Health and Safety in the Library Workplace: Lessons from COVID-19 Pandemic Adaptive Practices and Guidelines

Abstract

Health and safety management are priorities in libraries necessary to ensure workers well-being, patrons’ safety and sustenance of information services. Several factors exist in the library workplace that are potential risk factors for infectious disease transmission. These include the library's nature as community facilities, enclosed spaces, poor social distancing, and high personal contact points. The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic raised unprecedented awareness of health and safety susceptibility challenges in the library workplace and their potential to disrupt the system. The paper discussed library environmental risk factors for infectious disease transmission. It reviewed library adaptive practices for service continuity and workplace safety during the COVID-19 pandemic disruptions. The practices included optimized digital services, virtual programmes, contactless book borrowing and return system and others. It also reviewed health recommendations and guidelines on personal and environmental hygiene issued by library organizations and professionals for disease preventive actions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper concludes that despite the remission of the pandemic, the threat of old and new infectious diseases emerging is unending. This necessitates that libraries have well designed policies, guidelines, and practices for workplace health and safety. The various COVID-19 health protocols provide lessons for health and safety management in libraries. They should be strategically implemented for a healthy library workplace.