This document discusses the role of libraries during times of crisis. It provides context on the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on libraries, forcing their closure initially and transition to digital services. Public and academic libraries reacted similarly by closing facilities, extending loans, and intensifying virtual services and resources. The document examines lessons from previous economic crises, finding libraries were more utilized though did not fully transition digitally. It argues libraries are not designed for short-term needs but longer-term social challenges like inequality and isolation. While facing disruptive changes, libraries should focus on supporting user needs and processes over preserving past models. Libraries can help palliate future crises by facilitating community adaptation.

1. For what kinds of crisis, libraries
are useful for?
Lluís M. Aglada i de Ferrer
(CSUC)
Eurolis Online Seminar 2020
An online conference held over 3 weeks
Wednesdays 14, 21 and 28 October 2020

2. For what kinds of crisis, libraries
are useful for?
Lluís M. Aglada i de Ferrer
(CSUC)
Eurolis Online Seminar 2020
An online conference held over 3 weeks
Wednesdays 14, 21 and 28 October 2020
Some thoughts and consideration
on crisis and libraries
Lluis Anglada (CSUC)
kindly helped by Lluís Agustí (FIMA-Bcn University) and Ferran Burguillos (Bcn City Libraries)

3. The impact
of the
COVID-19
crisis over
libraries
and their
reaction
1. The
impact of
the
COVID-19
crisis on
libraries
and their
reaction

4. The academic libraries reaction
• Always
• Library staff work from
home
• User attention maintained
by phone
• ILL stopped
• Loans and renewals
automatically extended
• Face-to-face cultural
activities postponed,
• Some times
• Specific communication
plans to disseminate
available e- resources.
• Virtual training intensified
• Web pages, blogs or small
portals with links to e-
content, tutorials and
services
• Online book clubs and
virtual exhibitions still active

5. The public libraries reaction (Barcelona city)
Interview with Ferran Burguillos (Head of Barcelona libraries)
 Stage 1: closing (mid-March)
• Libraries must close by governmental mandate
– At the same time, libraries do activities for vulnerable groups (books for the homeless)
• The conditions for reopening involve important physical changes in libraries
– At the same time, some rules were clearly exaggerated (books were put in quarantines of 30 days )
• Some actions were taken to increase digital content and for facilitating distance access
(digital library cards)
– more licenses, the inclusion of educational material
• Stable groups of users (reeding clubs...) were contacted by phone
 Stage 2: reopening (2nd June)
• Libraries reopen with important restrictions
• different libraries depending on different administrations interpret differently de rules
established by the Health department
• A lot of library staff are categorized as 'group of risk' and they cannot personally go to the
library and libraries don't have enough staff for opening

6. The public libraries reaction (Barcelona city)
Interview with Ferran Burguillos (Head of Barcelona libraries)
 Stage 3: reopening (now)
• Due to the lack of clear common rules for libraries, the different public libraries network
established a board of coordination
– they have not the power to change the rules but they try to interpret them equal
• some services must be reorganized after the 'new normal'
– public computers (internet access) must be booked
– the activities done in libraries require a reservation
– books returned for users must be 48h in quarantine
– ...
 Stage 4: changes for the future (structural, not transitory)
• Deepen the digital transformation of processes, work methods and services of the library
• Increase the digital content and equipment, including technological training
(videoconferences) in library services
• Deepen the relationship with communities in the library's neighborhood, especially with the
most vulnerable

7. Can we learn anything from the last economic crisis?
 José-Antonio Gómez-Hernández (2009)
• Effects on libraries: budgets at risk
• Users behavior will change & libraries will be more
needed
• It’s an opportunity to rethink library services and
adapt libraries to new needs
 Lluís Anglada (2012)
• The economic crisis will represent more competition
between social services for resources. It is a moment
to show and defend the social role of libraries
 Hilario Hernández-Sánchez y Natalia Arroyo-
Vázquez (2014)
• Effects on libraries: budget reduction concentrated in
acquisitions but also affecting staff (less budged for
acquisitions = less appealing libraries)
• Libraries are more used (more library cards, more
visits, more borrowings)
• But the structural changes that could have been
made were not made (more automation and digital
content)

