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What has 2020 taught us about the information ecosystem?
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What has 2020 taught us about the information ecosystem?
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SPEAKER 1: Hi, everyone. And welcome to the session what has 2020 taught us about the information ecosystem? Thank you for being a part of NISO Plus 2021. This particular session is a little unusual in that rather than having a particular topic that someone proposed to us, we actually went out and sought a series of experts in the field because we wanted to talk about what differences have occurred over the last year as a result of the pandemic and the various types of unrest in the world.
SPEAKER 1: So we sought out a group of people, and we gave them a series of questions, and we asked them to tell us what they thought about those questions. These people were from all different fields in the information ecosystem, from all different parts of the world. We thought it would be interesting to see how different places in different fields were changed over the course of 2020.
SPEAKER 1: So this will be a series of very small presentations. We'll start with Dr. CK Ramaiah from the University of Pondicherry. We'll move on to Dr. Stephanie Dawson with ScienceOpen, Doctor Sandy Hirsh at the San Jose State University, Oya Rieger from Ithaca S+R, Mohamed Ba-Essa from KAUST, Clarissa West-White at Bethune-Cookman University, Peter Simon news bank, and finally, Christopher Chan at Hong Kong Baptist University.
SPEAKER 1: So we have quite a range of places and people. Afterwards many of them will be available in the Zoom session to have a conversation and to talk further about the changes that may have happened in your organization, and to think about what might be permanent moving forward into the future as a result of those changes. So thanks. Enjoy the presentation, and we'll see you in the Zoom rooms.
SPEAKER 1:
C K RAMAIAH: In our organization, people started realizing the Indian culture and its old traditions, started practicing them again. For example, no handshake, using namaskar in its place, and also actually washing legs and hands before getting into the house. Carefulness about the health, lately awareness about health care has gone up considerably in all levels of people. People have actually become more [? extremely ?] [? applied ?] to cooperate with the government, and the local people of course started sharing information about neighbors.
C K RAMAIAH: And the negative side is actually the loneliness and the depression, which we have seen actually on campus, among the people, and particularly the students of course. After going some time of course, we have seen actually some hardship among poor families about the neighborhood, and the neighbors have been helping them. And we managed the period without any problems.
C K RAMAIAH: We had budget cuts in almost all area in our university. However, we survived that with the able administration of our [? late ?] chancellor. We cut many areas, but we were able to spend at least that money in health care aspects of university staff, and fortunately there was no actually big problems, particularly job losses on campus.
C K RAMAIAH: And there were some small issues. The guest faculties we could not pay, because there was no teaching actually. That was the only hiccup. And the expenditure on social activities, basically the conferences, the seminars, meetings and all, were cut down, including the examinations, various functions. The PLT way was they were all actually moved to the online world, and with that there is a lot of savings.
C K RAMAIAH: And most of our activities moved to the IT and [INAUDIBLE] tools, and the movement of this will help actually, moving to the digitization side. And there are no entertainment, meetings, all those cut down and because of that I think we saved the budget considerably.
C K RAMAIAH: Both national and international standards helped the organization in maintaining the health care on campus. As for the Minister of Health directives, Pondicherry University strictly followed the rules and regulations and followed the protocols, health protocols, on campus. We never allowed actually anybody to get into the campus, and particularly the physical distance maintaining, and also on campus the thermal scanning and actually the hands cleaning.
C K RAMAIAH: Our various cleaning aspects are taken into utmost levels. The results? Actually, on campus there was no casualties, and we [? followed ?] actually the system carefully. All the faculty, staff, research scholars and our students actually cooperated so much, and they all followed the Ministry of Health and the WHO norms. Our elected governor, Dr. [? Ebadi, ?] met him, and our team members implemented health care aspects and standards very meticulously, the entire Pondicherry Union Territory, and saved the people from coronavirus thanks to police, hospitals, health care workers, and actually the essential staff who helped during this time to great extent.
C K RAMAIAH: All the students and scholars except foreign students were asked to vacate the hostels, and that helped to a great extent on our campus. Physical contact was brought to minimum extent, and actually we would encourage the virtual meetings, strictly managing the cleanliness on campus and following the government and the religious instructions actually helped us to come out of this pandemic.
C K RAMAIAH: During the time several training programs were conducted, particularly the faculty members, and that helped actually. The meetings helped faculty members to enhance their executive skills, which helped them in doing online teaching at later date. There are several workshops that are actually conducted, and hundreds of webinars were conducted for the benefit of this college, students, and faculty members, and there are programs about the awareness, the part that the university had to come up with several posters, videos, jingles on awareness programs.
C K RAMAIAH: We also conducted an international web photo contest on the post-corona impact, and for that we got actually more than 400 photographs from all over Asia. That is one of the very interesting programs which we have done during that time. Sudden breakdown of coronavirus and lack of awareness created havoc among many people on campus.
C K RAMAIAH: Shortage of daily provisions, medical supplies, created temporary problems in our area. During pandemic, [? councils ?] conducted weekly meetings of deans and our other departments. That helped actually, to meet virtually, all the people. [? Council ?] was used to update the government use regulations and also updated the campus news to all the people.
C K RAMAIAH: That makes people happy. Virtual meetings started during that time, continue till date. Many faculty scholars started publishing all their pending papers, and the maximum number of papers were published during that time. So that is the time actually we had given remote log-in to the library users, and virtual users of library have gone up tremendously, and a lot of downloads.
C K RAMAIAH: If you see the number of downloads during that time, it actually is very high. And that also helped actually the Pondicherry University faculty, and Pondicherry University, its index has gone up during that time. Online meetings helped, actually, many people updating their [? ICP ?] skills, and they are more concerned about the others. And also cooperation between the people is also one of the important aspects one can see.
C K RAMAIAH: Negativity is comparatively reduced. To some extent actually positivity has gone up considerably higher. Overall, it is a lesson to the human beings. A micro-organism was able to control the entire planet.
STEPHANIE DAWSON: The question is, what will be permanent after this pandemic year? My answer, faster science. 2020 saw a global effort to understand a novel virus, and the result was new vaccines and treatments in record time. To share information with their peers faster, many researchers posted their articles as open access preprints on servers like Bio archive, Med archive, Archive and others to speed access to the data and results while the paper underwent peer review.
