Public Libraries’ Novel Response to a Novel Virus ; The Atlantic, March 31, 2020

Deborah Fallows, The Atlantic; Public Libraries’ Novel Response to a Novel Virus

[Kip Currier: The University of Pittsburgh's Master of Library and Information Science graduate degree program will launch for the 2020 Summer Term a brand new required course  -- The Information Professional in the Community -- epitomized by this article demonstrating the vital roles that information professionals exercise in a diverse array of analog and digital communities during challenging times, like the Covid-19 pandemic.]

"America’s public libraries have led the ranks of “second responders,” stepping up for their communities in times of natural or manmade disasters, like hurricanes, floods, shootings, fires, and big downturns in individual lives.

Throughout all these events, libraries have stayed open, filling in for the kids when their schools closed; offering therapeutic sessions in art or conversation or writing after losses of life; bringing in nurses or social workers when services were unavailable to people; and hiring life-counselors for the homeless, whom they offer shelter and safety during the day.

Today, interventions like those have a ring of simpler days. But libraries have learned from their experience and attention to these previous, pre-pandemic efforts. They are pivoting quickly to new ways of offering services to the public—the core of their mission. When libraries closed their doors abruptly, they immediately opened their digital communications, collaborations, and creative activity to reach their public in ways as novel as the virus that forced them into it.

You can be sure that this is just the beginning. Today libraries are already acting and improvising. Later, they’ll be figuring out what the experience means to their future operations and their role in American communities."