COVID-19 Preparations: Ready to Go

Jeffrey Selesnick

It was midway through March Break when Director of Ohrstrom Library Sarah Ludwig realized the scope of the task that stood in front of her and her staff.

Rector Kathy Giles had informed families that the Spring Term would begin online, and the date when students could phys- ically return to the School was unknown. The services offered to students and faculty at Ohrstrom Library needed to be made available in a digital space in a matter of days.

“The hallmark of what we do is making those personal connections with students and seeing them every day,” says Ludwig, “so we had to change our mindset.”

One of the biggest hurdles was making sure all resources were available to students, even if they were off the grounds. The previous setup had been such that if a student was on the SPS network, they would automatically have access to the services offered by the library. Ludwig partnered with IT and brought in a third-party platform to enable the services to be securely shared with students, no matter what their login location.

Ludwig and her staff took a two-pronged approach to establishing a distance-learning environment. The first step was to bulk up and streamline all of the library’s pre-existing online resources and digital services. While Ohrstrom boasts a digital collection that rivals most small colleges, this process still included building a distance-learning webpage from scratch, creating tutorials and moving instruction online, and establishing a virtual reference desk. “We get a lot of requests around capstone projects and Fourth Form research papers,” explains Ludwig, “so we wanted to try to replicate that level of support online.”

The second aspect of the Ohrstrom staff’s approach was establishing the Pelicans Read Together program. Conceived about a week before faculty returned to campus, the library staff needed just three days to establish the framework for this community reading project that would kick off Spring Term and the inaugural iteration of distance learning at St. Paul’s School. It also bought faculty valuable time for a week of professional development surrounding virtual classroom best practices.

Ludwig credits a tech-savvy staff for being able to make the jump to online instruction with few hiccups, and establishing a community-wide learning project with minimal lead time. “When else do you get to create something that every single student is engaging in?” she asks.

The student response has been favorable, and the Ohrstrom staff has been plenty busy, even in a remote learning environment. Ludwig says the “library access numbers have been through the roof,” with more than 5,500 views of research guides created by Public Services Coordinator Christie Cho and Research and Instruction Librarian Lura Sanborn. Looking ahead, the goal remains building community, even without face-to-face connections. 

“We're eager to continue working with faculty to build tools that support their work,” Ludwig says, “and continuing to educate students on what we can do to help them.”