图书馆正在应对大流行期间对图书和服务的新需求

图书馆正在应对大流行期间对图书和服务的新需求

If you find yourself scrambling for a good novel to escape the novel coronavirus, you're not alone. Across the country, libraries have seen demand skyrocket for their electronic offerings, but librarians say they continue to worry about the digital divide and equality in access — not to mention the complicated questions that must be answered before they can reopen for physical lending.

如果你发现自己在为躲避新型冠状病毒而苦苦寻找一本好的小说，你并不孤单。全国各地的图书馆都看到了对他们的电子产品的需求激增，但是图书馆员说他们仍然担心数字鸿沟和平等获取——更不用说在他们重新开放实体借阅之前必须回答的复杂问题了。

"Since the library closed on March 16, we've had about seven thousand people register for library cards," says Richard Reyes-Gavilan, Executive Director for the District of Columbia Public Libraries. "We've had over 300,000 books borrowed since mid-March, which is astounding considering that our collections are limited."

哥伦比亚特区公共图书馆的执行主任理查德·雷耶斯-加维兰说:“自从图书馆3月16日关闭以来，我们已经有大约7000人登记办理借书证。”“自3月中旬以来，我们已经借出了30多万本书，考虑到我们的馆藏有限，这令人震惊。”

By the library's accounting, that's 37% higher than the same period in 2019: Weekly library e-book lending across the country has increased by nearly 50 percent since March 9, according to data from OverDrive, a service used by many libraries to let patrons check out media for e-readers.

据该图书馆统计，这比2019年同期增长了37%:根据OverDrive的数据，自3月9日以来，全国图书馆每周的电子书借阅量增长了近50%。OverDrive是一项服务，很多图书馆都使用它来让读者为电子阅读器查看媒体。

Audiobook check-outs are also up 14% — not quite as large a shift, likely because fewer people are in their cars commuting to work.

有声读物的销量也上升了14%——这并不是一个很大的转变，可能是因为开车上班的人变少了。

Nationally, there's been a jump in titles checked out virtually across topics, but demand for children's e-books has more than doubled during this period.

在全国范围内，各个主题的图书借阅量都在猛增，但同期对儿童电子书的需求增加了一倍多。

By comparison, e-book checkouts for adult fiction across the U.S. have grown by more than a third, and young adult fiction by more than 50 percent. There have been more checkouts of children's books than adult nonfiction on weekdays since the week of March 22.

相比之下，美国成人小说的电子书借阅量增长了三分之一以上，青年小说增长了50%以上。自3月22日起，平日里儿童读物的借出量超过了成人非小说类书籍。

Library categorization is notoriously messy, but OverDrive's rankings of the top national checkouts by genre (using the industry's standard BISAC codes) indicate that readers aren't radically shifting their tastes. The top categories have remained remarkably stable through 2020, led by thrillers, romance, "women sleuths," and literary fiction.

图书馆分类是出了名的乱七八糟的，但OverDrive按类别(使用行业标准的BISAC代码)对全国排名前几位的图书进行了排名，表明读者并没有从根本上改变他们的口味。到2020年，排名靠前的几大类一直保持稳定，以惊悚片、浪漫小说、“女侦探”和文学小说为首。

Libraries have also reacted to the closures by transitioning events to virtual spaces. DC's libraries added a chat service allowing readers to ask a librarian questions over the phone or the web. It also launched its "one city, one book" program online by offering free digital access to Elizabeth Acevedo's With the Fire On High.

图书馆也通过将事件转移到虚拟空间来应对关闭。华盛顿特区的图书馆增加了一项聊天服务，允许读者通过电话或网络向图书管理员提问。该公司还在网上推出了“一座城市，一本书”项目，免费提供伊丽莎白•阿塞韦多的《火焰在高处》一书的数字下载。