Making Your Own Luck: Academic Libraries and the Digital Shift

Abstract

Abstract COVID-19 did not disrupt higher education; it hastened the disruptions that have already been taking place. One particularly prominent disruption is the digital shift, or the move from primarily face-to-face operations to operations with a large digital component. In order to survive, higher education needs to fundamentally change. But how prepared is your library for these changes? You cannot simply wait for these changes to happen and hope to get lucky; instead, you need to make your own luck. Libraries are uniquely situated to lead the institution in this digital shift. This article will present an overview of student demographic and higher education trends such as decreasing enrollment, increasing diversity of the student body and its needs, technological disruptions, and changing workforce needs. Specific examples from two academic libraries in the United States will demonstrate how this information has informed practice, allowing these libraries to be ahead of the digital shift, to easily weather the COVID storm, and to be models for other campus departments. As humanity’s response to the COVID-19 crisis transitions from reactive to proactive, higher education cannot return to pre-pandemic operational norms. Libraries must position themselves to nimbly adjust to disruptions of traditional services rather than rely on “getting lucky” when change is forced upon them. Instead, make your own luck by intentionally integrating more digital resources into the collection and more virtual services into the workflow, using patron data to inform workflow decisions, and flexibly adapting crisis mode operations to sustainable, permanent operations. Ultimately, this article will show how librarians can combine the tried-and-true with new library practices to adjust to the digital shift in a way that positions them to lead campuses into the future of higher education.