Health Information Needs of Public Library Leaders during COVID‐19

Abstract

During the COVID‐19 pandemic of 2020–2021, public library leaders across the United States were forced to make decisions quickly that affected the services and resources they were able to provide. However, the health information they had to make decisions on was imperfect and constantly changing. Interviews with 23 public library managers and directors revealed that more authoritative local data was needed for decision‐making and to share with their service populations. Overwhelmed public health system and/or suspicious or skeptical political environments hindered access to locally‐specific health information. Several respondents were uncomfortable creating information or making decisions without the guidance of health officials. Additionally, the library managers and directors described working as crisis managers, making decisions that impacted the health of their staff and their communities. In capturing and analyzing these “pandemic decision‐making stories,” this research informs future library information responses to community needs during times of crisis.

INTRODUCTION

Public librarians across the United States were placed in difficult positions during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Health information, i.e., information that would support best practices during the pandemic, was ever‐changing and often elusive. Public library leaders (i.e., managers and directors) were forced to make decisions in an environment of imperfect and changing information and political turmoil during a surge of pandemic misinformation. Previous research has explored factors influencing public library responses to COVID‐19 (Kosciejew, 2020), including the content of public library announcements (Wang & Lund, 2020), public library Twitter messages (Alajmi & Albudaiwi, 2021), changing community needs (Wahler et al., 2022), and resource use and virtual engagement (Goddard, 2020). This short paper describes research on how public library managers and directors found, used, shared, and created health information during the pandemic. The goal is to inform future library information responses to community needs during times of crisis.

Research Questions

1. What pandemic‐related health information did public library leaders need?

2. What contextual factors influenced public librarians' creation and sharing of health‐related pandemic information?

3. What specific challenges did public librarians face in finding health‐related pandemic information?

Literature review

Previous research has shown that public libraries are trusted spaces within their communities (Morgan et al., 2016), and librarians do provide health information through reference work and referral (Flaherty, 2018; Rubenstein, 2018). Librarians have partnered with doctors or social workers (Wahler et al., 2020) to fill in gaps and extend services including health and wellness programming (Luo, 2018). During COVID‐19, though, library partners were overwhelmed, and public spaces were closed. Many libraries closed physical locations due to local mandates and to protect staff and public health but continued to offer services to the best of their ability, particularly through virtual platforms.

The literature demonstrates that health and pandemic‐focused wellness information services, programming, and referrals (Smith, 2021) became a focus. Information about the pandemic was complicated, though; recommendations and mandates were in flux for two years, and authorities were unable to provide a unified message to the public (Nagler et al., 2020). This led to an uneven provision of information. Urban libraries were more likely to direct library users to pandemic‐related information, but smaller, rural libraries were less likely to do so (Wang & Lund, 2020). Rural libraries, though, served as a valuable resource in countering pandemic‐related isolation, especially in aged populations (Lenstra et al., 2021). The size, expertise, and capacity of the library influenced the health information they were able to provide.

METHODS

As part of a larger project, 23 public library managers and directors from urban, suburban, and rural; conservative, and progressive communities across the United States agreed to participate in interviews, which were conducted in February and March 2022. The interview protocol was designed to build on previous literature about libraries' role in health information provision, while specifically pointing at how provision might have been affected by the pandemic. It covered a variety of issues, including each library's “pandemic decision‐making story”; pandemic information sources that they used for making decisions and those that they shared with staff or the public; whether they created their own resources or hosted informational events; and what kinds of data and information would have been most useful as they led their teams through the pandemic. Drawing from the focus of the literature, public library leaders with varying expertise were sampled from different‐sized libraries in a range of locations, from rural to urban.

After transcribing the interviews, three researchers discussed common trends in the answers and any potential emergent codes in the data. Two researchers jointly coded five transcripts using NVivo 12 to test the validity of the proposed codes and to determine if more codes were needed. After discussing coding differences, the two researchers divided the rest of the interviews and coded them separately.

After all the interviews were coded, the entire research team met, and as a group, discussed the transcripts and codes to reach consensus on what the results demonstrate regarding public library information practices and what the implications might be for future crisis‐related information practices.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The interviews found both trends and outliers in terms of what public librarians were able to do and what health information they provided during the pandemic. Public library leaders felt that the available information about the disease was inadequate. They expressed frustration with an inability to find authoritative, trusted local information for both their own decision‐making (e.g., whether to open the library, how many people to let in, etc.) or to pass along to the public. Librarians have a duty to provide useful information to their service populations. COVID‐19 presented a rapidly changing and uncertain situation in which data collection and distribution were politicized, and in which national data did not always reflect local situations.