STEPHANIE DAWSON: The urgency of the situation demanded faster communication and open sharing. The weeks between submitting a manuscript and its publication had a body count. As we slowly get the situation under control, I believe that preprint sharing is here to stay. The overall increase in the usage of preprint servers beyond the topic of COVID-19 suggests that researchers had a positive experience and are sharing their second and third articles as preprints as well.
STEPHANIE DAWSON: I predict that posting a preprint will become the norm in the biomedical sciences, and that inventive publishers will find ways to offer peer review services for this growing community.
SANDY HIRSH: Hi, my name is Sandy Hirsh. Higher education has seen massive shifts in the way that courses are delivered at universities and the ways that faculty and staff work due to the pandemic. After more than a year of delivering mostly online education and university faculty and staff working remotely, my university, San Jose State University, is hoping to return to delivering more face-to-face instruction for fall 2021 and to bring back more university personnel on campus.
SANDY HIRSH: However, I do not think it is likely that our university and higher education in general will revert 100% back to the way it was pre-pandemic. Three major changes in higher education that I think will remain post pandemic are more acceptance for remote work, an increased mix of course modalities, and changed student demographics. First, there will be more acceptance for remote work.
SANDY HIRSH: Prior to the pandemic, there was a great deal of concern in the university about remote work. For example, how do you know that people are actually doing their job? How can you properly supervise them? All university meetings, events, and trainings were held on campus in person. There was no interest in allowing hybrid or online meetings.
SANDY HIRSH: It was a huge adjustment for many university staff and faculty to shift to working in a fully-distributed manner, but now, after a year, many have gotten used to working remotely and some are loving the convenience and flexibility of working from home. Others are missing the camaraderie and in-person interactions and campus routines. There is also a tension between the benefits of remote work in helping to alleviate the significant space challenges on campuses like ours versus the need to have faculty and staff physically on campus.
SANDY HIRSH: That said, I think there will be more openness and interest in allowing remote work going forward. Universities will need to figure out the right balance to ensure how the competing needs of the university can best be supported, but I believe that more remote work will be allowed and will continue. Second, there will be an increased mix of course modalities. Prior to the pandemic, our university offered mostly in-person education, especially at the undergraduate level.
SANDY HIRSH: As a result of the pandemic, everything had to shift to being delivered 100% online almost overnight. This was not only difficult for faculty, but it was also a big adjustment for students. Students were not prepared to learn online, and many do not have home environments that are conducive to online learning. Additionally, not all of the content is best learned online, such as lab classes, dance and music classes, physical education, et cetera.
SANDY HIRSH: Some groups of learners, such as first year undergraduate students, first generation students, and international students, have been found to learn better when the classes are delivered in person versus online. Many students attend a four-year college because they want the on-campus residential experience, which is very hard to replicate in an online environment. That said, many faculty and students have found that online learning works well for them, and they want to continue with online courses.
SANDY HIRSH: Going forward, I think there will be more of a mix of course modalities. Higher education won't necessarily be offered all in-person or all online. At our university, for example, the university's goal is to offer a mix of face-to-face courses, hybrid, high flex courses, and online courses in fall 2021. I believe offering this type of mix will continue for the long term and will be a huge shift in the way that universities deliver education.
SANDY HIRSH: While universities have dabbled in hybrid learning, such as flipped classrooms, and in online education, these modalities have not generally been widely adopted in higher education. I believe that this will change, and that education delivery will be more student centered, offering students more flexibility in how they are able to learn, and will also ensure that the delivery of the content is best aligned with the learning objectives.
SANDY HIRSH: Third, student demographics will be different. Trends. show that enrollment at universities was already predicted to decline prior to the pandemic, and the pandemic has introduced even more enrollment challenges due to economic uncertainty, lack of resources, and health concerns. We are starting to see changes in learner demographics, with more non-traditional students likely to pursue higher education, such as older students, more first generation students, and more lifelong learners who may turn to the university to continue to learn throughout their lives.
SANDY HIRSH: This means that universities will need to provide different types of student supports and resources to help ensure student success, and will also need to consider innovations in learning models such as offering mini credentials badges and short courses, and also need a variety of educational technologies and delivery modes, such as remote learning asynchronous delivery, more use of audio and video and online classes, et cetera.
SANDY HIRSH: This will also require more support within the university for trying out different approaches to best meet student learning needs and a bigger investment in student success initiatives. In sum, the pandemic has forced higher education to try new ways of teaching, learning, and working that probably would not have happened at all, or would have taken a much longer time to happen. The three major changes that I mentioned today, more acceptance of remote work, an increased mix of course modalities, and changing student demographics, are necessary changes for higher education and will have a lasting effect on how higher education functions.
SANDY HIRSH: Hi, my name is Sandy Hirsh, and I want to share with you some of the results from a survey that I conducted between August 24th and September 7th, 2020, which focuses on the pandemic impact and response in higher education. This survey was sent to deans, directors, and program chairs in the Association for Library and Information Science Education, ALISE.
SANDY HIRSH: 31 people responded to the survey, with 81% from institutions in the United States and with small numbers of participants coming from other countries, specifically Canada, Mexico, and France. While this survey focused on graduate programs in library and information science, I believe that the findings from the survey are applicable to higher education institutions generally, however, it should be noted that many library and information science programs already offered online courses and programs pre-pandemic.
SANDY HIRSH: We asked respondents to agree or disagree with the following statement: transitioning to remote learning due to the pandemic will change the way your department will deliver instruction for the long term. 1/3 third weren't sure, and 1/5 agreed with the statement. There was a general sense that the institutions that were not offering some online or hybrid courses will be offering more online courses after the pandemic.
SANDY HIRSH: Those who are already offering online education pointed out that what has changed is offering more or stronger support through the online learning environment. We asked about the impact of COVID-19 on schools and departments and found that there were many implications. Top areas that were decreased due to COVID-19 include the number of international students enrolled, study abroad programs, and the number of course offerings.
SANDY HIRSH: Top areas that were increased due to COVID-19 include student access to support services, and some schools reported increased enrollment. Many schools reported no change in the areas of faculty research activity, student access to faculty hours, and budget allocations. The top areas that respondents said needed to be reconsidered or reconfigured were related to fostering community and engagement, specifically on how to develop student engagement opportunities for children, how to build connectivity and a sense of community among students, how to effectively communicate with faculty and students, and how to encourage collaboration and camaraderie among faculty.
SANDY HIRSH: When asked about what new or creative virtual services have faculty and staff implemented to support and engage and nurture students during the pandemic, the top activities respondents indicated were ensuring continuity of their programs and services and also the use of social media to connect with students.
