I'll start my presentation today by telling you something about the State University of West Georgia and how we deal with the delivery of library services and content to distance learning students there. Part of that discussion will have to address statewide issues: West Georgia is a member institution of the University System of Georgia. The system is a collection of 35 2- and 4-year colleges and universities with a single Board of Regents and Chancellor's office, and over the last four years system libraries have been able to jumpstart legislative initiatives that no single institution would have had the influence, or money, to achieve. Those initiatives impact nearly all Georgia educational institutions, public and private, secondary and postsecondary, including public libraries. I believe that West Georgia has been able to leverage these statewide programs as well as any institution, and we've been able to redirect local funds to provide what I believe is superior library services to Georgia's Cyberstudents.

Something about West Georgia and Ingram Library: we are a primarily residential liberal arts institution located about 50 miles west of Atlanta. We have about 8670 students, so we're larger than Adelphi, but smaller than Hofstra. We have 109 majors: more than Long Island University, but fewer than Stony Brook. We have forty-five graduate majors and about 24% of our students are graduate students. While many of those graduate majors are in education, we also have master's programs in Biology, Rural & Small Town Planning, Accounting, Musical Performance, English, History, Psychology, and other traditional liberal arts programs. We will be beginning a Doctoral Program in Education, Fall 2000. Last year we had more Honors students' research papers accepted for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the National Collegiate Honors Council than any university in America; our debate team placed second at the National C(ross) E(xamination) D(ebate) A(association) Tournament. We also qualified, for the 27^th consecutive year, for the National Debate Tournament, a record matched or beaten by only four other universities in America. The Advanced Academy of Georgia, a residential program for exceptionally gifted high school juniors and seniors at West Georgia (this year, I believe the youngest was 14), continues to enjoy success measured by national standards. In a comparison of SAT scores of 20 top national public Universities, our entering academy students ranked 5^th. The University is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award bachelor's, master's, and education specialist's degrees. All programs preparing teachers are accredited by NCATE; undergraduate and graduate programs of the College of Business are accredited by the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business. Other accreditations include the National League for Nursing, National Association of Schools of Music, American Chemical Society, Consortium for Diversified Psychology Programs, and National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration. Our President is determined that every program that has an accrediting body will be accredited. All courses at West Georgia are taught by faculty: while we have graduate assistantships, all are research, rather than teaching positions. Both the University President and Vice-President for Academic Affairs teach at least one course a year.

That's the good news, and that's the speech my President makes. What are some of the factors that directly impact library services to students, whether off-campus or on? First, our total library expenditures per FTE student are less than any academic institution in LILRC, other than Nassau Community College (and we don't have 20,000 students to give us a critical mass of funds). Our recent expenditures for collections are about the same as Dowling College's, or about 45% what Adelphi spends. I believe we spend a larger proportion of our collection expenditures on print materials than any academic institution in LILRC. That's not necessarily bad, because we have a real determination not to be caught in the traditional academic library bind over spiraling escalation of serial prices, and the consequent inability to purchase books that go out of print after about 6 weeks. We are, by the way, -- by far -- net lenders of ILL materials, both returnables and non-returnables. Our student/library staff ratio is higher than every academic LILRC library except SUNY/Farmingdale and Nassau Community College. We have a staff of 35 -- two more than Dowling College, with 2500 more students and 60 more majors. Our average librarian salary is above the average salary for LILRC institutions, but all librarians have faculty rank and status, with attendant teaching, research & publication, and service responsibilities required for tenure (and we all know that administrators like me skew salary averages). Every Librarian is expected to serve on Library committees, on University committees, and on University system committees. We have representation in the University Faculty Senate. Administratively, we're like a College, divided into four divisions: Access Services (which includes circulation, document delivery/interlibrary loan and off-campus services ((essentially, we view all these activities as material delivery mechanisms)); Technical Services (which includes serials, acquisitions/collection management, and cataloging); Instructional Services (which includes reference, government documents, special collections, and classroom instruction) -- this is the largest division and includes most of the library faculty; and Administration, which is the smallest division. Instructional services -- as a division -- provides library instruction to all lower level courses; individual librarians provide instruction and materials to upper division and graduate courses. Every librarian has collection management and departmental liaison responsibilities, in addition to whatever they consider to be their "normal" job. Every librarian works at the reference desk. We're open nearly 90 hours per week, and we provide full service at the reference desk every hour that we're open. We have a true merit pay evaluation that generally takes about four months to perform. Annually over the past five years when average salary-increase pools have been 5.6%, librarians' salaries have increased from 2 to 13%. Classified staff increases, from their own pool, have been about the same. We pay for performance.

