Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine changes in services offered by academic libraries belonging to the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic during the 2020–2021 academic year. The study reports on aggregate safety precautions libraries took, based on a corpus of public-facing policies from 112 institutions, but also provides insight into whether political affiliation, library expenditures, and public or private institution status had any bearing on library safety precautions. Findings of interest include (1) library expenditures and public or private institutional status were unrelated to the extent of precautions libraries took to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and (2) academic libraries in states with Republican governors were significantly more likely to employ fewer COVID-19 safety precautions than academic libraries in states with Democratic governors. The article concludes with a discussion of the partisan response to the COVID-19 crisis and provides recommendations for libraries based on the findings.

摘要

本研究的目的是检查属于研究图书馆协会 (ARL) 的学术图书馆在 2020-2021 学年为应对 COVID-19 大流行而提供的服务的变化。该研究报告了图书馆采取的总体安全预防措施，基于来自 112 家机构的面向公众的政策，但也提供了有关政治派别、图书馆支出以及公共或私人机构地位是否与图书馆安全预防措施有关的见解。感兴趣的发现包括 (1) 图书馆支出和公共或私人机构地位与图书馆为防止 COVID-19 传播所采取的预防措施的程度无关，以及 (2) 有共和党州长的州的学术图书馆更有可能雇用更少的人COVID-19 安全预防措施比有民主党州长的州的学术图书馆要好。文章最后讨论了党派对 COVID-19 危机的反应，并根据调查结果为图书馆提供了建议。