By: Jacob Johnson
In the past year the world has changed a lot due to the pandemic, most of which has been negative changes but there are some good things too, like the technological advancements that have made working and learning remotely, easier.
In-person meetings have now almost completely been replaced with virtual meetings, giving workers the ability to meet and work from almost anywhere, but this technology has also helped students learn outside of the traditional classroom setting and made it possible for families to safely connect with each other.
Henderson Library on Georgia Southern's campus was faced with a difficult task a year ago. To create a safe environment for students and faculty to work and study in, but with restrictions in place during the beginning of the pandemic, only a few people were allowed in the library at a time.
This created the need for the library to implement a system to get their resources into the hands of those who need it.
Henderson libraries resources go far beyond physical books, in fact they have a large amount of laptops, chromebooks and headphones for students to check out and use, but this became difficult when the university shut down.
“Students who take advantage of our services, like checking out laptops were negatively impacted when classes went online,” said Jessica Garner, head of interlibrary loans and a task force aimed at making it possible for the library to reopen to students. “Those students without access to a computer were at a disadvantage when we had to shut down.”
The library created a system that allowed students to request a laptop and have it mailed to their address if they were not near campus, which would give them the technology needed in order to transition to their new online class schedule and help keep the number of students in the library to a minimum.
Out of 117 laptops that the library has for students to check out, only 22 of them were still available after the initial shutdown of campus and other departments on campus got involved, offering over 600 laptops for students to be able to check out and use, according to an article written by Garner and Logue.
“We continue to run low on the amount of laptops we have left for students to check out and I have continuously asked for more funding so that we can buy more laptops for students,” said Natilie Logue, assistant head of inter-library loan at Georgia Southern.
Once the library reopened, only a limited number of students could enter at a time, which created the need for an appointment system.
Georgia Southern’s access services department worked with the IT department to create an app that allowed students to make an appointment to come to the library or reserve a time to check out equipment, this was eventually merged inside of the LibApps that were already being used to reserve study rooms.
“I do not have a personal computer at home, so the library being open is extremely important to me,” said Jose Rodriquez, a junior at Georgia Southern.
The library also used technology to transfer documents that were previously paper forms, into online documents, in order to limit the exposure between workers and students.
Now that the library is open, other policies have been put in place to ensure proper social distancing, one of which was moving the library's 200 desktop computers so that they are far enough apart to keep students from being too close to each other.
Additionally, the library has encouraged faculty to have their course materials available in virtual format, which helps keep students and faculty from having to go to the library to get the materials they need.
In the last year technology has advanced in many ways and when the pandemic first started, one of the main concerns, besides a vaccine, was how educational institutions would be able to effectively teach their students.
A lot of work went into creating or improving certain technology in order to create a safe and effective learning environment, which the new and improved technology will likely be integrated into education for the foreseeable future.