Last fall, about 17% of our students -- not including students taking courses via the internet-- took courses at 18 sites off-campus, generally through two-way interactive video. Those locations are anywhere from 30 miles to 250 miles from campus. By this fall our faculty had developed nearly 120 courses offered through the Internet, a little more than half are undergraduate, a little less than half are graduate courses. While some of those are survey courses, they also include courses such as Ancient and Medieval Political Thought, Eukaryotic Molecular Genetics, Sport Management, Analytical Chemistry (including the lab sessions), and International Finance. On our last accreditation report, the State University of West Georgia received commendation for library-services to distance students. Last year, in a student satisfaction survey conducted by the Chancellor's office of all system students, on-campus library services at Ingram Library recieved about the third highest institutional satisfaction score from West Georgia students. Besides working like dogs, what are we doing right?

I believe that, fundamentally, what we've done is to treat all of our students as if they were distance students. Whatever works on-campus must work off-campus: actually, that's really the easy part. Using technology and money, that's mostly a mechanical process. We provide 1-800 voice and fax services, we'll fax or email consumable library materials to students' homes, we have contractual relations with two libraries that our serve permanent off-campus locations and we buy them fax machines and computers, and books for their collections; we have courier services to provide physical objects, we will ship reserve collections to contracted locations. What is more difficult is to make whatever is successful off-campus standard operating procedure on-campus. When I begin to discuss some of the state-wide initiatives, I think you'll see how some of these procedures have become easier, and what kind of challenges lie ahead of us. By the end of this fall, the last two dormitories on campus will be wired into on the campus fiber optic network. Next fall, while students will not be required to own computers, they will be under the presumption to have access to one at home or at work, with an Internet service provider, or the ability to connect to the campus network. At Ingram Library, we've begun to realize that whether a student is in the next building or in the next state we have to be able to provide the same level of library service to them as to the student standing in front of the reference desk. Indeed, on-campus students may be taking some of their courses in a classroom building and some through the Internet.

Let me briefly mention two older system-wide projects of library cooperation in Georgia that have been helpful foundations for providing library services to both our on- and off-campus students. First, for about fifteen years, University system libraries have supported a Joint-Borrower's card. That means that any authenticated student, staff, or faculty member has borrowing privileges at any of the 35 member institutions of the University System. Ingram Library annually issues more than 2000 joint borrowers' cards to students and faculty who either find other libraries more convenient or know that items we don't have are located elsewhere in the state. Materials can be borrowed from, and returned to, any institution in the system. While we must offer and provide service and materials to our students, the majority of state institutions are located around Atlanta, and many students do find other libraries more geographically convenient to use. Secondly, there has been, for about 15 years, an online Georgia Union list of Serials named Georgia GOLD. About 120 libraries and library systems have detailed holdings statements for about 36,000 serial titles. Participants include public and private academic libraries, public libraries systems, corporate and hospital libraries. Participants must provide annual updates to continue participation. This helps in Interlibrary loan and in tandem with the Joint Borrower's card, provides fairly accurate information for students willing to turn to other libraries. University system libraries have both a statewide UPS contract and use ARIEL software for faxing interlibrary loan materials. Turn-around time for ILL is about 72 hours. I believe that document delivery for our off-campus students is at nearly the same level, but sometimes it is easier or quicker for students to go directly to another institution. Both these projects -- the borrowers' cards and the union list -- are key components in current and upcoming system-wide initiatives.