What pandemic‐related health information did public library leaders need?

Interviews with library management regarding their pandemic experience revealed the information needs public librarians saw in their communities and the access they had to that information. Two specific information needs emerged: for local information, and for information relevant to the public library context.

Our participants wanted accurate, timely local information. Although they were able to use CDC (Centers for Disease Control) data for some local coverage, they needed more granular data about their own communities.

Participant 111: Our director still meets regularly with our health department, and I think that's kind of who we are leaning on locally, to really provide information.

Participant 128: Our State Department of Health, I should have looked at that more often, because it was really focused. It actually broke it down into the county and where the counties were, levels of the county at that time…

Participant 136: [Our city's] safety director was doing lots of research and bringing in information for us, and that was like my primary source, because it was so well researched and such high quality.

However, some participants reported that their local health departments were overwhelmed and suggested that it might have been useful to have in‐house expertise.

Participant 116: [Our] local health department was very soft pedal on the whole thing. They were quite overwhelmed, and they changed leaders during the middle of it. […] One of the things that was in my policy about when we need to shut our buildings down was based on, was supposed to be based on local public health officials' recommendations. […] I actually tried contacting our local health department, I never got an answer back from them, their phones were constantly busy […] they were just overwhelmed up there. We really, you know, just had to do it on our own.

Participant 113: Up until recently, we hadn’t been contacted very much by [our] county health department. They just dropped off a bunch of N95 [masks] that we were able to give out, but beyond that, it didn’t seem like they were very communicative of what we should be doing.

Participant 101: A statistician seems like that would be a great person for us to be able to afford to have, or maybe our regional consortium or state library could employ one.

Our participants also indicated a need for public library‐specific information related to the pandemic, which they reported getting from their various state libraries and state library associations, as well as the Association for Rural and Small Libraries. One participant indicated creating cooperative relationships between area libraries.

Participant 122: The university library received a grant to do vaccine outreach and education, and they partnered with all of the public libraries in the area, and so one of the other public libraries tried to do a, they did [a program] based on vaccines and vaccine hesitancy and outreach like that. […] We had signs all over the library saying, you know, “find your vaccine here, here's how you can request it” … helping people get that vaccine appointment set up.

Other participants indicated that they wanted and used information on quarantining and disinfecting books during the time when the COVID‐19 transmission routes were not fully understood, staggered schedules for staff to limit exposure to the virus, and information about social distancing when their libraries re‐opened.

What contextual factors affected librarians' creation and sharing of pandemic information?

Staff size and expertise affected librarians' creation of pandemic information. Some larger libraries had staff dedicated to creating resources; other libraries did this work on top of their existing workload, as demonstrated in the contrasting statements below from a rural (Participant 104) and more urban context (Participant 105). This research indicates that the differing responses noted in previous literature between urban and rural areas might be attributed to staff size more than will or motivation; a two‐person staff that cleans, catalogs, and budgets naturally has a less pronounced presence on social media.

Participant 104: We’re a two‐person system. There's just two of us for the whole county … but we did set up a website that had links to trustworthy, reliable, frequently updated information.

Participant 105: [I, a scientist‐turned‐librarian, led] a group of five individuals and our task was to basically create the messaging for all the 12 disparate departments of the city [studying] like‐size communities that are two weeks, four weeks, and six weeks out from what we are experiencing. The reason for this is, I want to know what's coming down the pipeline and I included, you know, from the airports to public works to police the HR, the whole gamut. […] All the reports that we ended up feeding up to city council, county commissioner, the health officer, mayor, city administrator, they were about 85% accurate, it was quite scary, actually.

Multiple participants noted (e.g., Participant 109, 111, 122, 130) that the political polarization of information regarding COVID‐19 discouraged them from sharing information.

Participant 109: We heard such varying stories from different sides of the aisle that trying to decide what to disseminate would have been, we would have [said] “I don’t know if we should be telling people this.”

Participant 130: We stay completely away from that. It was so polarized around here.

There was some hesitation in creating information. Several participants (e.g., Participants 102, 103, and 109) noted that since they were not health care professionals, they emphasized using other information sources that had already been vetted, such as PubMed or CDC information.

