The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has not left any industry unscathed. Some more than others, are struggling or flat out failing financially. As far as libraries, the impact on face-to-face instruction and academics in general have resulted in substantial challenges to the student experience. The Scholarly Kitchen brought this interesting information to our attention in their article, “The Impacts of COVID-19 on Academic Library Budgets: Fall 2020.“
The increasing costs of revamping education access while retooling campuses, both physical and virtual have left declining revenues and increased expenses.
The overall impact on academic library budgets is still playing out, but it will likely be substantial. However, the good news is academic libraries have steadily increased their investment in virtual services and digital resources over the past several decades. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting shift to remote work and education has served to reinforce an existing acceleration toward digital resource acquisition.
2021 will hopefully offer some insights into the real impact of the pandemic on all industries and hopefully not offer more challenges.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