SANDY HIRSH: While there were definite challenges and setbacks imposed by COVID-19, respondents also reported some positive outcomes, innovations, and changes in their departments and schools, such as focusing on sustained program growth, streamlining their operations, developing a sense of community through virtual social time, establishing more structure for faculty and staff communications and meetings, holding more Zoom meetings after COVID-19 to help offset long commutes for faculty, and providing more online offerings and hybrid courses.
SANDY HIRSH: Our final question was about the long term ramifications that respondents expected COVID-19 would have on their schools and departments. While many indicated they were unsure about the long term ramifications, others noted scarce resources, faculty morale, budget restrictions, less engagement, slow program growth, and more innovative and comprehensive ways to reach and engage with students.
SANDY HIRSH: In sum, respondents indicated that the impact from COVID-19 has not been all bad, although it has certainly resulted in many challenges. Negative outcomes that have resulted from the pandemic include decreased international student enrollment, fewer course offerings, decreased student abroad opportunities, and freezes on hiring part-time and full-time faculty. However, there have also been positive outcomes that have resulted that include continued student access to the support services, program growth, although not for all institutions, and agility and flexibility.
SANDY HIRSH: Some of the most significant challenges reported include budget cuts, faculty morale, student engagement, and concern over scarce resources well into the future. But there are also opportunities that have arisen from the pandemic, such as opportunities to expand online support services, including moving more student services online, increased use of virtual office hours, with faculty, and the use of social media to engage students to build community.
SANDY HIRSH: In sum, the survey shows the agility and resilience in higher education, particularly in library and information science programs and in high schools. Thank you.
OYA RIEGER: Responding to the question what has 2020 taught us about the information system's fragility and resilience, I would like to reflect on preprints, one of my research areas, as an example to demonstrate strengths and weaknesses. A preprint is an early version of a manuscript posted to a repository to facilitate open and broad sharing without any limitations.
OYA RIEGER: COVID-19 has had a major influence on preprints in biomedicine and life sciences. They began to play a dominant role early in the pandemic, as there was great urgency in addressing the public health crisis and speeding research on vaccination and therapeutics. The crisis prompted researchers to start sharing their research at a more preliminary stage.
OYA RIEGER: BioRxiv and [? Puji ?] for prints, and [? both ?] founded in 2013 and dedicated to life sciences, have flourished. MedRxiv, for the health sciences, launched in June 2019. Although the urgency in addressing the pandemic prompted researchers to share their work early, it also raised concerns about this practice of sharing of unvetted research.
OYA RIEGER: Some worry about the increase in noise-to-signal ratio, as there are now multiple versions of papers, sometimes not sufficient version information or reference to version of record. And some journalists began reporting on preprints as they try to identify and report new developments, unfortunately often without contextualizing or making it clear that the work cited is a work in progress.
OYA RIEGER: So we witnessed the development of new policies as BioRxiv and MedRxiv edit cautionary labels to preprints to emphasize that they are preliminary reports of work and they have not been certified by peer review and should be used accordingly. The level of attention that preprints have gotten during the last year has significantly increased awareness about the medium's virtues and risks.
OYA RIEGER: There were numerous discussions and presentations in scientific and publishing forums about how preprints are affecting scholarly communication, and we should expect these important conversations to continue. The community by all means appreciates the benefits of early and free sharing. However, there's also great interest in understanding the associated risk and consequences of disseminating works prior to the peer review process, especially raising questions about the continuing role and value of peer review version of record.
OYA RIEGER: So just a quick example of one information system and its value strengths and questions raised during this pandemic.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: Hello, everyone. My name is Mohamed Ba-Essa. I work at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. I'm glad to be with you at the NISO Plus 2021 event, and I would like to share with you some of our experience and lessons learned dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. So first of all, KAUST is a quite new university, established in 2009 in the East Coast of Saudi Arabia.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: It's actually a small city where we will work and live at the same campus, around 1,000 people from 100 nationalities from around the world. So in 2009 we had the opportunity at the library to establish most of our services online, most of our collections online. 99% of our collections are online, our thesis and dissertation online on digital format.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: So we don't keep any physical record of the documents. So we call ourself an [? on-digital ?] library. So before the pandemic, I believe like many other places and organizations around the world there are a number of exercises that we have been going through, and that was very helpful for us to deal with the pandemic. In 2017 we work in the business continuity plan, where we have identified all the library services and processes, and we then try to identify the critical processes, and then responses to any failures and recovery plan, though only for services.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: So that was very helpful for us. When the pandemic started in early 2020, we updated the documents and make sure it is up to date and it includes all our new services there. Again, as a [? on-digital ?] library with almost all services online, I believe dealing with the pandemic was having less impact on our customers. We follow all the library practices and standards on access to collections, management, and so on.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: So all our resources are available on campus through the network and local network, off campus with single sign-on, choosing Shibboleth, and EZproxy, and VPN, and so on. So our users or our customers did not really have a great impact in accessing the collection. The collection was accessible to them, yet there were some of the services that were provided physically, like physical archive and records management and so forth, learning classes.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: We introduced the virtual learning class in March, and we started using different online platforms to provide our learning services, and that was also a quite successful experience. And on top of that, it's all recorded, so people can refer to it when it is needed. I believe KAUST as a universe or as an organization has a very, very great response to the pandemic and was able to keep most of the functions going, that include research and other services going on.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: Also, which was important and very appreciated, is focusing on the human aspect and well-being, and there was a number of programs introduced in the universities to help with that. One interesting project that we work in 2018 was to develop dashboards for different library services and systems.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: The idea of the dashboard is to monitor the different systems and services and also to give us live data on the status of each of these services. So during the pandemic that was very helpful tool. So we [? identifications ?] and we are able to monitor all our systems and services in real time fashion. And that tool was very helpful to us.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: I think one other area that was positively impacted with the pandemic is an electronic records management and archive. Even though we are a relatively new university, we had a quite big collection of physical records in our archive. And most of those records are going digital [? and ?] coming from the system, but yet they have to be printed and they have to be archived because they carry some important signatures for most of them, which makes them the final record for the archive.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: With the pandemic, the electronic signature was highly used, and I think this will have a very positive impact in our electronic records and archive program. Again, I think COVID was a moment of truth for many of us. We did miss the human interactions, but gladly there wasn't a huge impact for us at KAUST with the pandemic other than the human.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: And I'm going to touch on human interaction, which was greatly missed of course during this pandemic. I hope that was helpful insight, and I'm happy to answer any questions.
