Virtual programming during COVID: What we wished we had known in advance

Abstract

The University of Wyoming (UW) Libraries received two grants to provide African American poetry programming in the spring and summer of 2020, one from the Library of America’s Lift Every Voice project and one from the Wyoming Humanities Council Spark Grant. As part of the grants, the library partnered with Albany County Public Library and the Laramie High School to create a slate of programs celebrating African American poetry and music that would appeal to all generations. The initial programming was intended to be a series of month-long face-to-face events with a balance of programming types: lectures, poetry readings, poetry slams, children’s programming, and panel discussions. The fact that multiple people worked together to plan the programming enriched the series and was extremely helpful when we realized that we would have to pivot to a virtual program series because of the coronavirus pandemic. This article will discuss how we turned a face-to-face program series into remote programming in a very short timeframe.