Library books and Covid

Browsing the new rules and guidelines for OSU Libraries for the autumn semester 2020 I see there’s not a lot of agreement on how long the virus lives on books.  The guidelines say a book will be quarantined for 5 days when returned to service.  I’ve checked various websites, and at least in the recent (yet ever changing) rules and research nothing is that draconian. It will push faculty and students even more to on-line use. I know when I was employed there (retired in 2000) the library was absolutely dependent on our student staff; I assume it is still that way and they will have the most face time with the public.  They will be handling the materials. If the lending partners throughout the state have the same quarantine, it will really back up interlibrary and intra-library loans. And no course reserves—those were heavily used in the veterinary library because so many did not own the books for their classes.

https://library.osu.edu/news/university-libraries-service-updates-for-autumn-semester (posted August 7)

“University Libraries is looking forward to providing the services our students, faculty and staff need to meet their education and research goals in a safe and healthy environment. To that end:

• masks are required in all University Libraries facilities.
• the book stacks will remain closed to the public. Materials must be requested through paging. Only University Libraries staff may remove books from shelves. Any books brought to the circulation desk by visitors will have to be quarantined and unavailable for up to five days.
• requests for materials will be made online at library.osu.edu and picked up at the circulation or information desk within the library.
• visitors are asked to maintain a safe physical distance of six feet apart. We have spaced out seating in our common areas and closed our group study rooms to help make this possible.
• eating and drinking are not permitted in the libraries.
• returned materials will be quarantined for five days and will remain on your account until quarantine is complete and they have been checked in.
• due to quarantine, OhioLINK and Interlibrary Loan requests will be delayed.
• physical course reserves will not be available.
• requests for new materials will take longer than normal to process.
• Thompson and 18^th Avenue Libraries will maintain normal hours, departmental libraries and special collection reading rooms will be operating on a modified schedule. Hours are subject to change. Please visit library.osu.edu for current information

This article from WebMD sounds more like the advice from 4-5 months ago when they were trying to sanitize cruise ships, however it’s update stamp is Aug. 21. https://www.webmd.com/lung/how-long-covid-19-lives-on-surfaces

Although I haven’t been in a library for 6 months, I’ve used the free little libraries around town liberally, and I’ve been in a book store and touched and opened the books. https://www.webmd.com/lung/how-long-covid-19-lives-on-surfaces (posted April 3)

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/06/26/heres-how-long-coronavirus-can-live-surfaces-and-air/3256678001/

In all research, it’s what you do AFTER you hold or touch material others have been using that is critical.  Your HANDS and FACE.  Do not touch.  And since masks are so uncomfortable, that’s the hardest advice to follow.

Big Tech is still the winner in this pandemic.  There is no problem getting a new or used book through Amazon, and although the machines may be wrapping and handling, you still have to get the box open and dispose of the trash.

This article is not research, it’s anecdotal, but something to think about because we’ve become so dependent on how some large businesses are staying open when everything we need is closed. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-08-27/covid-pandemic-u-s-businesses-issue-gag-rules-to-stop-workers-from-talking (posted August 27)

Ohio State sets new enrollment records

According to OSUToday: "Ohio State has set new records this fall – in the size, quality and diversity of its student body. There are new records in the number of students attending the Columbus campus and several regional campuses. New autumn quarter enrollment figures show a 2.7 percent increase in Ohio State enrollment, with a record 63,217 students on all campuses and a record 55,014 on the Columbus campus – a 2.4 percent increase. Across all campuses, there are a record 49,915 undergraduates including 9,510 new first-year students — providing more students than ever access to higher education." Read more: the full report (51 pages) or the press release http://osu.edu/news/newsitem2575

The library has now moved back to the main campus, so in order to go there, I'll have to compete for parking again. I loved having it on Ackerman Rd. The ACK STAX. I think I used the library more those 3 years than all the other years in my retirement (9).

OSU Library renovation declared Stupendous

It's considered a success. Link with photos. I haven't seen it yet.

