[Eril-l] Temporary e-book access for distance-learning mode during the COVID-19 outbreak.

[Diane Westerfield]

Hi all,



I wanted to broach the subject of campuses closing because of COVID-19 concerns, and how libraries are going to support distance learning.



My institution is a small residential liberal arts college. Our patrons have a preference for print books, at least for reading in depth. We are not really set up for unplanned distance learning, but here we are. https://www.coloradocollege.edu/other/coronavirus/



So my question is, how can we fill the gap for a month or three for books? We do have a lot of ebooks, but I can’t think of anything we have for modern literature/fiction (the only fiction ebooks are in special historical sets like Eighteenth Century Collections Online and Early English Books Online). We’re somewhat light on humanities, compared to all the science and social science e-books we get from Springer and Elsevier. Are there vendors who can serve fiction ebooks in an EZ Proxy/single-sign on environment? Who is good for humanities e-books?



On a side note - we have a few Project Gutenberg titles in our catalog. I’ve just asked our lead cataloger if we can update the MARC records; at least we can have out-of-copyright full text works linked from our catalog. This would flesh out the 1800s and early 1900s literature somewhat. We can also direct patrons to Google Books and Internet Archives.



On another note: There may be an increase in requests for book chapters to be scanned so that faculty can post readings to Canvas. As we are heavily reliant on student workers for Circulation, ILL, and book shelving, there may have to be a reshuffling of library staff/librarians to handle some of this work.



Thanks,

Diane Westerfield, Electronic Resources & Serials Librarian
Colorado College, Tutt Library
diane.westerfield at coloradocollege.edu<mailto:diane.westerfield at coloradocollege.edu>
(719) 389-6661


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.eril-l.org/pipermail/eril-l-eril-l.org/attachments/20200311/bb704db4/attachment.html>