CLARISSA WEST-WHITE: I am Clarissa West-White, research librarian and reference instructor at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida. What is working better than you expected in your organization or community during the pandemic, and what is worse? One of our primary concerns centered on students' access to computers and the internet. Many of our students reside in communities and countries that struggle with the digital divide, so the initial shutdown in March 2020 left some students scrambling.
CLARISSA WEST-WHITE: We were able to extend the length of checkout, cancel fees of course for those who left with the library's laptops, but for some this was still not enough. So we pushed information regarding places that offer free Wi-Fi access such as fast food chains, their local libraries, and other entities within their areas. It was soon discovered that the library's supply of laptops could not meet demand, and thus additional laptops were purchased.
CLARISSA WEST-WHITE: Therefore, the library's ability to track students' requests and respond quickly has worked better than expected. Unfortunately, while still attending remotely, students in areas without access to the internet or a dependable transportation system to locations with Wi-Fi, are not experiencing the same type of relief we would like to see. What one thing helped or hindered your organization most when dealing with the pandemic?
CLARISSA WEST-WHITE: As libraries have been digital for decades, the transition from in-person to online and remote reference and support were almost seamless. There were a few bumps. Not all librarians were accustomed to using Zoom and other online media platforms or knowledgeable of their features, like inviting and scheduling meetings, the different account types, and varying privileges.
CLARISSA WEST-WHITE: Librarians also had to transition their in-person research and reference instruction sessions to online. The dynamics of speaking to and engaging with black-and-white etched names and photos of students in varied locations and dress took some getting used to. As an instructor, you could no longer rely on facial expressions and body language to gauge comprehension.
CLARISSA WEST-WHITE: But simply getting the word out to faculty and students about our availability and platforms for hosting workshops and instructional sessions proved the most difficult. For example, I had to learn to adapt to new marketing and graphic creation tools. I had grown accustomed to PowerPoint and Publisher to create flyers, but it could be time consuming. So I attended webinars about free or premium online applications that could help create and disseminate information to stakeholders effectively and efficiently.
CLARISSA WEST-WHITE: These webinars and tools have proved most helpful.
PETER SIMON: What is working better than I expected? I think that the organization became much more focused on priorities, on rising to the occasion and meeting the needs of a much more center stage virtual environment for all of our user groups, particularly in college and university libraries and K-12 schools. And I think just in general in terms of how we have been functioning in terms of planning meetings, et cetera, being in a virtual mode folks have been much more cognizant of having a clear agenda and really honing in on what's most important.
PETER SIMON: So in that regard, I think actually the organization has worked better than in the past. As far as what changes I'd expect to see, it would be, again, as I mentioned before, the ability to focus much more clearly and succinctly on what's most important, but specifically how to meet the needs of all the virtual modes of delivery-- virtual learning environments, virtual services to public libraries, really taking center stage.
PETER SIMON: Someone mentioned that they thought this period was not so much a change as much as it was an accelerant of what's really been there all along, but, as I said, kind of taken center stage as it relates to what's happening in our information world. So I think the one thing that helped our organization most when dealing with the situation in the current environment was that our operations, our meetings, our processes were already geared to much of our workforce being virtual if not all the time, some of the time.
PETER SIMON: So with some upgrades to our capabilities, we were able to hopefully make a successful shift to what's been our way of working for the past 10 or 11 months. I've found that our interaction with users, librarians, other organizations, has worked well in that we've all willingly participated in the virtual mode, meeting, et cetera.
PETER SIMON: And I think having had skill sets already resident around that helped us succeed more than not.
CHRIS CHAN: Hi there. My name's Chris Chan, and I'm the deputy university librarian here at Hong Kong Baptist University library. 2020. Where to begin? What has 2020 taught us? The year was obviously overshadowed by the events of the pandemic around the world, but here in Hong Kong we also faced fallout from the 2019 protests here, which were sparked originally by a proposal that would have allowed the extradition of offenders to jurisdictions where we don't have an extradition treaty, and that includes the mainland of China.
CHRIS CHAN: For various historical reasons, a significant proportion of the population of Hong Kong found that unacceptable, and of course there are many, many, many, many other things that had built up over the years. I won't recap all of the events. I'm sure you're familiar with them. But ultimately, the protest movement led to the imposition of a national security law on Hong Kong by the National People's Congress in Beijing.
CHRIS CHAN: Now speaking purely personally, this brought home the real fragility of the freedom that we have in our information environment. Like every librarian, I've been trained to oppose censorship and ensure free access to information wherever I can, and for a long time those were sort of academic considerations, right? But suddenly I found myself in an environment where books are being banned.
CHRIS CHAN: So these problems that seemed theoretical before have been really brought into sharp relief for me. And as a librarian working in an academic setting, my biggest fear at this point are the potential chilling effects. Self-censorship is a concern. And, again just speaking personally, I found myself thinking twice about what to say in professional settings.
CHRIS CHAN: So my controversial question then to you is, is there anything that could be done to shore up the information ecosystem in such circumstances? I mean I'm a big believer in global cooperation and collaboration of the sort that we're seeing here in NISO Plus, but what happens when these ideals run into, let's say, political realities? What realistically can we do, and how can we help each other?
CHRIS CHAN: So I guess in comparison my experience with the pandemic itself has been more positive. I mean obviously it's been, maybe positive is not the right word to use. It's obviously been hugely disruptive, but I've been extremely impressed by the resilience shown by my colleagues at my institution and others in Hong Kong and around the world in adapting to things like online teaching and learning, and providing easy access to information resources via virtual and electronic means.
CHRIS CHAN: And it's been a driver for progress as well. At our own institution a good example is our impending adoption of OpenAthens as a SAML-based authentication solution. I don't think that would have happened as quickly if not for the pandemic, and we could make the case that, hey, we need to make it as frictionless as possible for our patrons to access our e-resources. So in a certain sense it's been accelerating trends that were already evident: greater use of e-resources, lower circulation of print materials.
CHRIS CHAN: The absence of students on campus has been hard, but I would say that overall the importance of what we do, of what all information professionals do has been underlined for me, and as we go forward I'm trying to focus on these positive developments wherever possible, rather than dwelling on some things that I feel are really out of my control. Thank you for listening, and I hope that it was useful to you Bye.
