Community as a Shared Resource: How One Consortium Congregated, Collaborated, and Innovated Its Way through the COVID-19 Crisis

Abstract

In the spring of 2020, interlibrary loan department librarians and staff members suddenly found themselves working from home as library spaces closed to the public in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. On March 26, 2020, the first online town hall was convened for the resource sharing section of the SHARES consortium. This initial town hall led to regular meetings where resource sharing practitioners could share their stories and learn from one another in an unprecedented time. A small band of volunteers from the SHARES Best Practices group came together to synthesize information presented at these gatherings and to build documentation that would benefit the members of SHARES and the resource sharing community at large. This paper details the background, process and some developments and innovations that came about as a result of these town hall discussions and this valuable collaborative work.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• interlibrary loan
• library consortium
• resource sharing