Abstract:
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
with 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
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 despite 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 of virtual library services such as chat reference
and online library classes...