CHRIS CHAN:
Segment:0 .
SPEAKER 1: Hi, everyone. And welcome to the session what has 2020 taught us about the information ecosystem? Thank you for being a part of NISO Plus 2021. This particular session is a little unusual in that rather than having a particular topic that someone proposed to us, we actually went out and sought a series of experts in the field because we wanted to talk about what differences have occurred over the last year as a result of the pandemic and the various types of unrest in the world.
SPEAKER 1: So we sought out a group of people, and we gave them a series of questions, and we asked them to tell us what they thought about those questions. These people were from all different fields in the information ecosystem, from all different parts of the world. We thought it would be interesting to see how different places in different fields were changed over the course of 2020.
SPEAKER 1: So this will be a series of very small presentations. We'll start with Dr. CK Ramaiah from the University of Pondicherry. We'll move on to Dr. Stephanie Dawson with ScienceOpen, Doctor Sandy Hirsh at the San Jose State University, Oya Rieger from Ithaca S+R, Mohamed Ba-Essa from KAUST, Clarissa West-White at Bethune-Cookman University, Peter Simon news bank, and finally, Christopher Chan at Hong Kong Baptist University.
SPEAKER 1: So we have quite a range of places and people. Afterwards many of them will be available in the Zoom session to have a conversation and to talk further about the changes that may have happened in your organization, and to think about what might be permanent moving forward into the future as a result of those changes. So thanks. Enjoy the presentation, and we'll see you in the Zoom rooms.
SPEAKER 1:
C K RAMAIAH: In our organization, people started realizing the Indian culture and its old traditions, started practicing them again. For example, no handshake, using namaskar in its place, and also actually washing legs and hands before getting into the house. Carefulness about the health, lately awareness about health care has gone up considerably in all levels of people. People have actually become more [? extremely ?] [? applied ?] to cooperate with the government, and the local people of course started sharing information about neighbors.
C K RAMAIAH: And the negative side is actually the loneliness and the depression, which we have seen actually on campus, among the people, and particularly the students of course. After going some time of course, we have seen actually some hardship among poor families about the neighborhood, and the neighbors have been helping them. And we managed the period without any problems.
C K RAMAIAH: We had budget cuts in almost all area in our university. However, we survived that with the able administration of our [? late ?] chancellor. We cut many areas, but we were able to spend at least that money in health care aspects of university staff, and fortunately there was no actually big problems, particularly job losses on campus.
C K RAMAIAH: And there were some small issues. The guest faculties we could not pay, because there was no teaching actually. That was the only hiccup. And the expenditure on social activities, basically the conferences, the seminars, meetings and all, were cut down, including the examinations, various functions. The PLT way was they were all actually moved to the online world, and with that there is a lot of savings.
C K RAMAIAH: And most of our activities moved to the IT and [INAUDIBLE] tools, and the movement of this will help actually, moving to the digitization side. And there are no entertainment, meetings, all those cut down and because of that I think we saved the budget considerably.
C K RAMAIAH: Both national and international standards helped the organization in maintaining the health care on campus. As for the Minister of Health directives, Pondicherry University strictly followed the rules and regulations and followed the protocols, health protocols, on campus. We never allowed actually anybody to get into the campus, and particularly the physical distance maintaining, and also on campus the thermal scanning and actually the hands cleaning.
C K RAMAIAH: Our various cleaning aspects are taken into utmost levels. The results? Actually, on campus there was no casualties, and we [? followed ?] actually the system carefully. All the faculty, staff, research scholars and our students actually cooperated so much, and they all followed the Ministry of Health and the WHO norms. Our elected governor, Dr. [? Ebadi, ?] met him, and our team members implemented health care aspects and standards very meticulously, the entire Pondicherry Union Territory, and saved the people from coronavirus thanks to police, hospitals, health care workers, and actually the essential staff who helped during this time to great extent.
C K RAMAIAH: All the students and scholars except foreign students were asked to vacate the hostels, and that helped to a great extent on our campus. Physical contact was brought to minimum extent, and actually we would encourage the virtual meetings, strictly managing the cleanliness on campus and following the government and the religious instructions actually helped us to come out of this pandemic.
C K RAMAIAH: During the time several training programs were conducted, particularly the faculty members, and that helped actually. The meetings helped faculty members to enhance their executive skills, which helped them in doing online teaching at later date. There are several workshops that are actually conducted, and hundreds of webinars were conducted for the benefit of this college, students, and faculty members, and there are programs about the awareness, the part that the university had to come up with several posters, videos, jingles on awareness programs.
C K RAMAIAH: We also conducted an international web photo contest on the post-corona impact, and for that we got actually more than 400 photographs from all over Asia. That is one of the very interesting programs which we have done during that time. Sudden breakdown of coronavirus and lack of awareness created havoc among many people on campus.
C K RAMAIAH: Shortage of daily provisions, medical supplies, created temporary problems in our area. During pandemic, [? councils ?] conducted weekly meetings of deans and our other departments. That helped actually, to meet virtually, all the people. [? Council ?] was used to update the government use regulations and also updated the campus news to all the people.
C K RAMAIAH: That makes people happy. Virtual meetings started during that time, continue till date. Many faculty scholars started publishing all their pending papers, and the maximum number of papers were published during that time. So that is the time actually we had given remote log-in to the library users, and virtual users of library have gone up tremendously, and a lot of downloads.
C K RAMAIAH: If you see the number of downloads during that time, it actually is very high. And that also helped actually the Pondicherry University faculty, and Pondicherry University, its index has gone up during that time. Online meetings helped, actually, many people updating their [? ICP ?] skills, and they are more concerned about the others. And also cooperation between the people is also one of the important aspects one can see.
C K RAMAIAH: Negativity is comparatively reduced. To some extent actually positivity has gone up considerably higher. Overall, it is a lesson to the human beings. A micro-organism was able to control the entire planet.
STEPHANIE DAWSON: The question is, what will be permanent after this pandemic year? My answer, faster science. 2020 saw a global effort to understand a novel virus, and the result was new vaccines and treatments in record time. To share information with their peers faster, many researchers posted their articles as open access preprints on servers like Bio archive, Med archive, Archive and others to speed access to the data and results while the paper underwent peer review.
STEPHANIE DAWSON: The urgency of the situation demanded faster communication and open sharing. The weeks between submitting a manuscript and its publication had a body count. As we slowly get the situation under control, I believe that preprint sharing is here to stay. The overall increase in the usage of preprint servers beyond the topic of COVID-19 suggests that researchers had a positive experience and are sharing their second and third articles as preprints as well.
