Know & Go: Using Open Science to Deal with the Next Health Crisis

In 2022, researchers at the University of Missouri received a grant from IMLS to conduct a needs assessment and environmental scan of rural, urban, and suburban public libraries to determine strengths and weaknesses in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the results of the study, the COVID-19 pandemic generally found a concerted effort on the part of public health officials to aggregate and push out information about COVID-19, but the Centers for Disease Control and other organizations offer a wealth of information that librarians can mine to increase their community’s health and resilience.