Georgia librarians (like librarians everywhere) are big on acronyms. Here, I'll mention two: GALILEO and GIL.

Georgia Library Learning Online -- GALILEO -- has gotten some national press, but I want to point out some features that are particularly important at Ingram Library as we both leverage state resources and continue a real paradigm shift in the way we regard distance and local library services. First, to University system libraries, GALILEO provides centralized, system-wide Internet access to about 130 commercial databases, using a common OCLC SiteSearch based interface and search-engine. With different database configurations, GALILEO is also available to private academic institutions, to every public library in the state, and to every public school district, and to every technical school. State funding has provided computers, Internet connectivity, and database selections to all the publicly-funded libraries. University students, who have the widest selection of databases, are provided with password access to GALILEO from any Internet connection. That means our off-campus students can go into a public school, a public library, or be at home and have the same range of services they would have from inside Ingram Library. On-campus students have full access from any computer on the campus network: and parts of our network are located in a center 30 miles away from the main campus. This provides a base level of support for West Georgia students from anywhere, and it truly does not make any difference whether they are in the library building, or studying this semester overseas. It also means that the smallest unit of the University system, a two-year institution with an EFT count of about 500 students, has a base level of support equal to any other unit in the system. Their students can transfer to a senior institution with a built-in, base skill set that transfers as easily (probably easier than) their course credits. What do the GALILEO databases provide? Standard bibliographic databases include: all the H.W. Wilson databases, Medline, OCLC and its associated FirstSearch databases, PAIS, RILM, GEOREF, Dissertation Abstracts, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, ISI's Current Contents, a 35 year subset of SocioFile and a four year subset of PsychAbstracts. Full text databases include Bell & Howell's ABI Inform, Business Dateline, and ProQuest, a range of Ebsco full text serials databases, many of the Chadwyck-Healey databases, Georgia state documents since 1994, the New York Times, Lexis/Nexis Academic; language dictionaries including OED 2, the Grove Dictionary of Art, encyclopedias, the World Almanac, and CollegeSource college catalog collection. Since we already had the Georgia GOLD Union List of Serials in an online version, we were able to link hooks to holdings for serial titles that were not full-text in GALILEO. Students can directly download available full-text, they can know whether we own a non-full-text title in traditional formats, or they can find out who does. So, GALILEO explains some of the ways we provide content to our students (both on- and off-campus). How did it change the way West Georgia thought about Library services to students? First, we realized that as many services as possible has to be available at least online. Online services had to become the standard delivery mechanism. Class handouts, directions and maps, ILL request forms, book order forms, document delivery request forms had to be online. We can demonstrate them or print them out to give to students, but we have to have them online for those students who aren't in front of us. Subject bibliographies or pathfinders developed by liaison Librarians have to be online. Instructional Services teaches a 2-credit course; of course we now have an online version so workbooks and instructional materials need to be online. The course, Academic Library Research, was originally designed with Ingram Library as a working laboratory for conducting research. Ironically, the critical thinking and evaluative skills are much more apparent and necessary in an online environment. Since we instituted the online version, we had to find online equivalents for many of the resources we teach students to use. It became ludicrous to talk about the "big red books" whether we were talking about LCSH or about the New York Times Index. Next year, I believe we will be looking at creating our Reserve collection for the semester as an electronic database. GALILEO provides full-text for about 2500 journals. (This accounts for overlap between different vendor packages, and does not include titles in LEXIS/NEXIS). We continue traditional subscriptions for about 1300 titles, and now locally provide electronic access to about 700 more titles, either through purchase or subscription. We provide a standard mix of vendors: JSTOR, Project MUSE, Academic Press' IDEAL. We're looking at Stanford Press' Highwire to beef up scientific titles, although we continue to provide Dialog access to most STN literature. We additionally provide electronic access to a variety of monographic literature: a collection of about 900 computer texts (since they age so quickly), electronic versions of the Human Relations Area Files, electronic EDRS, federal tax and human resources legal services, etc. Since we had locally purchased electronic periodicals not covered in GALILEO, and since we found that many of the title lists provided by electronic vendors such as UMI/Bell & Howell and Ebsco contained so many errors, we created one concatenated list of electronic journals with hotlinks to them. If liaison librarians propose acceptable, free Internet journals, they can be added to the list. When students are online, they can open two windows, and, as they check bibliographic databases, they can check our full-text holdings, and go straight to the titles if they find what they're looking for. As I suggested before, we still have about 1300 periodical titles, and our book purchases remain fairly stable. Ironically, since we've begun this process, we've often found ourselves ahead of the GALILEO curve: we had LEXIS/NEXIS before GALILEO, when they picked it up, it freed local funds for other databases. Particularly, many of the titles we use to have on CD-ROM, with the associated network maintenance and limitations, are now available via the web, and local funds are continually being freed to feed this whole process.