8. Libraries are not good for short-run races
It has been studied and happened as it was predicted (Lisl
Zach & Michelynn McKnight. 2013)
• “In disasters, such as … pandemics … librarians may be
called upon to provide new and modified information
services to users whose information needs have
suddenly changed, at the same time that access to
information resources has dramatically diminished.”
• the types of situations envisioned in many traditional
disaster plans … have focused largely on the
preservation of staff, collections, and the physical plant
itself rather than on the provision of services.
After the last and current crisis, we can conclude that
• when a crisis explodes, more urgent needs than culture
appear
• libraries can help, but they lose their foundational
purpose a little
• it is logical (and probably good), but it is also a moment
to explain that libraries are a very good solution for the
recover

9. 2. Let's talk a bit about crisis
 Definitions of crisis
 Cambrigde dictionary
• a time of great disagreement, confusion, or suffering
 Merriam Webster
• an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is
impending,
 Wikipedia
• any event that is going (or is expected) to lead to an unstable and
dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, community, or whole
society.
 International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
• Disaster = A sudden, calamitous event that seriously disrupts the
functioning of a community or society and causes human, material, and
economic or environmental losses that exceed the community’s or society’s
ability to cope using its own resources.

10. Clayton M. Christensen:
“Disrruptive innovation”
Thomas Kuhn
“Scientific
revolutions”
Great changes are not produced by evolution but by revolution.
Some very important changes are not linear, they are discontinuous,
disruptive

11. Not all crises are the same, neither in depth nor in recovery time
short
medium
long

12. Until the mid-19th-century, libraries were designed to serve some. The great
innovation made with the modern (public) library is that they have been designed
to serve everyone.
At the same time, societies are experiencing big changes (that can be called
crises), that affect libraries: how people gain knowledge and how they relate to
others
3. For what
kind of social
crisis were
public
libraries
created?

13. urbanization
isolation
globalization
information
literacy
literacy
long-life
learning
agricultural
society
industrial
society
informati
onal
society

14. How libraries helped people to
adapt to a live in cities and to
know how to read becomes
important
How libraries are shared space
(or social infrastructure) that
helps to mitigate some urgent
social challenges as inequality
and isolation
How libraries can be
community builders and help
people to improve their lives

15. A friend of mine asked me to help him borrow an uncommon book
4. Are libraries
‘crisis free’ and
can help to
palliate current
and future social
crisis?

16. The big change does not consist of going from print to digital
The big change is moving from ‘info scarcity’ to ‘info abundance’

17. Are libraries ‘crisis free’ and can help to palliate current and future social crisis?
 David W. Lewis
• “… we need to recognize that … what should be about is not
saving the library. Rather, … it should be about providing a
product or service that can help students and faculty to more
effectively, conveniently, and affordably do a job they’ve been
trying to do in their scholarly lives.”
Libraries are experiencing deep
transformative changes
• a sudden, calamitous event that
seriously disrupts the functioning of a
community (= a disaster o crisis)
And quite often the librarian's
reaction is a move to save the library
and this means to preserve it in the
same way as the library was before
the big change

18. Print vs Digital / Scarcity vs Abundancy / Objects vs Processes
 In the printing era,
• Information was scarce and time to look for
and to access was abundant
• (Logically) libraries emphasize collecting
information (objects) rather than saving time to
the user (processes)
• People went to the library to have an
environment rich in information (which was
scarce outside the library)
 In the digital era,
• Time is scarce and information is abundant
• Libraries (have to) shift their attention to the
user and to the processes of how people use
information more than in the information
(objects) itself
• Libraries have to go to the people and embed
their services in their activities and daily lives

19. Books vs People
 The acceleration of the evolution of society will
create new 'long run' crisis. In this context,
adaptation will be needed and libraries can be the
social organizations that escort people in growing
to adapt.
 R. David Lankes (Expect more)
• Stone tablets became scrolls, scrolls became
manuscripts, manuscripts became books, and books
are rapidly becoming apps. The tools that libraries
use to achieve the mission, any mission, will change.
The purpose of using those tools (and new tools)
remains steady over long periods of time. Libraries
should be about knowledge, not tools.

20. To finish let's go back to coronavirus crisis
 The crisis (the change) appears suddenly and their short-term
consequences (economic or health) will always obscure that the
solution is the people growing and adaptation.
• Libraries and librarians’ purpose is helping in this process.
• Do not give up.