"If you drop a book into the toilet, you can fish it out, dry it off and read that book. But if you drop your Kindle in the toilet, you’re pretty well done." — Stephen King (2014)
And then came the Coronavirus pandemic. Our lives were instantly turned upside down. In many regards, we found ourselves underwater, including access to the books in our libraries. Academic libraries and publishers alike were caught in various states of preparedness to publish and deliver content electronically to the scholarly community. Organizational priorities were re-cast. Relationships with partners were re-calibrated. The sense of community was lifted by the rising pandemic tide.
In what ways have we been required to re-imagine to role of our institutions? How have our priorities changed over the past several years? How have user needs in the community driven change within our organizations? How have the many complexities of making content available been re-examined?
For nearly 2 decades, libraries and publishers have been engaged in an often fraught battle between serving their mission and budgets under siege, driven in large measure by rapidly changing technology and concomitant issues of sustainability. Has the pandemic brought some clarity to ways forward for our community? Join the directors of 2 distinguished scholarly publishers and 2 collection strategies librarians in a discussion of their perspectives and experiences.