STEPHANIE DAWSON: I predict that posting a preprint will become the norm in the biomedical sciences, and that inventive publishers will find ways to offer peer review services for this growing community.
SANDY HIRSH: Hi, my name is Sandy Hirsh. Higher education has seen massive shifts in the way that courses are delivered at universities and the ways that faculty and staff work due to the pandemic. After more than a year of delivering mostly online education and university faculty and staff working remotely, my university, San Jose State University, is hoping to return to delivering more face-to-face instruction for fall 2021 and to bring back more university personnel on campus.
SANDY HIRSH: However, I do not think it is likely that our university and higher education in general will revert 100% back to the way it was pre-pandemic. Three major changes in higher education that I think will remain post pandemic are more acceptance for remote work, an increased mix of course modalities, and changed student demographics. First, there will be more acceptance for remote work.
SANDY HIRSH: Prior to the pandemic, there was a great deal of concern in the university about remote work. For example, how do you know that people are actually doing their job? How can you properly supervise them? All university meetings, events, and trainings were held on campus in person. There was no interest in allowing hybrid or online meetings.
SANDY HIRSH: It was a huge adjustment for many university staff and faculty to shift to working in a fully-distributed manner, but now, after a year, many have gotten used to working remotely and some are loving the convenience and flexibility of working from home. Others are missing the camaraderie and in-person interactions and campus routines. There is also a tension between the benefits of remote work in helping to alleviate the significant space challenges on campuses like ours versus the need to have faculty and staff physically on campus.
SANDY HIRSH: That said, I think there will be more openness and interest in allowing remote work going forward. Universities will need to figure out the right balance to ensure how the competing needs of the university can best be supported, but I believe that more remote work will be allowed and will continue. Second, there will be an increased mix of course modalities. Prior to the pandemic, our university offered mostly in-person education, especially at the undergraduate level.
SANDY HIRSH: As a result of the pandemic, everything had to shift to being delivered 100% online almost overnight. This was not only difficult for faculty, but it was also a big adjustment for students. Students were not prepared to learn online, and many do not have home environments that are conducive to online learning. Additionally, not all of the content is best learned online, such as lab classes, dance and music classes, physical education, et cetera.
SANDY HIRSH: Some groups of learners, such as first year undergraduate students, first generation students, and international students, have been found to learn better when the classes are delivered in person versus online. Many students attend a four-year college because they want the on-campus residential experience, which is very hard to replicate in an online environment. That said, many faculty and students have found that online learning works well for them, and they want to continue with online courses.
SANDY HIRSH: Going forward, I think there will be more of a mix of course modalities. Higher education won't necessarily be offered all in-person or all online. At our university, for example, the university's goal is to offer a mix of face-to-face courses, hybrid, high flex courses, and online courses in fall 2021. I believe offering this type of mix will continue for the long term and will be a huge shift in the way that universities deliver education.
SANDY HIRSH: While universities have dabbled in hybrid learning, such as flipped classrooms, and in online education, these modalities have not generally been widely adopted in higher education. I believe that this will change, and that education delivery will be more student centered, offering students more flexibility in how they are able to learn, and will also ensure that the delivery of the content is best aligned with the learning objectives.
SANDY HIRSH: Third, student demographics will be different. Trends. show that enrollment at universities was already predicted to decline prior to the pandemic, and the pandemic has introduced even more enrollment challenges due to economic uncertainty, lack of resources, and health concerns. We are starting to see changes in learner demographics, with more non-traditional students likely to pursue higher education, such as older students, more first generation students, and more lifelong learners who may turn to the university to continue to learn throughout their lives.
SANDY HIRSH: This means that universities will need to provide different types of student supports and resources to help ensure student success, and will also need to consider innovations in learning models such as offering mini credentials badges and short courses, and also need a variety of educational technologies and delivery modes, such as remote learning asynchronous delivery, more use of audio and video and online classes, et cetera.
SANDY HIRSH: This will also require more support within the university for trying out different approaches to best meet student learning needs and a bigger investment in student success initiatives. In sum, the pandemic has forced higher education to try new ways of teaching, learning, and working that probably would not have happened at all, or would have taken a much longer time to happen. The three major changes that I mentioned today, more acceptance of remote work, an increased mix of course modalities, and changing student demographics, are necessary changes for higher education and will have a lasting effect on how higher education functions.
SANDY HIRSH: Hi, my name is Sandy Hirsh, and I want to share with you some of the results from a survey that I conducted between August 24th and September 7th, 2020, which focuses on the pandemic impact and response in higher education. This survey was sent to deans, directors, and program chairs in the Association for Library and Information Science Education, ALISE.
SANDY HIRSH: 31 people responded to the survey, with 81% from institutions in the United States and with small numbers of participants coming from other countries, specifically Canada, Mexico, and France. While this survey focused on graduate programs in library and information science, I believe that the findings from the survey are applicable to higher education institutions generally, however, it should be noted that many library and information science programs already offered online courses and programs pre-pandemic.
SANDY HIRSH: We asked respondents to agree or disagree with the following statement: transitioning to remote learning due to the pandemic will change the way your department will deliver instruction for the long term. 1/3 third weren't sure, and 1/5 agreed with the statement. There was a general sense that the institutions that were not offering some online or hybrid courses will be offering more online courses after the pandemic.
SANDY HIRSH: Those who are already offering online education pointed out that what has changed is offering more or stronger support through the online learning environment. We asked about the impact of COVID-19 on schools and departments and found that there were many implications. Top areas that were decreased due to COVID-19 include the number of international students enrolled, study abroad programs, and the number of course offerings.
SANDY HIRSH: Top areas that were increased due to COVID-19 include student access to support services, and some schools reported increased enrollment. Many schools reported no change in the areas of faculty research activity, student access to faculty hours, and budget allocations. The top areas that respondents said needed to be reconsidered or reconfigured were related to fostering community and engagement, specifically on how to develop student engagement opportunities for children, how to build connectivity and a sense of community among students, how to effectively communicate with faculty and students, and how to encourage collaboration and camaraderie among faculty.
SANDY HIRSH: When asked about what new or creative virtual services have faculty and staff implemented to support and engage and nurture students during the pandemic, the top activities respondents indicated were ensuring continuity of their programs and services and also the use of social media to connect with students.
