Johanna Drucker
Information Fields and the Pandemic Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies shares ways that archivists, librarians, and other professionals can utilize skills to support learning and information literacy in the pandemic’s online environment.
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BY JOANIE HARMON
n March 7, 2020, Johanna Drucker, the UCLA Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies, and Anna Chen, head librarian of UCLA’s William Andrews Clark L ibrary, presented a daylong conference on “Sustaining Visions and Legacies: The Future of Special Collections Libraries.” Speakers including Professor Ellen Pearlstein, UCLA Information Studies students and alumni including Jesse Erickson of the University of Maryland, and library deans, archivists, and librarians from across the nation, shared their expertise in addressing sustainability, not only of physical materials and methods but from a perspective of site specificity and community needs and culture. And then the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, indefinitely shutting down in-person access to special collections for scholars, students, practitioners, and the public. Along with meeting the challenges of providing even greater access to virtual repositories so that scholarship, research, and enrichment can continue for these audiences, Professor Drucker delineates ways that information professionals can use their skills to support and enhance the new normal of a virtual environment that now exists for interactions in libraries, museums and archives, education, medicine, and the media.
6 UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020