Yale University: “The Heart’ of the University is Still Beating, Albeit a Little Differently”

From a Yale Daily News article:

Currently, around 250 members, or 50 percent, of the Sterling library’s staff are authorized to be on campus. And the libraries, which fully reopened on Aug. 31, now allow access to the physical spaces, which was not possible during previous closures. But without crammed reading rooms or a robust in-person operation, the system looks nothing like what Yale’s libraries looked like at the same time last year or, more generally, like a normal conception of a library. University Librarian Barbara Rockenbach is determined to use this time to change that narrative.

“People have a perception of what a library is,” Rockenbach said. “We tend to really focus on our image of the library being physical. One of the challenges — but it’s also been an incredible opportunity to tell a different story of the library — is that COVID forced us to continually say, ‘The library is still open even when the buildings are closed.’ You can still do your research, you can still learn and teach, because we have invested … in digital infrastructure that makes that possible.”

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