Dear Duke Community,   

The Duke Libraries will close to the Duke and broader communities on Wednesday March 18 at 5pm. Library staff will continue to scan documents, focusing on course requests, through 5:00 pm Friday, March 20, 2020. All library staff will work from home thereafter.  

To ensure the health and safety of users and library staff through close of business March 18, users who wish to check out books will be distributed as necessary to checkout stations spread apart in Perkins and Lilly so users can move through quickly and with as much distance from each other as possible.  

At the same time, the Libraries are making extra efforts to enable digital alternatives. The public services staff is developing information for faculty and students and will be posting it to the Library’s COVID-19 update page (https://library.duke.edu/about/coronavirus) on library resources available and whom to ask for help.  Library leadership is working to arrange open access to collections for research purposes, and will be sharing updates on the update page as soon as they have them. As well, the library will maintain extended online chat services from 9:00 am to 12:00 midnight (asklib) for reference questions; they will also offer research consultations as well as (if requested) instructional sessions by Zoom.  

Please know that Libraries staff will make best efforts to meet specific course and research needs. We ask for everyone’s understanding given that interlibrary lending systems are shut down nationally, and there is limited ability to move materials between libraries within the university.   

Professional school libraries messages will follow soon or are available on websites:  

School of Medicine: https://mclibrary.duke.edu/about/coronavirus   

Fuqua School of Business: The Ford Library is closed and librarians are providing library services remotely. The Reference Librarians Team is using email and chat (https://library.fuqua.duke.edu/about/askus.htm) to help students and faculty with research. The Data Services Team (library-data-requests@fuqua.duke.edu) will continue to assist faculty with data purchases. For further information about Ford Library collections and services, visit this website: https://library.fuqua.duke.edu   

Sincerely,  

Deborah Jakubs
Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian & Vice Provost for Library Affairs  

Jennifer Francis
Executive Vice Provost