Library staff worked tirelessly to develop and update research guides for directing patrons to other locations for collections, as well as new methods to contact staff for research consultations and instruction. The Library website was updated daily, sometimes hourly, and a new Milne Project page was created as a central point of contact and information.  Library patrons were directed to contact Wadsworth Library and the Livingston County Historical Society, and make use of interlibrary loan services. Library staff made contact with other libraries in the region that also had teacher education collections to set up borrowing agreements so SUNY Geneseo..Read more and view photos

In the coming days, additional walkthroughs of the selected space in Sturges took place to plan locations for library staff and services. Of note, the Leadership Team needed to find locations for 25 staff members, the Service Desk, Course Reserve Collection, CIT HelpDesk, Writing Learning Center, Research Help Desk, and the Mail room for shipping / receiving purposes.  

Less than two weeks after the initial evacuation of Milne, library staff moved into the Sturges office suite to begin preparations for the start of the Spring 2020 semester.

By the first day of the semester, nearly all library services were operational, and library staff members were moved into their new Sturges offices. While the closure of Milne was deeply upsetting to students, faculty, and staff across the campus, resuming operations in such a short period of time was the result of a truly immense amount of time and effort by library staff, Facilities Services, state contractors, and the campus administration.

With rising concerns about a number of different campus issues at the start of the Spring 2020 semester, SUNY Geneseo Administration held an open forum to hear concerns from students. The Library was represented by Alana Nuth, Milne’s Head of Collection Management.

Even as library staff were getting settled in Sturges, and students and faculty were getting used to the temporary library “situation” brought on by the discovery of asbestos in Milne, news of COVID-19 was catching the attention of the world—and the campus. By the beginning of March 2020, unprecedented shutdowns were taking place throughout the United States and the rest of the world and across all sectors of society, including academia.  On March 5, 2020, President Battles sent a message updating the campus community about preparations being made on campus, urging everyone “to remain calm as we learn more about..Read more and view photos

Two additional open forums were held by the Library in conjunction with Campus Auxiliary Services and the campus administration to gather input from students on a proposed Library move to Fraser Hall. Stakeholders wanted to hear what sorts of seating options and supplemental services students hoped to see in a long-term temporary library space in Fraser 203.

The campus was closing down. The morning of Tuesday, March 17, 2020, was the last time library staff gathered for a meeting in Sturges. Immediately afterward, staff packed up their work things, completed the necessary forms for working from home, and left. For the remainder of the spring semester, at least, the Research Instruction, Collection Management, Information Technology, and Administration units would transition entirely to remote work.  

Research Instruction librarians, along with the rest of Geneseo’s teaching faculty, prepared to make the switch to remote instruction. CIT provided webinars, tutorials, guides, and other assistance for getting up to speed with Canvas, Zoom, and other technologies useful for teaching online. Our Library IT/Web Services Developer, Leah Root created  Zoom Asynchronous and Synchronous options for Library Instruction requests in our custom Library DataPortal web application and database system. Library Instruction continued in this mode through the Spring and Fall 2020 semester.  

During the Remote Learning Period (Spring 2020 Semester),  the Library would continue to provide access to journal articles and books that could be delivered electronically, via its Information Delivery Services (IDS). Due dates were extended for books that had been borrowed, either from Milne or from other libraries via IDS, prior to the campus closing.   

Librarians planned for the inevitable reduction of the main circulating collection. Using data gathered from the current library catalog and data harvested from the previous system, as well as a holdings analysis conducted by SUNY Library Services to identify which titles had few or zero holdings within SUNY, librarians put together several scenarios to share with campus project stakeholders. Regardless of which scenario was selected, the collection would have to be reduced in size to fit into any temporary location on campus while Milne Library underwent abatement and renovation. The College Archives and Special Collections and the TERC collection would..Read more and view photos

The Library was still in its temporary location in Sturges when the Fall 2020 semester began. Most of the staff were still working from home, but some—notably, Access Services staff—were spending part of their time working in Sturges (it was a “hybrid” semester, after all).   Even though limited, there was a small physically circulating collection available (the flagged books and items), electronic versions of items were available, and instruction and consultations were ongoing.

Meanwhile, over in Fraser Hall… Plans for renovating the third-floor space were finalized and crews began the work of transforming the place into a proper library, one that would aim to provide all the services students were used to (including an on-site café!) as well as adequate workspaces for staff. In December 2020, library staff began moving out of Sturges and into their Fraser Hall space. Units coordinated their moving days with each other, again to minimize contact, but also to avoid too much competition for the boxes, book carts, and elevators involved. Historically, Fraser Hall was used as a..Read more and view photos

Crews were now turning their efforts toward installing shelving in Fraser’s closed stacks area (as well as in Schrader), in preparation for the much-anticipated books that would soon be moved from Milne.  Planning and Construction secured two locations to store print books for the duration of the Library’s occupancy of Fraser Hall: the former periodicals room in Fraser Hall (Fraser 210) and a satellite location in Schrader Hall. Books would be requestable in the library catalog (GLOCAT) and library staff would retrieve materials and make them available for checkout at the Service Desk.  In preparation, the former periodicals room was..Read more and view photos

After all collections were received from Milne Library, the library staff worked to sort books and shelve them into their proper location, scan barcodes of books in the main and TERC collections to ensure an accurate inventory, and shift all books in all collections so each area in the collection occupied a footprint that would accommodate current holdings and allow space for future growth. This phase of the project took the longest, and required a great deal of space planning to measure and mark where each collection and each Library of Congress class and subclass would be located in the..Read more and view photos

 While many library staff members were still working mainly from home—providing remote library instruction and research assistance, processing IDS requests, etc.—as the semester progressed some staff started to spend more time in their campus offices, settling in and getting used to providing socially distanced and masked service. In July 2021, along with the rest of campus,  library staff returned to campus to work from their Fraser Hall offices. 

Research Instruction librarians are back to interacting in-person with students and other researchers, with drop-in research help hours Monday through Friday in Fraser 203A (the Research Instruction office) or by appointment (for more in-depth research assistance). The librarians are also providing in-the-classroom instruction again.  Throughout our unprecedented events, our Research Instructions Librarians provided excellent service, whether remotely or in various temporary locations.  From January 2020 through December 2021, our Librarians taught 481 Instruction sessions and had 1986 consultations, question sessions, and scheduled appointments.