Resilience Practices in Health Science and Medical Libraries During the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic: This paper uses the concept of resilience engineering as an organizing principle to discuss best practices that evolved within health science / medical libraries in the United States during COVID-19 crisis, focusing on the period March – August 2020. Protection of library staff, assistance to medical staff, reducing the circulation of misinformation and public health consumerism all required substantial changes to standard processes. These process changes had to arise in the context of both physical isolation and information overload. Some practices became widespread due to their utility, and these are the focus of this report.

October 2024 — Justin’s project has been published in Medical Reference Services Quarterly:

Gaynor, J. F. (2024). Resilience Practices in Health Science and Medical Libraries During the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2024.2420045

Justin Gaynor received his doctorate in Materials Science from Virginia Tech in 1995. After many years in the semiconductor and medical electronics industries, he retired from the private sector to focus on his love of information science and libraries. He hopes to become a health sciences librarian upon earning his MLIS, ideally working to support faculty research in a medical school.