SANDY HIRSH: While there were definite challenges and setbacks imposed by COVID-19, respondents also reported some positive outcomes, innovations, and changes in their departments and schools, such as focusing on sustained program growth, streamlining their operations, developing a sense of community through virtual social time, establishing more structure for faculty and staff communications and meetings, holding more Zoom meetings after COVID-19 to help offset long commutes for faculty, and providing more online offerings and hybrid courses.
SANDY HIRSH: Our final question was about the long term ramifications that respondents expected COVID-19 would have on their schools and departments. While many indicated they were unsure about the long term ramifications, others noted scarce resources, faculty morale, budget restrictions, less engagement, slow program growth, and more innovative and comprehensive ways to reach and engage with students.
SANDY HIRSH: In sum, respondents indicated that the impact from COVID-19 has not been all bad, although it has certainly resulted in many challenges. Negative outcomes that have resulted from the pandemic include decreased international student enrollment, fewer course offerings, decreased student abroad opportunities, and freezes on hiring part-time and full-time faculty. However, there have also been positive outcomes that have resulted that include continued student access to the support services, program growth, although not for all institutions, and agility and flexibility.
SANDY HIRSH: Some of the most significant challenges reported include budget cuts, faculty morale, student engagement, and concern over scarce resources well into the future. But there are also opportunities that have arisen from the pandemic, such as opportunities to expand online support services, including moving more student services online, increased use of virtual office hours, with faculty, and the use of social media to engage students to build community.
SANDY HIRSH: In sum, the survey shows the agility and resilience in higher education, particularly in library and information science programs and in high schools. Thank you.
OYA RIEGER: Responding to the question what has 2020 taught us about the information system's fragility and resilience, I would like to reflect on preprints, one of my research areas, as an example to demonstrate strengths and weaknesses. A preprint is an early version of a manuscript posted to a repository to facilitate open and broad sharing without any limitations.
OYA RIEGER: COVID-19 has had a major influence on preprints in biomedicine and life sciences. They began to play a dominant role early in the pandemic, as there was great urgency in addressing the public health crisis and speeding research on vaccination and therapeutics. The crisis prompted researchers to start sharing their research at a more preliminary stage.
OYA RIEGER: BioRxiv and [? Puji ?] for prints, and [? both ?] founded in 2013 and dedicated to life sciences, have flourished. MedRxiv, for the health sciences, launched in June 2019. Although the urgency in addressing the pandemic prompted researchers to share their work early, it also raised concerns about this practice of sharing of unvetted research.
OYA RIEGER: Some worry about the increase in noise-to-signal ratio, as there are now multiple versions of papers, sometimes not sufficient version information or reference to version of record. And some journalists began reporting on preprints as they try to identify and report new developments, unfortunately often without contextualizing or making it clear that the work cited is a work in progress.
OYA RIEGER: So we witnessed the development of new policies as BioRxiv and MedRxiv edit cautionary labels to preprints to emphasize that they are preliminary reports of work and they have not been certified by peer review and should be used accordingly. The level of attention that preprints have gotten during the last year has significantly increased awareness about the medium's virtues and risks.
OYA RIEGER: There were numerous discussions and presentations in scientific and publishing forums about how preprints are affecting scholarly communication, and we should expect these important conversations to continue. The community by all means appreciates the benefits of early and free sharing. However, there's also great interest in understanding the associated risk and consequences of disseminating works prior to the peer review process, especially raising questions about the continuing role and value of peer review version of record.
OYA RIEGER: So just a quick example of one information system and its value strengths and questions raised during this pandemic.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: Hello, everyone. My name is Mohamed Ba-Essa. I work at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. I'm glad to be with you at the NISO Plus 2021 event, and I would like to share with you some of our experience and lessons learned dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. So first of all, KAUST is a quite new university, established in 2009 in the East Coast of Saudi Arabia.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: It's actually a small city where we will work and live at the same campus, around 1,000 people from 100 nationalities from around the world. So in 2009 we had the opportunity at the library to establish most of our services online, most of our collections online. 99% of our collections are online, our thesis and dissertation online on digital format.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: So we don't keep any physical record of the documents. So we call ourself an [? on-digital ?] library. So before the pandemic, I believe like many other places and organizations around the world there are a number of exercises that we have been going through, and that was very helpful for us to deal with the pandemic. In 2017 we work in the business continuity plan, where we have identified all the library services and processes, and we then try to identify the critical processes, and then responses to any failures and recovery plan, though only for services.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: So that was very helpful for us. When the pandemic started in early 2020, we updated the documents and make sure it is up to date and it includes all our new services there. Again, as a [? on-digital ?] library with almost all services online, I believe dealing with the pandemic was having less impact on our customers. We follow all the library practices and standards on access to collections, management, and so on.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: So all our resources are available on campus through the network and local network, off campus with single sign-on, choosing Shibboleth, and EZproxy, and VPN, and so on. So our users or our customers did not really have a great impact in accessing the collection. The collection was accessible to them, yet there were some of the services that were provided physically, like physical archive and records management and so forth, learning classes.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: We introduced the virtual learning class in March, and we started using different online platforms to provide our learning services, and that was also a quite successful experience. And on top of that, it's all recorded, so people can refer to it when it is needed. I believe KAUST as a universe or as an organization has a very, very great response to the pandemic and was able to keep most of the functions going, that include research and other services going on.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: Also, which was important and very appreciated, is focusing on the human aspect and well-being, and there was a number of programs introduced in the universities to help with that. One interesting project that we work in 2018 was to develop dashboards for different library services and systems.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: The idea of the dashboard is to monitor the different systems and services and also to give us live data on the status of each of these services. So during the pandemic that was very helpful tool. So we [? identifications ?] and we are able to monitor all our systems and services in real time fashion. And that tool was very helpful to us.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: I think one other area that was positively impacted with the pandemic is an electronic records management and archive. Even though we are a relatively new university, we had a quite big collection of physical records in our archive. And most of those records are going digital [? and ?] coming from the system, but yet they have to be printed and they have to be archived because they carry some important signatures for most of them, which makes them the final record for the archive.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: With the pandemic, the electronic signature was highly used, and I think this will have a very positive impact in our electronic records and archive program. Again, I think COVID was a moment of truth for many of us. We did miss the human interactions, but gladly there wasn't a huge impact for us at KAUST with the pandemic other than the human.
