Analysis of user's information demand during the COVID-19 emergency: case study

ABSTRACT

The difficult public health situation by COVID-19 represented a challenge from the end of March 2020 to 2021 in different areas. Academic libraries had the opportunity to strengthen their mission of supporting society. They took advantage and diversified their services, among which stands out the virtual reference service aimed at supporting users to locate and get information and data. This case study has the purpose of evaluate the reference service provided by the Daniel Cosío Villegas Library (BDCV) of El Colegio de México from January 2019 to December 2021. The queries that were asked to the reference librarians were analyzed based on the READ scale (Reference Effort Assessment Data). The data analysis was performed based on the variables of duration and type of question. The results show a slight increase in queries during the pandemic, related to the search for documents. © 2022 Universidad de Zaragoza, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras. All rights reserved.