Once it became clear that the two-week quarantine was going to extend just a bit longer than originally imagined, Circulation staff at Davis and Armstrong Libraries realized that they needed to come up with a plan to keep offering library services to patrons. We implemented a paging system by which patrons could request the books they wanted via the online catalog. Circulation staff would pull the books from the shelves, check them out, pack them in brown paper bags to comply with library privacy laws (library patron records are confidential by federal law) and place them in the library vestibule for easy pickup.
Interlibrary Loan staff also continued offering their services, along with quickly implementing from scratch an entirely new book-scanning service to scan portions of books from our own collection for remote patrons. Occasionally, staff would meet cars for a drop-off on Storrs Avenue or even make a delivery to a doorstep. Course reserves moved entirely online, with many e-books being purchased and many of our own books being scanned and placed on Electronic Reserve. Returned books spent seven days in a special quarantine room, because, at the time, we did not know how transmissible (or not) the virus was on surfaces.
When the Library reopened to patrons in the fall of 2020, staff roped off all of the book stacks in order to ensure that only library staff would be handling books and to minimize potential patron congestion in the stacks. We continued to offer the paging services and did our best to keep patrons in the library physically distanced from one another and masked. Also at this time, the Helpdesk did not have staff in the building, so a large number of technical questions were brought to the circulation desk. Our small contingent of on-site staff stepped up and helped ensure that the library kept running in unprecedented times.
The library is now functioning essentially as it was pre-Covid; the stacks are open, equipment is circulating, books are no longer being paged. Masking and distancing restrictions are still in place, and community members are still not allowed into the building, but we are hopeful that these remaining restrictions will soon be a thing of the past.
Daniel Frostman is a Circulation Services Manager.
