Librarians, historians keep knowledge alive at safe distance

WILMINGTON, N.C. — Jimi Rider walked in the New Hanover County Library’s downtown branch for the first time in weeks and breathed a sigh of relief.

“I just kind of thought to myself how much I’ve missed this place,” said the branch’s supervising librarian.

He stopped by to meet with property management officials to discuss how the library will be arranged to enforce social distancing practices when it reopens — whenever that may be.

Although the heavily trafficked location always has the quiet hum expected of its patrons, it has been virtually silent since it and all of its sister locations closed to the public and staff on March 28 when the county’s stay-at-home order went into effect to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The only people inside since have been county maintenance staff, who’ve used the downtime to give the interior a fresh coat of paint and the carpets a steam clean.

But the closure of the county’s libraries, as well as the Cape Fear Museum, has posed an unprecedented situation for the librarians and historians. What are they to do when their central locations of knowledge and learning shut their doors?

For both staffs, the answer is simple, at least in concept — adapt.

Like many institutions, this change in both scenery and practice has relied heavily on working from home and using online resources the library and museum have, in some cases, always had but never had to lean on.

“It’s been a challenge, but it is something where we’ve had to really focus on using so many of the online resources we already had,” Rider said. “In that way, we’ve been able to adapt pretty well.”

Rider said with patrons unable to rummage through the stacks of physical books in person, they’ve taken to searching the library’s website for everything they may have overlooked in the past. Since the shutdown, he said E-book rentals have increased and so has enrolment in a number of services free to anyone with a library card.

The library’s partnership with the popular genealogy website Ancestry is usually only available on library computers, but the service is temporarily open to members at home, leading to a record number of users.

“It wouldn’t have gotten any use had they not opened it up, but now April has seen the best usage we have had in at least five years,” Rider said.

It has also pushed librarians and staff to get creative with how they interact with patrons online. They’ve reactivated a chat feature online that allows people to ask questions directly to staff. They’ve also created a social distancing calendar to let patrons know of online events they can take part in, from a live feed of animals at the Bronx Zoo to daily story time hosted by staff on their Facebook.

The North Carolina Room has launched a community-sourced project that enlists local residents in transcribing around 900 Civil War-era letters that will be archived in the digital collection.

Rider said the ability to shift much of their work and community interaction online could not have been done even a few years ago, when many of their resources were still bound on the shelves.

“We used to have a massive collection of reference books we used, but as time has gone on, so many of those resources have gone online,” he said. “We’ve whittled down a lot of those physical books and now we have those at our fingertips inside the library or out.”

The transition to digital is not yet exhaustive, especially when it comes to local history material.

But it is still an asset for staff from the Cape Fear Museum as well, who rely on the library’s archives in addition to their own massive permanent collections for research and programming.

“I miss going into the North Carolina Room more than I can say,” said Jan Davidson, the museum’s historian. “We often say everything is online, but it isn’t yet.”

Davidson has set up her home office just outside her kitchen, where her cat Scotty pays her frequent visits. From home, she’s been able to work on local history research for future exhibits still years from debuting, while also brainstorming new ways to continue remotely educating the community with their current ones.

The museum has been active on its Facebook page posting short videos hosted by Davidson and other staff highlighting parts of the museum’s perennial Cape Fear Stories exhibit and its temporary Music Makers exhibit, which was set to debut when the museum closed down.

“They are a way to tell people that when you come back to our exhibits, these are some of the things to think about,” she said. “It’s also a way to keep the exhibits in front of people, even when they can’t be there physically.”

Davidson, curator Heather Yenco and others also did a series of videos on how to make a museum at home. Yenco used her dog as an example in discussing the curation process, while Davidson offered instruction on labeling artifacts with her own possessions.

“It’s all to remind our community what we do in our physical space, but also extend that physical space in their home in a fun way,” she said. “We’re not usually the story, but in this time, you become more of an actor than you expect.”

On Twitter, Davidson has also taken to engaging in hashtag challenges with museums across the globe in an effort to show off some of the best things in their collections for a worldwide audience. She is particularly proud of a popular tweet showcasing creepy blood-stained doll prop from the locally shot horror series “American Gothic” that she said “went as close to viral as we’ve ever got.”

But the museum, like the library, is also looking at what quarantine will mean for residents in the immediate future and long term.

Cape Fear Museum is asking residents to think about what they are using now that could tell Wilmington’s story of the coronavirus for future generations. Davidson has encouraged people to keep diaries of their experience and hold onto artifacts that could be donated to the museum’s collection when it is safe.

“We don’t think of ourselves as living through history, but I think people are more aware of it at this moment because this is a worldwide thing,” she said. “We want to tell those stories in our museum and be able understand this moment when it becomes history for our future patrons.”

At the Cameron Art Museum, staff has taken their exhibits online with virtual guided video tours, online art lesson plans for parents and even Facebook meditation sessions. Drivers may have also noticed the array of inflatable bright yellow ducks placed around the exterior and on top of the museum for a light-hearted visual treat.

As librarians and historians all over the region continue to work out of reach of their trusty collections, many are left yearning for the human interaction that’s also been lost in the shutdown.

“We terribly miss the one-on-one interaction with patrons,” Rider said. “And I know a lot of our patrons are just dying to come in and get a good book in their hands.”

Hunter Ingram, The Starnews, The Associated Press