Theological Libraries during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Early Findings from an Ongoing Study

Introduction

The onset of the still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic prompted many changes in how institutions function, both in terms of short-term strategies and long-term planning. Our research team aims to understand better the pandemic’s institutional and individual impacts on the theological/religious studies library community. As part of this research, we sent surveys to deans and library directors responsible for managing theological, seminary, and religious studies libraries in late Spring 2020. We also surveyed librarians working in non-administrative roles, and plan to continue collecting information about pandemic-related practices and outlooks during the second half of the year. While we plan to publish a peer-reviewed report following the completion of data collection, we feel that a brief summary of findings from the Spring surveys would be both appropriate and timely.

The Deans and Directors survey was sent to 265 deans or directors of ATS accredited libraries and it was distributed to the 190 members of the listserv for library administrators. Fifty-eight respondents completed the survey. The Librarians survey was sent to the ATLANTIS Listserv, which consisted of about 595 subscribers at the time, and had a 4.4% response rate, with 26 respondents completing the survey. ATLANTIS is open to all involved or interested in theological librarianship and is not an official agency of Atla.

In this report, we will describe several quantitative findings from the survey of deans and directors. Due to the low response rate to the survey of librarians and library staff, we do not plan to publish quantitative summary data from that survey. However, both surveys yielded interesting qualitative insights describing individual experiences during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. We will also describe plans to build on this initial research to understand how pandemic response strategies have changed in the Fall 2020 semester.

Survey Design and Preliminary Findings

The initial surveys were designed to include items that would provide qualitative and quantitative information related to the experience of dealing with the pandemic at a theological library. These included quantitative scale and checkbox response items as well as open-ended items.

Of the respondents to the Deans and Directors survey, 28 were administrators for libraries serving a college or university, while 30 were administrators for libraries serving stand-alone seminaries. All but one of the respondents’ libraries are institutional members of Atla. Of the 28 college and university libraries, a small majority of 15 (54%) served small institutions with enrollments of less than 1,000, while 13 (46%) served institutions with enrollments greater than 1,000. All but 28 of 30 (93%) of stand-alone seminary libraries served institutions of 1,000 enrollees or less. Most respondents represented institutions affiliated with Christian traditions. The distribution of responses across these categorical descriptors is broadly similar to their distribution across Atla institutional members. The distribution of institutional faith affiliations across responses is shown below in Table 1.

Table 1. Religious Affiliations of Survey Respondents’ Institutions for “Deans and Directors” survey respondents.

To gain a sense of broad trends in library pandemic response strategies, the Deans and Directors survey included two checkbox items asking respondents to report whether their libraries experienced one or more of several potential consequences of the pandemic.

All respondents reported that their institutions had moved courses online and that at least some faculty or staff were working from home. However, while most respondents reported that their in-person services and physical building access had been paused, this was not the case for all respondents. While a broad movement to remote work and remote instruction was present, different institutions had unique experiences explored more in follow-up interviews. 

A small but notable minority of respondents reported financial concerns and staffing changes in the early stages of the pandemic. Thirteen respondents reported that their library funding had been decreased, often concurrently with the suspension of library services. Five respondents reported layoffs of library staff, and an additional four respondents reported staff furloughs, with one respondent reporting both layoffs and furloughs within their library. Indications of institutional financial stress were also present in several open-ended responses, some of which are highlighted in the discussion of open responses below. Twenty-nine (50%) respondents also mentioned that hiring practices had changed as a result of the pandemic, with 20 reporting a partial or total hiring freeze. 

Thirteen respondents reported that their library funding had been decreased, often concurrently with the suspension of library services.

Respondents to the Deans and Directors survey were also asked to rate the degree of confidence that they had in information related to the pandemic, and their confidence in the institutional decision-making process at their libraries and institutions. These scores were generally positive, with a mean average of 7.28 out of 10 for “How informed have you felt when making decisions regarding services and staffing during the COVID-19 pandemic?” and 7.40 for “How would you rate your confidence in the decisions made by yourself or other administrators in your institution regarding services and staffing during the COVID-19 pandemic?” The minimum score for the question of information was 3 out of 10, while the minimum score for confidence in decision-making was 1, suggesting a higher degree of variability with regard to confidence in decisions relative to information. The items related to information and decision-making were correlated, but not perfectly so (Pearson r=.7, p<.0001). Understanding more about the discussions underlying theological library responses to the pandemic will be one of several topics to be explored in the second round of data collection.

The relationship between the pandemic and planned or unplanned transitions to online service models emerged as a major theme when reviewing these responses.

The surveys also included several open-ended prompts on the experience of responding to the pandemic, such as, “How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your role in theological librarianship?” (sent to respondents on the Librarians survey) and, “Thinking about your institutional context, what has been the biggest impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on your library?” (sent to respondents on the Deans and Directors survey). The themes emerging from open response questions provided rich insights into libraries and individuals’ experience during the early stages of the pandemic while also prompting us to check several initial assumptions. The relationship between the pandemic and planned or unplanned transitions to online service models emerged as a major theme when reviewing these responses. Several respondents cited the shift to an online presence (and the corresponding loss of face-to-face contact) as the major impact of the pandemic on their role in theological librarianship: 

“I scrambled to provide everything online for the residential courses. They moved from residential to online in about 1 week.”

“working from home is not conducive to the serendipitous interactions with students that often lead to more fruitful opportunities for research assistance”

“I am still coming to work – but there’s no one here. The students and faculty disappeared almost overnight. I don’t like working alone but I realize I am blessed to still have a job!”

Administrators also cited rapid shifts to online services as major impacts. However, some library directors mentioned that their robust pre-pandemic online presence had prepared them well for a pause in face-to-face services. 

“Very quickly, we moved to an ‘online only’ library at a suddenly ‘online only’ seminary.”

“With full time staff working from home, all aspects of library operations are affected: physical books and serials can’t be processed; print acquisitions are on hold; reference has gone remote; nothing is happening with special collections; physical access and circulation is limited to a few hours a week when on-campus student workers are available. In the past there has been resistance if not hostility from faculty and some students to using ebooks; now, everyone is using them.”

“Our library is primarily online anyway, so there was not a huge impact. Students who would supplement our online resources with local resources at public or academic libraries near them have been forced to find alternative solutions.”

As mentioned above, concerns about job security and financial sustainability were common themes, as well as the emotional and practical impacts of building closure on staff and students. Five respondents to the Deans and Directors survey cited hiring pauses or furloughs as the “biggest impact” of the pandemic at the time of the survey, while the majority of respondents to the Librarians survey cited financial issues as their main concern for the consequences of the pandemic in the future. However, respondents also noted areas for hope, as stated by this respondent to the Librarians survey:

“…there should now be a new appreciation for the highly gifted librarians who made finishing the semester online on short notice possible.”

Future Directions

Following an analysis of initial survey results, we seek to understand how changes to normal operations due to the threat of COVID-19 have changed in the second half of the calendar year. We also hope to gain more detailed information about the pandemic-related concerns, challenges, successes, and hopes of theological library professionals. To this end, we are conducting follow-up interviews with survey respondents this Fall. This approach will allow us to contextualize our initial findings better while affording the opportunity to record detailed accounts of library-level pandemic response.