Gardening During the Pandemic: One Agriculture Librarians’ Experience with Leveraging Covid-19 to Build Stronger Relationship

Gardening During the Pandemic: One Agriculture Librarians’ Experience with Leveraging Covid-19 to Build Stronger Relationship is a poster in the 2020 PNLA Virtual Poster Session. We encourage you to engage in discussion by leaving a comment on the page. The author of the poster will respond to comments the week of August 4-7, 2020.

Presenter: David Luftig

Track: Academic Library

Abstract:

As the Covid-19 pandemic forced people to physically distance, many turned to gardening as a way to get outside, grow healthy food, and to create a sense of self-reliance. For example, some news outlets began reporting on community trends similar to those seen in the Victory Gardens of World War II.

As an agricultural sciences librarian, at a land-grant university, who was also relatively new to campus, I saw the pandemic as a unique opportunity to connect with faculty, citizens, and extensions located across the state. It was my hope that I could leverage the crises so as to build better relationships.

This poster examines some of the strategies that I used to build relationships during the pandemic and some of the resources that I created. Some resources, such as an open access gardening library guide found an unexpected degree of popularity. I was also able to promote many of the Washington State University Extension documents which has further helped to build relationships within my own subject area.

In all, the pandemic has provided a unique opportunity to introduce myself, build relationships, and to promote university resources.