Going Digital: The Research Library and the Pandemic

Going Digital:The Research Library and the Pandemic Benjamin Gross and Allison Marsh Keywords COVID-19, fellowships, virtual fellowships, collections, accessibility, research experience The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly transformed the historical research process. The sudden closure of libraries, archives, and museums left scholars physically unable to consult primary sources. Researchers, in turn, restructured their investigations to capitalize on materials they could access digitally. The consequences of these shifts will resonate for years as students defend dissertations and scholars publish books and articles that were shaped by the pandemic. At the same time, collections-based institutions now have the opportunity to learn from their COVID experiences and devise new ways to serve their constituents' needs. As historians in different settings assess the dramatic social changes that have occurred since the spring of 2020, it is essential to consider the pandemic's impact on their profession. The April 2022 issue of Technology and Culture explored how curators and archivists responded to the pandemic. This public history section builds on those discussions by examining how COVID-19 led one U.S. institution, the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering, and Technology (LHL) in Kansas City, Missouri, to launch a virtual fellowship program. The Linda Hall Library was not the only institution to provide scholars with remote research support during the pandemic. Nevertheless, we believe that the Library's pandemic response merits discussion in Technology and Culture due to the technical decisions that facilitated its virtual fellowships. Despite a long history of supporting off-site patrons, providing these new fellows with the ability to navigate the Library's collections required investments in digitization infrastructure and the sustained involvement of reference [End Page 1137] librarians. Because conversations with other researchers are essential components of the fellowship experience, the Library used teleconferencing software to foster a sense of intellectual community. In the following articles, Library staff and scholars share their perspectives on the virtual fellowship program. Their accounts reveal some of the methodological challenges and opportunities associated with historical investigations during the pandemic. They also illustrate that COVID-19 altered the relationship between researchers and collections in significant ways. Some of these changes were a direct result of the pandemic, while others—such as the push to make collections more accessible to local and global audiences—had been underway for several years. Benjamin Gross, the Linda Hall Library's vice president for research and scholarship, leads off the section, demonstrating how longstanding collection and digitization strategies left the institution well positioned to offer virtual fellowships. Because its initial clientele consisted of practicing scientists and engineers, the Library prioritized the acquisition of technical publications, which are easier to digitize than manuscripts and personal papers. In addition, it launched a document delivery service in 1957 to provide patrons with copies of articles from scarcely held journals, first on microfilm and later as photocopies and digital scans. Over time, the Library continued to invest in scanning equipment and software to streamline the digitization process. When COVID-19 prevented fellows from traveling to Kansas City, the Library was able to adjust quickly and offer them scanned research materials. The preliminary success of this program, along with uncertainty concerning the duration of the pandemic, prompted the Library's leadership to offer only virtual fellowships during the 2021–22 academic year. Gross's article describes the structure of the new program and how LHL staff adjusted their work habits to support an unprecedented number of off-site scholars. The second piece in the section, compiled by Allison Marsh, presents scholars' perspectives on the Linda Hall Library's virtual fellowship program. From the outset, she aimed to foreground the voices of virtual fellows. At the same time, she recognized that asking them to compose essays about their affiliation with the Library would be burdensome, even if they were not coping with the stresses of the pandemic. Instead, Marsh conducted hour-long interviews with five recent LHL fellows via videoconference, which she subsequently transcribed, edited, and reorganized into the Q&A presented here. The resulting transcript is something of an experimental hybrid, combining features of a traditional roundtable and a structured conversation to assess the benefits and limitations of remote research in the...