In 2020, as the COVID pandemic continued to spread, colleges and universities took action to protect staff, faculty, and students, while continuing to teach and conduct research to assess the impact on academic libraries as all learning rapidly moved online.
The SPARC study on the impact of COVID was intended to address academic libraries’ budgetary challenges and approaches, with a focus on understanding how they affected attitudes towards content, collections, and open initiatives.
The study included a survey, sent to all 242 current SPARC member institutions in January 2021. Responses were received from institutions in the United States, Canada, and Australia. The responses included multiple submissions from the same library, partial responses, and a small number of responses from non-member institutions. Once blank entries and duplicates were removed, the final dataset included 117 complete responses and 20 partial responses. Several responses were followed up with phone interviews to gain further insight into the choices made and strategies implemented.
While this survey was conducted during the last academic year and is being released as the new year begins to unfold, this report can serve to reflect the realities of libraries over the past year in a way that can be helpful in informing the decisions and actions taken moving forward.
The study underscored the extremely difficult circumstances faced by most academic libraries as a result of the pandemic—and libraries’ continuing support for open initiatives despite these challenges. This moment has encouraged rapid change, permitting librar-ies to attempt changes they had considered in the past and accelerating changes already underway. Among these trends were questioning Big Deal agreements, renegotiating prices with major publishers, and continuing support for open initiatives.
Among the findings of the study:
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Nearly 80% of libraries had to contend with budget cuts as a result of COVID; over 20% reported having experienced a cut of 10% or more; the vast majority of those who experienced cuts anticipate that these reductions will likely be permanent.
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Many libraries reported renegotiating publisher agreements or unbundling a Big Deal, or were strongly considering doing so. That said, in some cases, the need to act quickly and efficiently served to protect major long-term contracts (including some Big Deals), while leaving smaller publishers and one-time purchases (like monographs) exposed as easier to cut with fewer immediate repercussions.
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Across the board, respondents reported investing in open initiatives in a range of ways; most felt these investments were either likely to continue at current levels (50%) or grow (35%) in the year to come.
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For many libraries, COVID-related shutdowns have reinforced the importance of the library as a source for provisioning digital content and for supporting online pedagogy, as demand from faculty and students for online content grew. Many librarians addressed this by shifting resources to providing further support for teaching, whether through digitization of course materials, working with instructors to create or manage online courses, or supporting adoption or creation of OERs.
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Among the concerns raised by library leaders were the long-lasting impact of having run libraries absent their physical spaces, the impact on staff morale, and an inability to move ahead with new plans.
Overall, responses indicated a very intentional spirit of experimentation, born of necessity, resulting in creative problem solving concerning spaces, personnel, and collections. This report will help to inform the SPARC agenda in the months ahead as library leaders adjust to campus life post-pandemic. While the more dramatic budgetary and space restrictions of the past year will hopefully disappear, the value of having openly available materials for research and teaching has never been more clear.
