Crest or Trough? How Research Libraries Used Emerging Technologies to Survive the Pandemic, So Far

Abstract

The final deliverable of the ARL, CNI, and EDUCAUSE joint initiative to advance research libraries’ impact in a world shaped by emerging technologies, this report returns to 11 participants in interviews conducted for the initiative, to find out how their perspectives have changed in the year and a half since the initiative began, given the disruption to research and learning caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In these new conversations, the interviewees retain optimism for the same transformative technologies discussed in earlier interviews, but they observe that the intense activity of the pandemic months has been largely related to adoption and refinement of existing technologies rather than innovating truly novel technological solutions to research and learning challenges.