MOHAMED BA-ESSA: And I'm going to touch on human interaction, which was greatly missed of course during this pandemic. I hope that was helpful insight, and I'm happy to answer any questions.
CLARISSA WEST-WHITE: I am Clarissa West-White, research librarian and reference instructor at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida. What is working better than you expected in your organization or community during the pandemic, and what is worse? One of our primary concerns centered on students' access to computers and the internet. Many of our students reside in communities and countries that struggle with the digital divide, so the initial shutdown in March 2020 left some students scrambling.
CLARISSA WEST-WHITE: We were able to extend the length of checkout, cancel fees of course for those who left with the library's laptops, but for some this was still not enough. So we pushed information regarding places that offer free Wi-Fi access such as fast food chains, their local libraries, and other entities within their areas. It was soon discovered that the library's supply of laptops could not meet demand, and thus additional laptops were purchased.
CLARISSA WEST-WHITE: Therefore, the library's ability to track students' requests and respond quickly has worked better than expected. Unfortunately, while still attending remotely, students in areas without access to the internet or a dependable transportation system to locations with Wi-Fi, are not experiencing the same type of relief we would like to see. What one thing helped or hindered your organization most when dealing with the pandemic?
CLARISSA WEST-WHITE: As libraries have been digital for decades, the transition from in-person to online and remote reference and support were almost seamless. There were a few bumps. Not all librarians were accustomed to using Zoom and other online media platforms or knowledgeable of their features, like inviting and scheduling meetings, the different account types, and varying privileges.
CLARISSA WEST-WHITE: Librarians also had to transition their in-person research and reference instruction sessions to online. The dynamics of speaking to and engaging with black-and-white etched names and photos of students in varied locations and dress took some getting used to. As an instructor, you could no longer rely on facial expressions and body language to gauge comprehension.
CLARISSA WEST-WHITE: But simply getting the word out to faculty and students about our availability and platforms for hosting workshops and instructional sessions proved the most difficult. For example, I had to learn to adapt to new marketing and graphic creation tools. I had grown accustomed to PowerPoint and Publisher to create flyers, but it could be time consuming. So I attended webinars about free or premium online applications that could help create and disseminate information to stakeholders effectively and efficiently.
CLARISSA WEST-WHITE: These webinars and tools have proved most helpful.
PETER SIMON: What is working better than I expected? I think that the organization became much more focused on priorities, on rising to the occasion and meeting the needs of a much more center stage virtual environment for all of our user groups, particularly in college and university libraries and K-12 schools. And I think just in general in terms of how we have been functioning in terms of planning meetings, et cetera, being in a virtual mode folks have been much more cognizant of having a clear agenda and really honing in on what's most important.
PETER SIMON: So in that regard, I think actually the organization has worked better than in the past. As far as what changes I'd expect to see, it would be, again, as I mentioned before, the ability to focus much more clearly and succinctly on what's most important, but specifically how to meet the needs of all the virtual modes of delivery-- virtual learning environments, virtual services to public libraries, really taking center stage.
PETER SIMON: Someone mentioned that they thought this period was not so much a change as much as it was an accelerant of what's really been there all along, but, as I said, kind of taken center stage as it relates to what's happening in our information world. So I think the one thing that helped our organization most when dealing with the situation in the current environment was that our operations, our meetings, our processes were already geared to much of our workforce being virtual if not all the time, some of the time.
PETER SIMON: So with some upgrades to our capabilities, we were able to hopefully make a successful shift to what's been our way of working for the past 10 or 11 months. I've found that our interaction with users, librarians, other organizations, has worked well in that we've all willingly participated in the virtual mode, meeting, et cetera.
PETER SIMON: And I think having had skill sets already resident around that helped us succeed more than not.
CHRIS CHAN: Hi there. My name's Chris Chan, and I'm the deputy university librarian here at Hong Kong Baptist University library. 2020. Where to begin? What has 2020 taught us? The year was obviously overshadowed by the events of the pandemic around the world, but here in Hong Kong we also faced fallout from the 2019 protests here, which were sparked originally by a proposal that would have allowed the extradition of offenders to jurisdictions where we don't have an extradition treaty, and that includes the mainland of China.
CHRIS CHAN: For various historical reasons, a significant proportion of the population of Hong Kong found that unacceptable, and of course there are many, many, many, many other things that had built up over the years. I won't recap all of the events. I'm sure you're familiar with them. But ultimately, the protest movement led to the imposition of a national security law on Hong Kong by the National People's Congress in Beijing.
CHRIS CHAN: Now speaking purely personally, this brought home the real fragility of the freedom that we have in our information environment. Like every librarian, I've been trained to oppose censorship and ensure free access to information wherever I can, and for a long time those were sort of academic considerations, right? But suddenly I found myself in an environment where books are being banned.
CHRIS CHAN: So these problems that seemed theoretical before have been really brought into sharp relief for me. And as a librarian working in an academic setting, my biggest fear at this point are the potential chilling effects. Self-censorship is a concern. And, again just speaking personally, I found myself thinking twice about what to say in professional settings.
CHRIS CHAN: So my controversial question then to you is, is there anything that could be done to shore up the information ecosystem in such circumstances? I mean I'm a big believer in global cooperation and collaboration of the sort that we're seeing here in NISO Plus, but what happens when these ideals run into, let's say, political realities? What realistically can we do, and how can we help each other?
CHRIS CHAN: So I guess in comparison my experience with the pandemic itself has been more positive. I mean obviously it's been, maybe positive is not the right word to use. It's obviously been hugely disruptive, but I've been extremely impressed by the resilience shown by my colleagues at my institution and others in Hong Kong and around the world in adapting to things like online teaching and learning, and providing easy access to information resources via virtual and electronic means.
CHRIS CHAN: And it's been a driver for progress as well. At our own institution a good example is our impending adoption of OpenAthens as a SAML-based authentication solution. I don't think that would have happened as quickly if not for the pandemic, and we could make the case that, hey, we need to make it as frictionless as possible for our patrons to access our e-resources. So in a certain sense it's been accelerating trends that were already evident: greater use of e-resources, lower circulation of print materials.
CHRIS CHAN: The absence of students on campus has been hard, but I would say that overall the importance of what we do, of what all information professionals do has been underlined for me, and as we go forward I'm trying to focus on these positive developments wherever possible, rather than dwelling on some things that I feel are really out of my control. Thank you for listening, and I hope that it was useful to you Bye.
CHRIS CHAN:
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