Editorial

Evidence Summary Theme: All Things Virtual

Heather MacDonald

Associate Editor (Evidence Summaries)

Health and Biosciences Librarian

Carleton University

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

2023 MacDonald. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons‐Attribution‐Noncommercial‐Share Alike License 4.0 International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one.

DOI: 10.18438/eblip30483

This issue’s Evidence Summaries (ES) takes a look at all things virtual; this includes the virtual library and virtual services. With the recent global pandemic there has been a surge in virtual library services, however virtual services were well established in libraries before that. The library as a virtual space is also not new but the pandemic brought the virtual library front and center for many.

A number of the ES in this issue look at studies examining the impact of the pandemic on libraries. This includes a study that looks at university instructors’ use of online library services, a study of virtual teamwork in public libraries in the United States, and a study investigating the response to the pandemic in public libraries in Bangladesh. In addition, one ES analyzes a case study of technical services usability testing of the library website, and the final two ES examine studies about virtual reference methods - one looking at effectiveness of virtual services and the other at the difference between perception and usage of these services.

Post-pandemic, libraries continue to provide virtual services and technologies. This series of ES highlights some of the most recent research in this area. We hope that you enjoy learning from these all-things virtual ES and can potentially apply them in your own work.