4 Redefining Academic Library Services During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A View from Zimbabwe

At the end of 2019, a novel coronavirus was identified in Wuhan, a city in China. It rapidly spread throughout the world, resulting in a global pandemic declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2019. The Gov­ernment of Zimbabwe (GoZ) reported its first case of COVID-19 on March 20, 2020, and quickly responded by instituting infection prevention and control measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The government encouraged the public to remain in their homes, work from home, practise hand hygiene, adopt physical distancing, and wear face masks in all public places. These measures meant that all schools and universities closed for face-to-face contact learning and adopted elearning. Librar­ians as trusted lieutenants for access to quality information, working with scien­tists, have a vital role to combat disinformation. This chapter reports on a quali­tative content analysis of posts on COVID-19 on the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) digital platforms. The UZ Library responded with an implementation framework and adapted proven techniques to empower researchers and students with tools to address harmful and false information. The chapter presents the key lessons learnt in addressing science disinformation at the peak of the information disorder. The implications of science disinformation to library practice post the pandemic are explored, along with the impact of the pandemic on staff skills development and service delivery in what has become known as the new normal.