The Library and Documentation Service (SBD) of the Universitat de València, which introduced its Continuity Plan on 19 March 2020, has developed a system of documentation and bibliographical sources search through its website. The SBD has been working on this service for the last few weeks to resume the activities of the Universitat in an online mode.

Even though SBD had already had various resources frequently used by students and the UV Human Resources Service (PDI), their selection expanded exponentially ever since the first week of distance learning. The director of SBD, Victoria García Esteve, outlined that “the Continuity Plan, aims to provide the university community with the maximum number of services in this extraordinary context, putting great efforts into adapting our staff to remote work as well as expanding and improving the services. This way, we strive to overcome a big obstacle of limiting a physical access to the written works.”

The Library Service has a large collection of electronic resources. According to the statistical data as of 2018, 83% of spending on bibliographical information were directed to the electronic resources, which include 58,474 online journals, 121 databases, and 410,579 electronic books. These resources can be found via Trobes+ search engine, and are available for all university community with the help of the VPN remote connection. In addition, the SBD provides 46,295 documents uploaded in the Repositorio Roderic and 7,681 digital documents at the Biblioteca Digital Sueño, which are considered a valuable bibliographical heritage preserved at the Universitat de València.

Building on the already existing structure within SBD before the crisis, the SBD has adopted its services and provided the university community with an exclusive webpage with special and interesting information within the context of distance learning. Moreover, the SBD developed a Continuity Plan which consists in 5 specific action plans:

1. Attend to the user queries online via the e-mail or the platform The Library Responds.
2. Distribute the electronic resources among the university community using a hashtag #labibliotecaencasa.
3. Continue working on the tasks in the UV repository Roderic as well as the cooperative repository Dialnet.
4. Continue working on the change of the Millenium library management system within the Alma library service platform.
5. Continue working on the tasks of service quality management.

To help the university community access the library, the service has elaborated one selection of resources for professors and researchers and another for students, focusing on the collection of manuals in an electronic format. In addition, certain publishers and providers offer some resources of interest to the university community free of charge. The SBD has gathered these contents on this webpage that is constantly being updated. As a result of successful negotiations between the Library of Social Sciences and the Tirant Lo Blanch editorial, the students and professors of the Universitat de València can access its interesting Digital Library. Meanwhile, the Library of Health Sciences offers help to the medical research staff and created a separate webpage informing about coronavirus.

On the other hand, the SBD is strengthening its presence on social media - Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Apart from posting the updated information, the service takes advantage of the social networks to stay in touch with the researchers and students, which is so important these days.

At last, the service continues popularising its valuable bibliographical heritage by joining the initiatives of “CulturaEnCasa” (“CultureAtHome”) and organising such campaigns as “Los domingos, a la Histórica!...también a Instagram” (“On Sundays, go to the Historical Library!... on Instagram as well”). Thus, everyone can continue enjoying our literary treasures.

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This information was elaborated as a part of institutional communication on behalf of the Principal’s Office of the Universitat de València in collaboration with the Library and Documentation Service of the Universitat de València.