Reopening Ethiopian Higher Education Institutions Library in the Context of COVID-19

Abstract

Countries are forced to close institutions by COVID-19. Since the first case of COVID-19 found in Ethiopia, a state of emergency was declared to safeguard citizens. Due to this the education system was suspended for 5 months. It was found that important reopening university by taking appropriate care of COVID-19. The ministry of science and higher education of Ethiopia prepare a directive as a precautionary measure to reopen the universities. In this directive there are certain criterions to be fulfilled by the library before providing services. The objective of this paper is to assess higher education library preparedness to reopen their libraries in the context of COVID-19 according to the directive given by the ministry office. The data was collected using a questionnaire and observation method. The questionnaire is constructed based on the ministry directive for the library. Eighty librarians were participated in the study. The results showed that most libraries fulfilled the expected requirements given by the Ministry office. From the study, we can observe that some libraries have budget shortages to implement the directive fully. The period of COVID-19 also determines the future services given to the libraries.

Keywords: Reopening University Libraries, COVID-19 and Ethiopian Libraries, Digital libraries

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