In support of World Evidence-Based Health Day, the Health and Biosciences (HBS) Section and the Evidence for Global and Disaster Health (E4GDH) Special Interest Group invite you to participate in the webinar “Librarians Lead in Times of Crisis: Specialised Evidence-Based Information Services Support Infodemic Management”.

This session will explore how society today expects libraries to be not just information service providers, but to also serve as catalysts for community engagement. The mission of librarians is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation, preservation, and dissemination. When the pandemic hit the nation, the majority of libraries had to close their doors. Libraries nationwide took the opportunity to transform their service to various types of formats and continue the provision of essential information services to their user communities. Various types of innovative and virtual information services have been developed and implemented. Libraries have been providing specialized evidence-based information services in health-related environments and to the general public.

Presenter Feili Tu-Keefner, PhD, Associate Professor, College of Information and Communications, University of South Carolina, will discuss how librarians have stepped up to being leaders to the communities they serve, especially focusing on how librarians have gone far and beyond to provide non-traditional library services to their communities. Several examples will be provided. Librarians’ leadership qualifications in time of crisis will be addressed. These qualifications are from the results of three situation-specific studies on the provision of disaster health-information services by public libraries. The significance of creating diversified workforces in libraries, as well as how to integrate equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in the libraries’ strategic plans will be also addressed.

Presenter Caroline De Brún, DipLIS, Knowledge and Evidence Specialist – South West, Knowledge and Library Services, UK Health Security Agency, will provide practical examples of how the UK Health Security Agency (formerly Public Health England) Knowledge and Library Services and the IFLA Evidence for Global and Disaster Specialist Interest Group have supported library users and librarians during the pandemic.

There will be a live Q&A with Dr. Tu-Keefner and Dr. De Brún following the presentations.

Please join us via Zoom on 20 October 2021 at 14:00-15:00 (CEST). Registration information is available on the Zoom Registration webpage.