Auburn University Libraries continues to provide services to support remote instruction

In an effort to further offer more normal services to faculty and students during this time of remote instruction, Auburn University Libraries, or AUL, has made a successful appeal to declare an emergency under HathiTrust’s Emergency Temporary Access Service. Auburn students, faculty and staff will have access online to almost 48 percent of AUL’s collection. AUL continues to offer the majority of its services with some limitations and continues to search for new ways to bring all services to its users.

“We’ve been trying very hard to continue all the services we can during this transition time and we’re doing our best to add more services as solutions are found,” said Dean of Libraries Shali Zhang. “The HathiTrust temporary emergency access is a huge step forward in being able to offer a large percentage of the most significant thing we lose when the Libraries are closed–the physical collections.”

HathiTrust is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries. It includes content digitized as part of the Google Books project and Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally by member libraries.

Nearing fruition is a project to allow students remote access to the needed software in 78 computers of the libraries’ newly implemented Innovation and Research Commons. These computers are high-end machines with all manner of powerful software installed. Students will be able tap that power from their home computers without the need to upgrade their computers or purchase new software.

AUL also continues to offer many of the services users have come to expect. In the three weeks since building closure, more than 5,000 users have successful logged in to access e-resources from the libraries.

Interlibrary Loans, or ILL, is busily operating to get items not held by AUL from other member libraries for our users and providing materials not held by peer libraries to their users so they may continue their research. ILL is also scanning pages and chapters from AUL print holdings and providing them to our users digitally, negating the need for in-person transfers. ILL is currently investigating ways to share e-books between multiple users.

Workshops for both research-enhancing software and Adobe users are being offered remotely via Zoom and recorded video, with 109 users taking advantage of these workshop opportunities so far.

Subject librarians are offering research consultations via Zoom so work momentum is not lost. Reference questions are also being responded to with 176 such questions already fielded.

All Auburn University Libraries online services may be accessed at https://www.lib.auburn.edu/. Specific help on remote learning, teaching and research may be found at aub.ie/libraryhelp. To access the HathiTrust assets, go to http://libguides.auburn.edu/hathitrust.