... how Carnegie Library responded to the pandemic
Librarians at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh worked remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic up until last month, but that didn’t mean library services and resourcescame to a halt.
While the key role of a librarian is providing in-person customer service to patrons, that traditional role has evolved in the post-pandemic era.
Simon Rafferty, 41, went from a full-time teen librarian at the East Liberty branch to working from home and providing technical software support over the telephone. He mainly helped adult and senior citizen library patrons use the library’s e-resources and get their personal technology devicesup and running.
This interview has been edited for space and clarity.
Q. How did your work change during the pandemic?
A. Instead of helping teens every day, I became a digital access literacy expert. I was calling and helping primarily adults and seniors as part of the Digital Access Literacy and Equity (DALE) Team.
Our e-books became very popular. There were a couple of months where the library was completely closed, so a lot of adults and seniors were sort of dusting off those old tablets they were given, and they needed some help getting those online and connecting to Wi-Fi and then using some of these services like Overdrive and Libby and Hoopla that they could get free e-books from home.
How much had people used e-books from the library prior to the pandemic?
Those got much, much more popular when we closed down during the beginning of the pandemic. These sources of library materials had pretty much gone unused before the pandemic. For a while, it was the only way to get a book.
But after around three months, we started offering curbside pickup. Still, a lot of patrons didn’t feel safe even coming for that, so they just used their e-devices. Once they got used to reading an e-book from home and they didn’t have to leave home to get one, they were taking advantage of that much more than they used to do.
Did you enjoy doing a job that was so different from what you are trained for?
It was actually incredibly rewarding being able to help people with their devices at their home. They didn’t have to leave their place. They didn’t have to be unsafe, and it was very successful. We’re not tech experts. We’re not IT. But we are lifelong computer users, and we’re very good at doing research and finding help.
So, just being there to talk to people and talk them through their issues step by step, 90% of the time, we were able to get their devices working and get them using the e-books. It was a very good experience, honestly, being able to help people no matter where they are.
Which library resources were most popular with teens and young people during the pandemic?
One program we offered was for remote hot spots [for those] who were having issues connecting to the internet, specifically for schoolwork. We offered about 500 hot spots that were available pretty much throughout the entire school year for free. It’s like having the internet in your pocket. A household that maybe can’t afford internet or get internet otherwise could use one of these hot spots to connect to their phone or laptops or computers to that device.
Did you always want to be a librarian?
I always wanted to help people when I was growing up. That was a big thing.
Then, when I was at Denison University, I worked at the school library while I was a student and over the summer. I came to Pittsburgh and started working at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh at the support center. Then I moved over to the Knoxville branch when they needed a teen library assistant. I got my master’s in library and information science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2013, then I landed a job here as a librarian at the East Liberty branch.
How has the library experience changed in general over the past 20 years?
Here, especially in the teen space, we have things like 3D printers. We have Cricket, which does vinyl cutting. We have a sound booth where teens are able to record music and rap and all sorts of things like video games. Pre-pandemic, when therewere a lot of teens here, this space was a lot noisier than you would expect in a library. We have adults like myself who understand teens are growing and there’s a lot of stress being a teenagers right now, and just having a place where they feel safe and where they have caring adults is so importantto have at that age.