Contributing writer Libby Cobera ’24 interviewed Ms. Joan Baldwin, interim director of the Edsel Ford Memorial Library, about the library’s contributions to COVID-19 related needs.

Interviews have been lightly edited for clarity.

As unfortunate as this experience has been, are there positive experiences or moments that have come out of it?

I think actually meeting and working as a team on Zoom has been weirdly easier than our in person meetings. There’s something about it that I feel has brought the team together in a way that maybe wasn’t as effective as before. 

When we imagine a world past the pandemic, do you envision new online resources continuing to be used? 

Oh, absolutely. And this year for the first time we are testing out a virtual library and every Sunday night, one of us is going to be the virtual person and anybody –– faculty, staff, students –– can contact us between 7 and 10 p.m. But I think that’s something that, if it works and people like it, we can push it forward and make that a bit more robust. 

Is there anything that students could do to help your team be successful? 

The library has been known as a place where you can go and you can kind of hang out with your friends: maybe it’s your study space, but it’s also a place for quiet talk or chess or Scrabble, studying near friends, and obviously all of that is kind of over until the pandemic is over. What students can do is to just try to help us by observing the rules, because it’s no fun to be the sheriff of the library.