Libraries in the Context of a Pandemic: Crisis and Oportunity
Libraries in the Context of a Pandemic: Crisis and Oportunity

Summary/Abstract: Any crisis situation is a challenge for libraries. The pandemic caused by COVID - 19 cannot be compared with other crisis situations encountered by libraries. This crisis has profoundly affected the activities of libraries, their presence in the community, their relations with users, and even their mission and vision of institutional development policies and strategies. Forced to carry out most of their activities online, libraries have reorganized and resized their activities and have looked for new ways to best adapt to the digital environment. At the same time, the crisis situation is also an opportunity to analyse the risks and vulnerabilities that they are obliged to face and to develop institutional development strategies that protect and benefit libraries in a competitive environment such as the digital environment. Thus, libraries become concerned with strengthening their online presence, making and publishing their own digital content from their own collections, producing value-added products and services, reaffirming the heritage function by which they constitute and promote the cultural, social, and scientific memory of the community they serve, and partnering with similar institutions in order to ensure mutual support and resource sharing. This study presents a brief analysis of the online presence of Romanian libraries. The contemporary library thus institutionally redefines itself, in terms of its mission, specific activities, products and services, of its presence in the digital competitive environment so that it can effectively fulfil its role at the level of the community it serves and of society as a whole.

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