In early March 2020, COVID-19 blindsided academic institutions all over the world. With little time to plan, we suspended our library facilities for the safety of our users and employees and moved to remote services only. Due dates for all outstanding printed material were extended indefinitely and overdue fines waived.
Thankfully, our electronic resources, research tools, off-campus access service and website have served us well during this transition. For print-only materials or library holdings, we created two new services for our users:
Drive-thru Service : where USEK members can request any book online via the Library Catalog and pick it up from the University’s main gate.
Chapter Scanning Service : As the US Fair Use & Emergency Remote Teaching and Research copyright law does not apply in the context of the Lebanese copyright law, we created the Scanning Chapter Service for our students, scanning chapters or sections of material and sending them to the user via email or Article Exchange.
Within weeks of closure, the Library managed to roll out Remote Research Help Services including WhatsApp calls, online chat with extended hours, online research consultations (one-on-one appointments), online training sessions (RefWorks, APA, Electronic Resources access, etc.), e-conferences through Microsoft Teams, etc. and research webinars organized by database providers.
Recognizing the need to stay connected to our users, our reference librarians have been coming up with daily tricks and tips, handouts, and tutorials for the community, posting them on social media and sending them by email. They have produced research guides to provide targeted information on specific topics and tools to help users in their research process. They also created a new webpage on the library website for a list of free Covid-19 library resources.
Our Document Delivery Service has been an added value during this period. It allows us to order articles and chapters that are not available in the library collection through our partners in Lebanon and abroad at zero cost. This service is the result of USEK Library efforts to facilitate the development of collaborations with national and international consortia and organizations.
The USEK Library was the first Academic Library in Lebanon to resume its activities on campus in a phased manner with effect from May 2020. It has implemented robust safety measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 on its premises. All measures taken for the phased activity were based on the WHO recommendations and the "COVID-19 and the Global Library Field" published by IFLA and were announced to users through the following libguide: https://libguides.usek.edu.lb/usek-library-lockdown-exit-strategy/lockdown-exit-strategy
USEK Library Roadmap
As it is too early to predict the end of COVID-19, we have drawn a strategic roadmap to allow us to continue our library services under the “new normal” and explore all the opportunities and possibilities for developing even better services for our users.
We are starting with the following:
• Moodle Learning System
• Creating additional subject research guides
• Creating a YouTube channel for Library orientation sessions, workshops, training, and tutorials
• E-course reserve, etc.
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