Academic libraries' leaders' decision-making during the COVID-19 crisis

Abstract

During the COVID-19 crisis, leaders of academic libraries had to make various decisions to retain library relevance and maintain essential services. The COVID-19 crisis raised the question of libraries' value to their universities more than ever. Libraries were facing financial difficulties but also operational challenges due to the services built around physical libraries. This paper uses a mixed methods approach to investigate academic library leaders' decision-making during the first year of the COVID-19 crisis. It combines quantitative and qualitative data from previous studies with primary data collected by the author to determine what kind of decisions university library leaders faced during the crisis and why. These studies show that leaders were concerned about the following main challenges: lack of access to physical services and collections, the safety of staff and patrons, new ways of working, and the library's role during the crisis. The results show that library leaders made decisions in smaller groups or some cases, individually due to the lack of time or information. While there have been numerous studies on libraries' response to the COVID-19 crisis in the past three years, this paper focuses mainly on academic library leaders and their decision-making to solve the crisis for their libraries.