Collection promotion and shift role of librarians at pandemic time

How to promote library collection and what is the role of librarian during pandemic?

Our school’s collections are largely paper based. When we all work at home, I cannot circulate materials in the library.  Students and teachers cannot get physical books from library. If the paper collection can do nothing to help students and teachers, what library can do to show our commitment to support academic work?

1. Promote all online resources we have

The online presentation organized by EBSCO (Yang, 2020) mentioned that how other librarians promote their online collection service. My school has 2 databases for G11 and G12 and 3 educational sites for all year groups.

Those databases and educational sites do not provide eBooks and eAudiobooks for students. When amazon opens its audible books for free, I posted the news on Moodle, which is a learning platform for students and staff to communicate.

2. Proactively communicate with different professionals whose work has connection with library

2.1 other librarians and social media

Librarians like to share their thoughts and ideas on social media. Get involve into their network and ask for help or offer what you know with them. This is how I get many information and new resources.

1.2 Proactively work with vendors and publishers

Vendors and publishers are great sources of information. Workshops .e.g Librarians’ action taken during pandemic organized by EBSCO, teach online organized by National Geographic give us inside what resources and information needed by teachers and students.

1.3 Proactively work with teachers and students

The major force for our students to receive information and read information and books is from their teachers. Therefore, I emailed teachers with my wish to support their work. I also emailed them some useful tips to teach online and researched resources to support their teaching.

When school called for offering online co-curriculum activity, I organized an online research CCA. It works well and was appreciated by students and administrators.

1.4 role change

In Ali’s (2020) article, he mentioned librarian’s role change to fit to new needs of community. My role shifted to be mentor for 2 students who were disengaged into online learning.  

1.5 store information

I listened an online course (Zhu, n.d.) and learned some tips to organize computer files. Our library management system did not good at organize computer files and I am the type of person who have many brilliant ideas but need support to organize resources. I am now using Onenote to store and organize my resources and files. I classify those resources and files according to topics they belong to, so if I need any resource in the future, I can quickly find them through topic search on OneNote.

References:

Ali, M. Y., (2020) The COVID‐19 (Coronavirus) pandemic: reflections on the roles of librarians and information professionals. Retrieved from  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hir.12307 

Yang, L. P. (2020, March). Upgrade ourselves in a crisis-a case sharing from XJTLU Library. Presentation presented at the EBSCO online webinar, Beijing. Retrieved from  https://ebsco.webex.com/ebsco/m.php?MTID=e37924f93669530f26cc2e099e288ec7d

Zhu, D. (n.d.). Module 13: Most systematic way to organize your computer files [Class speaknotes]. Retrieved from
https://appvjpmzbar5202.h5.xiaoeknow.com/v1/course/audio/a_5cb340a664b2c_OdroojLH?type=2&pro_id=p_5cb340a3de420_r715Fu96&source=2&ct_app_id=YXBwOUhlNThiSGw5MDc4