COVID-19 Is Forever Changing How Students Experience Libraries

 COVID-19 is forever changing how students experience libraries . Retrieved 2020, from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-11-19-covid-19-is-forever-changing-how-students-experience-libraries

This article takes a look at how covid-19 has changed school libraries. While librarian’s duties have not changed much, instead of allowing students to look at shelves and pick new books that way and  converse about them, they have to do it all virtually.. Many school libraries are currently closed. The East Baton Rouge Parish School System (EBRPSS) had previously aimed to have only 10% of their budget designated to online resources, but of course with covid-19 online resources are seen as being more beneficial,.  EBRPSS library director Susan Gauthier said that it has permanently changed how she sees collection development, saying she doesn’t want to be in a situation where she panics about all students having access.

One interesting thing to note was that Gauthier observed that it was high school students who had the most resistance to using e-books, but also thought that was due to the system’s priority of purchasing books that they can keep in perpetuity vs ones where the license expires. It is often the popular new titles that have those restrictions, vs older books with expired copyrights. For example, access would be lost to The Hate U Give after 26 borrows. Many places only license out books for 1-3 years so school districts have to continually repurchase items. This is a struggle between what students are interested in reading vs what libraries want to use their budgets for, and not a problem faced with physical books where people have that book until it falls apart. Another problem with the 1-3 year license is that if it's based on curriculum, there is only a short amount of time during the year that students need access to that book. These are challenges that are unique to the digital collections, and something that libraries and e-book sellers are still working out. 

The article notes that it is still a work in progress, and that there are some things that have changed, such as devoting time to Makerspace. Even so, Tampa school librarian Diana Rendina is hoping to add makerspace to the virtual curriculum in the future. Some schools are also still trying to give physical books and figure out how to make that work. 

This is a good article to read when wanting to see how covid-19 has changed school  libraries, how librarians think, and the use of digital books. In some ways they are useful because students can access them at any times, but there are still many unique legal challenges with them. It is also good to think about what to improve for future programs, such as how to incorporate makerspace and activities. The article mentions how useful Zoom has been, so incorporating Zoom workshops would be a good idea. It would be good to have a follow up article updating how these libraries have further adapted to digital spaces as the pandemic continues, and how much of a pivot to e-books there are as a result.