Behind the Desk: Washington State Community and Technical College Librarians’ and Library Workers’ Perspectives on Student Reference Needs during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Across Washington State, community and technical college librarians and library workers struggled to meet student reference needs as they grappled with swift and often detrimental changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic—which we define as the period between March 2020 and 2021, in keeping with return-to-campus trends of Washington State higher education institutions. Through a framework of the authors’ backgrounds and experiences along with the existing literature, this article situates the impact of COVID-19 in the broader context of academic reference pre- and post-pandemic. This article likewise examines prominent issues COVID-19 brought to the fore and trends that persisted through the end of 2022, when we conducted our research. The authors highlight the gap in this research area to demonstrate and better understand the many challenges Washington State students encounter in their pursuit of higher education, to promote the study of community and technical colleges more broadly, and to shed light on the challenges librarians and library workers continue to wrestle with in 2025.