Participant 102: Really, I mean we’re not medical professionals or scientists, we are information specialists, but it was just such a chaotic scared time. I’m sure there was more we could have shared … but I think, because we were nervous, we just went with the links to, you know, really credible resources.

Our findings highlighted the disparate roles of health information professionals and librarians. The chaotic situation of the pandemic forcibly made many librarians “acting health information librarians.” Although librarians can lead their patrons to up‐to‐date health information sources, several of them felt hesitant to create health‐related information for the public since it is not their subject expertise.

What specific challenges did librarians face in using and finding pandemic information?

The most common challenge expressed by participants was that pandemic guidance changed frequently, thus leading to information overload and lack of trust in the validity of information available. Participants discussed the challenges they had due to the inconsistent guidelines between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (such as Participant 111) and the local health department or constantly changing guidelines from the CDC (such as Participant 130).

Participant 104: [My state] did a lot of shifting throughout the pandemic in the way that they were communicating data with people. … at one point they stopped tracking daily new cases. […] I guess some of that is, you know, like, it's communications PR, it's trying to make it look better.

Participant 130: The major struggle we had was following the CDC guidelines, because they were constantly changing.

Participant 111: At times are the CDC contradicted the [local] health department, you know, whether it was on advocacy of masks to ventilation to what the number of people are allowed to gather in a room … the efficacy of sanitizing materials. […] It was really hard to have a consistent, I guess, position in the eyes of our community and staff.

Additionally, there was organizational confusion and lack of follow‐through in information provision. Participants reported disorganization in their leadership, at both the library (such as Participant 132) and the municipal levels (such as Participant 109), often leaving the library staff “alone” in critical times.

Participant 109: We were told that we were going to be receiving information, that all the branches were going to receive information [on] helping people find a vaccine site if they hadn’t yet done that. […] and then I never got anything so I didn’t know what happened with that.

Participant 132: A number of folks who were in pretty key leadership positions were sort of MIA for a while.

As employees of public institutions, librarians were expected to collaborate with local and state administrations to distribute health‐related information or provide any services in safe environments. However, the missing guidance created severe confusion and frustration for many public librarians, who could not independently make policy decisions. Findings from the current study indicate the importance of creating direct communication channels among public libraries, local government offices, and/or public health service centers, which can enable fast information exchange between these organizations to provide accurate health information to the public efficiently, and promptly.

Conclusion

Much research has been published about public librarians' responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic in terms of services, the adoption of electronic resources, and the pivot to online programming. However, this research looks specifically at the health‐related information needs and communication of public library managers and directors during the pandemic. This set of interviews is one part of a larger research project focused on lessons to strengthen public librarians' responses to the next pandemic or related crisis. Interviews are especially useful in finding out why patterns exist. Interviews can help dispel assumptions and prejudices by revealing contextual factors that are not readily apparent in quantitative studies. There is no singular public library pandemic story. These interviews demonstrated that some libraries had more information access than others. In some cases, this was just by chance, such as the library director who used to be a scientist. Other cases demonstrated a disconnect between libraries and city administrators, previously evidenced in funding and currently emphasized in lack of information provision. The pandemic also revealed strengths and weaknesses in public library management in an uncertain and politicized information situation. Our interviews found a lack of clear direction from higher‐level authorities, an inability to trust some public information, and a dearth of actionable state or local information. Politicization of the pandemic meant that some public libraries had to use their local community knowledge to decide how and when to share pandemic information. Participants' varied responses suggested relationships between authorities' decisions and the librarians' active participation in pandemic information provision. Some librarians had extensive agency in their actions, but others were constrained.

Although public libraries are locally controlled, the participants in this study sought information from all levels: local, regional, and national. They felt like what they needed to best serve their communities, though, was granular local information. A multilevel task force composed of a group of medical librarians and health communicators at the national level who regularly communicate with state librarians and other key regional stakeholders could provide significant help to public libraries around the nation on 1) health information retrieval, 2) health information dissemination and communication, and 3) guidelines for library services and facilitation.

In a pandemic situation, library managers are also crisis managers, making decisions that impact the health of their staff and their communities. They cannot necessarily rely on health authorities in these situations because, as we saw during the COVID pandemic, the health authorities in many communities were completely overwhelmed. The goal is to empower librarians with an independent network of distributed, authoritative, methods of collecting and distributing data to their communities. Collecting information on what worked, what failed, and what might work will help library managers make better decisions for the inevitable next crisis.