Tryst with uncertainty: Efforts of Department of Library and Information Science, University of Gour Banga, Malda, West Bengal, India

Abstract

The whisper that started circulating in the air at the end of December 2019 ultimately has grown into a roar. Yes, a new strain and highly contagious virus known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (World Health Organization, n.d.) is spreading like a bush fire in every corner of earth, infecting every continent, the outbreak of which was first noticed in Wuhan, a city in Hubei province, China. The extremely infectious nature of the virus and its special affinity for aged human population with some kind of pre-existing lifestyle diseases is causing widespread death and has forced the world economy into a grinding halt. In the absence of a definite curative therapy, governments have implemented lockdown resulting in complete closure of all academic, industrial, and social activities and enforced home confinement. In India, as the number of Corona infected cases rose steadily, a 14hour voluntary public curfew (7a.m. to 9p.m.) was observed on 22nd March (Desk, 2020) as was proposed by the Prime Minister of India and eventually followed by implementation of pan India lockdown in three phases for 21, 19, and ongoing days respectively started on 25 March and continuing. Since then, all the academic institutions are closed. As this extraordinary situation has brought about multiple challenges in the conventional teaching-learning environment, it was felt that an overhaul of faculty-student communication process in a university set-up was imminent. In the following, we give an account of contactless remote interaction with students of the Department of Library and Information Science (DLIS), University of Gour Banga, Malda, West Bengal, India.