on the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies - Committee on Library and Information Resources Executive Board. He has also served as chair of the Eurasian and Central Asian Subcommittee of the International Relations Committee of the American Library Association, chair of the Slavic and East European Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries, co-chair of the Digital Projects Subcommittee of the Bibliography and Documentation Committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, served on the Conference Organization Committee of the Central Eurasian Studies Society, and others. He has published, presented papers, taught workshop sessions, served as a panel discussant or chair at numerous conferences and workshops both in the United States and internationally, including presentations in Russia, Sweden, England, Germany, Kazakhstan, and Canada. Prior to coming to UW-Madison in April 2002, he was a Visiting Assistant Librarian and Project Manager for the Russian Periodical Index Digital Library Project at Indiana University from November 1999 until March 2002 and a Cataloging / Acquisitions Specialist for Slavic and Central Eurasian Languages at the Indiana University Libraries from January 1993 until October 1999. He received his Master of Library Science (MLS) from Indiana University in 1999 and a Master of Arts in Soviet and East European Studies from the University of Kansas in 1991. Rare Ephemera from Both Sides: Russia/Soviet Union and Asia. A Digital Collections and Curation Case StudyAbstract This presentation is a Digital Collections and Curation case study involving several very rare items that the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Special Collections has recently acquired which are in the process of being converted into Open Access digital collections to enhance access for scholars worldwide. The unifying theme of these materials is rare ephemera representing various stages of Russian-Asian relations. This presentation focuses on the process of acquiring these very rare items, the partnership between subject specialist Bibliographers and Special Collections Librarians in curating these collections, collaboration with faculty in determining the potential research value and use cases for the materials, the physical and digital processing of such rare and fragile materials, the research involved in determining the historical context of the items, metadata creation in multiple languages, digital infrastructure, preservation of the physical originals, etc. One of these collections consists of over 60 original Russian propaganda news placards from the Russo-Japanese War era as well a set of propagandistic chromolithographs of battle scenes of the Russo-Japanese War. In addition, we have recently acquired an original Russian colored print in the lubok (лубок) style also from the Russo-Japanese War period. A second collection is a very rare complete run of an illustrated Ottoman Turkish magazine about the Russo-Japanese War. This magazine demonstrates the great interest among the Turkish people of the time in the Russo-Japanese War and its outcome. A third collection comprises a scrapbook of photographs documenting an anti-Soviet exhibition held in Japan circa 1940. As far as we have been able to determine, it is the sole remaining historical record of an exhibition called "赤色ロシヤを発く展覧会" (Akairo roshiya o abaku tenrankai = Debunking of Red Russia). This exhibition gives a unique insight into the state of Japanese-Soviet relations as reflected in Japanese popular culture in the period immediately before World War II. A fourth item acquired and made available Open Access by UW-Madison Libraries’ Digital Collections Center is a digital surrogate of an 18th century Kazakh dictionary lexicon for which the original unique manuscript is held by the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books (Отдел рукописей и редких книг) of the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, Russia. This dictionary lexicon was compiled during the period of gradual expansion of Russian influence in the northeastern Kazakh steppe in the late 18th Century. |
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Ray Abruzzi is the Publisher for Wiley Digital Archives, a program to digitize the archival holdings of learned societies and other institutional repositories. Ray has over 20 years’ experience in academic publishing, and has been working for over a decade to make primary sources accessible to students, educators, and researchers, partnering with over 300 libraries, archives, and other institutions around the world to digitize primary source collections. Ray is a member of the Center for Science and Society, the Executive Editor of the Columbia Journal of History, a research associate on the Making and Knowing project, and a consultant on History Lab at Columbia University in the City of New York. COVID-19: Impacts on Information Organization, Transmission and UseAbstract The ways in which scholarly research outputs have been organized and disseminated have undergone some complete changes in the last decade, notably through the expansion of Open Access and the increased availability of such information outside of existing publishing channels. The crises related to COVID-19 and the demand for critical data and research findings needed to inform medical responses and public health and public policy decisions has increased the speed with which information has traveled along more traditional paths, but has also resulted in a substantial shift to new paradigms of information organization and sharing, as well as some improvement in international collaborations. This shift is not entirely new-- researchers tackling the challenges of earlier health crises (e.g., those engaged with mitigating the health impacts of the 1918 Influenza) had called for changes in the way information is organized and shared, as well as for greater collaboration amongst nations and institutions. The research communities grappling with COVID-19 have echoed those historical calls, and what has resulted is a rise (or, in some cases, an expansion) in the use of new methods for disseminating information including pre-print servers, rapid correspondence within peer-reviews publications, leveraging social media as a tool for disseminating data, and an increased demand for rapid digitization so that critical historical research might be more widely-available for use and analysis. This short talk will highlight examples of these new paradigms and discuss some of the long-term impacts that COVID-19 is likely having on the ways in which information is organized, transmitted, and used. |
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Lesley Moyo is the Associate University Librarian for Public Services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Her administrative portfolio includes international and area studies, teaching and learning programs, library spaces, science and engineering libraries, and humanities and social science libraries, including the flagship Memorial Library. Lesley also provides oversight for assessment efforts and annual reporting of library data to professional organizations. In addition, Lesley oversees College Library, which delivers an array of undergraduate library services and programs. Lesley’s research interests have evolved over time and she has published and presented widely on a myriad of topics in library and information science and related fields. She has served in various professional capacities and organizations including ACRL, ALA, and others, and has held positions as lecturer in library and information studies. Prior to joining UW-Madison, Lesley was Professor and Director for Research and Instructional Services in the University Libraries at Virginia Tech. Before joining Virginia Tech, she was Associate Librarian and Head of the Gateway Libraries at Penn State. COVID-19 Impact on Information Organization: Delivering Information and Library Services During a PandemicAbstract The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound and far-reaching impact on how we live and work all over the world. The year 2020 and the first part of 2021 were characterized by fear, uncertainty, and rapid change as society took shelter from the menacing pandemic. Yet, during the same time, we witnessed unprecedented transformation as various businesses and enterprises reinvented themselves to combat not only the deadly effects of the pandemic but also the disruption it was causing in all sectors of life. Within higher education, libraries featured prominently among units rethinking their operations in order to effectively support the continuity of research, teaching, and learning in their respective institutions. As a result, creative ways of organizing, accessing, and delivering services and information in spite of the constraints of the pandemic emerged. We saw the birth of curbside services, the enhancement of electronic access to collections, the increase of digitization on demand, and the emphasis on virtual library services such as chat reference and online library classes. This paper is based on the UW-Madison Libraries' experience in planning and delivering services throughout the pandemic and making necessary adjustments as the pandemic circumstances changed. The paper discusses lessons learned and some key insights gained from the planning efforts as well as some of the pitfalls encountered. The paper emphasizes the importance of preparedness and encourages libraries to develop plans for continuity of operations as an integral component of organizing and delivering library services and information. The importance of a strong web presence is highlighted as fundamental to a library’s organization of information as it serves as a portal to library resources and would be the place all of the library patrons would depend on to search for information when the physical library is inaccessible due to an ongoing pandemic or other similar circumstances. |
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