Online learning policy for students and work from home for lecturers and staff has been enforced in all Pelita Harapan University (UPH) campuses. Every supporting facility further follows this policy in order to give maximum online service, including UPH Medan’s library, which has shifted into online literature collection to meet students’ and lecturers’ needs.

Besides having a complete physical literature collection, UPH Medan’s library is also connected to The Johannes Oentoro Library (JOL), which have had hundreds of thousands of online literature, accessible through library.uph.edu/databases. Visitors can directly search for the literature they need by inserting their Student ID Number and Employee Registration Number for lecturers and staff.

Compared to the normal situation, physical book loan during the Covid-19 pandemic decreased significantly, one in which decreased by 80% in UPH Medan’s library. But if we are to see it from our online access at library.uph.edu/databases, UPH’s online library increased by a significant number, at 32.447 users from March to May 2020 alone. This number includes UPH Medan users.

Another interesting note to point out is the fact that UPH Medan also has virtual interactive services through e-mail. Every lecturer and student will be sent official announcements from UPH Medan’s library e-mail if they are to encounter difficulty in book accessing and/or search. If such difficulty happens, students, lecturers, and staff can send an e-mail to library.medan@uph.edu and receive feedback at 1×24 hours latest.

To ensure collection comprehensiveness, UPH Medan’s library further subscribes to various online literature access. These subscriptions include Academic Search Complete (Ebsco), Business Source Premier (Ebsco), eBook Academic Collection (Ebsco), EconBiz, Gale eBooks (Cengage Learning/Gale), Garba Rujukan Digital (Garuda), InfoSci (IGI Global), http://e-resources.perpusnas.go.id, MyLibrary, and PQTD Open (ProQuest).

Besides e-library access, students and lecturers are still allowed to borrow physical books for special needs. But in order to borrow physical books, everyone would have to follow specific procedures which include logging in to bit.ly/opacuphmedan to search the book they wanted to borrow or by accessing gofollett.com’s mobile version and choose “other countries” on location column and “UPH Medan Indonesia” on school column before clicking “GO”, and then log in with UPH’s their UPH e-mail and password.

“After they find the book they wanted to borrow, students or lecturers are required to send an e-mail to library.medan@uph.edu. The library will then reply to the e-mail with a confirmation date and time. Students and Lecturers are only allowed to take the book they want to borrow

on Monday or Wednesday, 10 A.M. to 1 P.M. at UPH Medan Aryaduta campus,” explains Arifin Fu – the Executive Director and Associate Dean to UPH Medan.

With the ease in literature access, UPH Medan proves its commitment to provide students and lecturers with the best accessibility to various literature collections needed during the online learning period.