Supporting Indigenous Education From a Distance

Abstract

As COVID-19 swept the globe, it transformed the way people access information. This has been both challenging and metamorphic for libraries worldwide, particularly those serving indigenous people. Indigenous education has been severely impacted by the pandemic. When the pandemic swept the globe and many countries went into “lockdown,” users were not allowed to visit the physical facilities of libraries and the collections become inaccessible. This chapter is a case study about the adjustment of collection strategies to serve the needs of students in an indigenous studies program during the pandemic. This chapter aims to capture the challenges encountered at a regional-focused collection, the impacts to an indigenous studies program, the adjusting collection strategies to meet the needs of the program, and key lessons learned. The selected case is a regional-focused collection in a research library on Guam.