The ACK Stacks

The main library (Thompson) on the Ohio State University campus has been closed for over a year for remodeling. Hard hat tours are now available to see its 1970s and 1980s cocoon of bastard designs and add-ons removed to reveal the original butterfly of the early 20th century. I'm sure it will be lovely, similar to when I first saw it in 1967. But that means many OSU students will never be in the library--not Thompson, and not the temporary one on Ackerman Road (they have to take a bus). I really enjoy the temp facility--it is close to my home, the parking is great, and I usually have the whole place to myself, because I think students have forgotten about it. The books are easy to find and the people aren't. OSCAR, the online catalog, is now pretty subservient to a behemoth that brings up everything in WorldCat and OhioLink when you do a search, with OSU as just one of the locations. So you need to learn how to limit and do advance searches or you'll be overwhelmed with books located in Atlanta and New York, and smidgens in articles and microfiche--maybe 350 matches when you were expecting 10. It's like walking down the snack aisle of a major supermarket looking for plain old Ritz crackers.



The ACK Stacks

Near the railroad tracks
on Ackerman Road
are the ACK Stacks
tucked away for me,
the vast collection
of the OSU library.

Foreign and Esoteric,
Religious and Oversize,
it’s hard for me to stick
to the task at hand.
Now other libraries
seem so bland.

A mile or two away
lies OSU main campus.
Some librarians say
a generation or so
of students and grads
to the library never go.

Does anything smell worse

or give the eye more pleasure than a Ginko tree?
Here's a wonderful site to browse Ginko Dreams. Both the agricultural library where I worked for 3.5 years and visited many more, and the veterinary medicine library where I worked for 17 years had lovely tall Ginkos right outside the entrances. The smell when they drop their fruit is like vomit, and the students would track the rotting residue into the library (along with "stuff" from the animal stalls). Ah, the memories make me smile.

3451 Why aid for economic development fails

and often hurts the very people it tries to help. In the late 1970s I had a wonderful 3.5 year contract as a bibliographer/reference librarian in agricultural economics. More specifically, I was paid by the U.S. Department of State, Agency for International Development, through a grant won by Ohio State University's College of Agriculture, Department of Economics who wanted a librarian to help develop a collection of research about how local, home-grown small grants for credit, not gifts, to people with little or nothing lifted families and villages out of poverty and hunger. To correct a problem created by an earlier group of well-intentioned social scientists in the 1950s-60s post-colonial era, these grants also went to women and to small collectives in rural areas. Perhaps it was credit to buy several sewing machines, or looms, small tools, or a working well for a village which could then sell the water. Savings and investments are concepts totally foreign to many cultures and I don't know the success rate of these programs over the long run. Really, compared to the amounts you think of as "aid," these grants were very small, but they were not Utopian or from the top-down. The aid went to the entrepreneurial and those with a network of family or friends who would use their services. And don't forget those of us along the way who were paying our mortgages, tuition and Lazarus' bills with these grants--we benefited too. It paved my career path for two more contracts, and then a 17 year faculty position in the Veterinary Medicine Library.

Western interference in the economies, politics and cultures of third world developing countries has not turned out well. The American left loves to point fingers at Christian missionaries who started hospitals, schools, churches and developed a written language for Africans, Asians, and Islanders, but their footprints are tiny compared to the disaster of foreign aid from Europe and the U.S. The missionaries at least were accountable to God and their denomination; the governments and the U.N. agencies who soaked the guilt-swamped for more money funded various interventions in their societies which were accountable to no one, not even us taxpayers, elevating a class of dictators, bureaucrats and home grown thieves.

For all the statistics and scholarly stuff, check The White Man's Burden; why the West's efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good, by William Easterly (Penguin Press, 2006) and The Trouble with Africa; why foreign aid isn't working, by Robert Calderisi (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Both authors were officials with the World Bank (one for 16 years, the other for 30) and have seen this problem from the inside out. And just to balance out your public library's collection, you might recommend either or both titles, after you've done your own research. [UAPL owns 2 copies of the Easterly title.]

Some reviewers found Easterly's writing style "cynical and breezy" choosing to criticize how he said it--even his chapter headings--rather than what he said. This is a tried and true method to keep people from reading or buying a book. One review of the Calderisi book starts out by comparing the number of people who died in the WTC with the number of Africans who die of AIDS, and how much the EU spends helping its own farmers. This is also a diversionary tactic to not deal with the book in hand. Build a straw book and burn it. Easterly and Calderisi clearly show that aid has not produced the desired results; Africans are now being victimized by their own rather than Europeans. The naysayers will want to kill the messenger and want to do business as usual either from guilt or because they are in the money pipeline.