Last updated on 24 June 2020
#blogjune Day 25: In this video, I take some time to reflect upon the opportunity to be or become evidence-based from the COVID19 crisis. I also briefly outline what my library is doing to capture its response and lessons learned during this time.
Transcript
G’day and welcome to this video series of chatting about all things evidence-based Library and Information practice. I am Alisa Howlett, the Coordinator of Evidence-Based Practice at the University of Southern Queensland library.
In this video I want to take some time to briefly reflect upon what’s happening and/or what’s been happening over the last few months – COVID19.
I returned to my work part-time the week after the physical library spaces closed. We were all working from home, which trust me, that was a challenge in itself. But the other challenge was around how do we make the most of this time, of this situation in terms of lessons learned. What do we capture? What about our services and the support that we provide to students and the university do we gather?
I wasn’t aware of any literature at least within EBLIP around what do we collect in a time of a crisis. But that didn’t mean that there wasn’t an opportunity here. And I think most or much of what we already gather routinely in terms of evidence and data is likely to change in the future.
Capturing the library’s response
We decided to capture the library’s response and the story of how we have supported our clients and community. We’ve done this in the form of a timeline to capture the rapid rate of decisions that were made and the service changes that occurred during this time. The internal communications that happened and the adjustments made by staff to continue their work from home, remain connected and feel supported.
A short staff survey was also undertaken to capture their stories and experiences of adjusting to a new normal. Now I’m working on an infographic that aims to present data around the ways and the extent to we, the library has supported the University.
So what will happen with these artefacts?
Well, we can reflect upon the decisions made and when they were made to help inform any potential policies or procedures that may be created later on for crisis situations. These artefacts can be used to communicate with our stakeholders about the role of the library during this time. And the other thing is that we can identify what service changes, experiments or innovations will continue, what won’t continue and what might be investigated further.
COVID19 is a real opportunity to become evidence-based or be evidence based. What story will you capture?
You can also view Day 25 (EBP and COVID19) video here.
Catch up on all the videos here.
