l Covid-19 and the digital shift in action Matt Greenhall Deputy Executive Director, RLUK COVID-19 AND THE DIGITAL SHIFT IN ACTION © 2020 Research Libraries UK Published: July 2020 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Suggested citation: Greenhall, M. (2020). Covid-19 and the digital shift in action, RLUK Report Contact the author: RLUK Room 257, Senate House Malet Street London WC1E 7HU
[email protected] COVID-19 AND THE DIGITAL SHIFT IN ACTION CONTENTS Overview: Covid-19 and the digital shift in action 4 Organisational context 7 Skills and leadership 13 Scholarship and collections 17 Physical and digital spaces 22 Moving forward 26 Further reading and useful links 32 Appendices 33 Appendix I List of contributing RLUK members 33 Appendix II Overview of interview process 34 3 COVID-19 AND THE DIGITAL SHIFT IN ACTION COVID-19 AND THE DIGITAL SHIFT IN ACTION This report provides an overview of the experiences of RLUK members in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, it explores the extent to which the period of the Covid-19 pandemic represented the ‘digital shift in action’ amongst research library services, operations, and collections. This report forms both part of RLUK’s wider work surrounding the experience of its members during the Covid-19 crisis and its activities around the digital shift. OVERVIEW: THE DIGITAL SHIFT The digital shift is used as an umbrella term for the analogue-digital transition of many library services, operations, collections, and audience interactions.1 This work around the digital shift forms part of RLUK’s current strategy, Reshaping Scholarship, and very broadly, relates to the impact of digital technology on the research library: Collections: reflecting the increasing volume of digital collections within research libraries, whether as born-digital archives, digitised content, data, research outputs contained within repositories, or electronic books and journals (e-print).