Schools have always collected data on their students - everything from grades and test scores to information about behavior and medical issues. Beginning in March 2020, however, the potential for unwanted sharing of student information exploded. Most schools without existing 1-to-1 technology programs, where every student is assigned a digital device, scrambled to hand out laptops, Chromebooks, or iPads to students. Schools also tried out and adopted digital teaching tools such as Google Classroom, Canvas, Clever, Pear Deck, Flipgrid, Edpuzzle, Screencastify, Explain Everything, Kahoot!, GoNoodle, and many others. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed many schools fully online. Now, with schools back to in-person learning, school activities still often depend on the use of these digital devices and tools.

Virtual field trips and programming were one way in which K-12 teacher librarians leveraged their resources, expanded equitable access, and pivoted during in-person school closures of the pandemic. Creative virtual programming provides equity of access and connects classrooms with rich and diverse experiences and perspectives. Virtual experiences can remove geographic and economic barriers, provide access to resources and strengthen community connections. This article discusses practical teaching and programming strategies that leverage video conferencing systems to create virtual classroom experiences which enhance lessons, embrace diversity, build community connections, and provide equity of access to resources.

During the COVID pandemic and the overlapping racial reckoning, the inequalities of resources and the disparities of the impact on our country and our communities have been exposed more than ever. Like most libraries, at Sherwood Public Library, we had tangible restrictions to our operations, were temporarily limited to curbside and virtual services, and reopened our doors to a community navigating multiple traumas and injustices. As we prepared to welcome our patrons back inside, our existing Behavior Policy (Sherwood Public Library, 2022) was inadequate, lacking the conviction of antiracism and trauma-informed customer service that we knew we needed.

An American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grant funded the establishment of a virtual reality lab at Eastern Oregon University (EOU) Library during the 2021-22 academic year. Virtual reality, or VR, simulates experiences with the aid of technology, most commonly specialized headsets that allow the user to see and feel like they are immersed in a virtual space. It can be used for gaming, entertainment, fitness, social interaction, and education. The project at EOU began with a collaboration with the Anatomy and Physiology course in which students investigated the inner workings of human organs and systems in VR as a lab assignment. The project has grown to include collaborations with History, Psychology, Health and Human Performance, Student Affairs, and other campus departments. The grant funding helped us to provide innovative digital content to our rural college students without any charge to them, and also helped to build learning experiences that were superior to what had been offered during the prior, more restrictive year of the pandemic. For the library, this wasn’t so much a pandemic-induced pivot as it was an opportunity to offer engaging, cutting-edge, free, and accessible learning experiences to our students.

The textbook market in U.S. higher education is changing. In recent years, publishers have developed an automatic billing model, in which colleges and universities negotiate deals with publishers to provide ebooks and courseware to students, folding the cost into student fees. This model is commonly known as "inclusive access." Because it offers students first-day access to course materials - important to student success - as well as some savings over full-priced standard textbooks, it is becoming popular with faculty and administrators. But textbook publishers are promoting these plans for another reason: The data they can collect with digital materials opens a lucrative new market, allowing them to diversify into analytics services.

As the pandemic forced the Eugene Public Library (EPL) to close its doors and re-imagine services, the Eugene Public Library Foundation created a grant program for staff to obtain funds for small projects that focus on connecting marginalized patrons with information resources. The first of these “Innovation Grants” was awarded to staff at the Bethel Branch Library to create a pilot program in which Wi-Fi hotspots were made available to local nonprofit agencies serving marginalized and at-risk clients. The success of the pilot program led to a wider fundraising effort to create a permanent nonprofit Wi-Fi lending program. EPL currently maintains a collection of 200 hotspot devices which are solely for use by nonprofit partners. Lending Wi-Fi devices for partners to share with clients and to support internal operations has sparked an entirely new type of relationship between the library and the nonprofit community. This article shares this story as a template for other Oregon libraries to envision rethinking their approach to nonprofit partnerships.