The other acronym I mentioned was GIL -- Georgia Interconnected Libraries. This project hasn't received the press that GALILEO has, but I think its impact will be as significant. System libraries are about half-way through a three-year process of replacing all system OPACs with Endeavor, mounted on three separate servers throughout the state. Ingram Library is in the process of completing data migration scripts and testing database configurations now. I think circulation is scheduled to go live on December 23, 1999. We've gotten funding for recon projects for government documents and for continuing authority control as a part of the project. During the past several years, a number of overlap studies in the state have revealed that even the smallest system library has a collection of at least 35% unique titles. My recollection is that West Georgia's collection is about 55% unique to system libraries, and of course larger Research library collections like Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia's figures are much larger. When the project is complete, all three servers will be linked to create a system-wide union catalog of thirty-five libraries with a universal patron database. Both the patron and bibliographic databases will be updated in real-time. At that point, any University system student will be able to self-initiate a loan request from any system library. That means, for any individual transaction, any student in the system could be a distance student for the lending library. On the day that the Union catalog and Universal Patron Database become fully operational, Ingram Library will, essentially, gain the potential for an additional 228,000 distance patrons. Using current fax and courier systems, we anticipate about a 48-hour turn around on any non-local request, and GALILEO and GIL will have created out of thirty-five system libraries, as was suggested in legislative proposals, One Statewide Library. Although each library will establish and retain its own circulation policies, at Ingram Library, the whole process has certainly meant a certain loss of control over local procedures. We've had representation though, on vendor selection, software and programming committees, circulation, ILL, reference/user interfaces, and catalog committees and we have fair confidence that our interests will be met. I think one of the reasons West Georgia librarians have been able to take a lead in the functional and design features of the system is that we were, as I suggested before, ahead of the curve in looking beyond our own doorway in deciding what would constitute library service in an electronic age.

When I received the invitation to participate in this roundtable, Francie Davis included a short list of questions that she felt might be generated by discussions of the conference theme: Cyberstudents and YOUR Library: Providing a Gateway to Distance Learning. By now, I expect you realize that I'm bound to have opinions about those questions, and that I'm certain that I'm right about my answers. So, here goes.

What are the true costs of distance learning? A lot more than you want it to be. My rough estimate of Ingram Library's costs for just the last two years is well in excess of $350,000, and that's a lot of money for us. Don't be deceived about my earlier remarks. When I talk off my campus, I claim that we do so well because we're lean and mean and efficient. When I talk to my Director, to my VP or President, I have a whole different set of numbers that compares Ingram Library to Georgia libraries that also have GALILEO. I make it clear that we're starving for funds.

Who pays for this access? You do, of course.

What and whose funds support the distance learning students' use of the library? Generally, your existing funds. While there may be some sort of additional programmatic support, it surely won't be enough. I encourage each of you to look at your institutional IPEDS or ACRL data on library expenditures (I have). In 1996, SUNY/Stony Brook (obviously the rich institution of your organization) spent $699 per student in total Library support: books, periodicals, databases, postage, labor. I believe that you'll find it almost impossible to provide the kind of support I've been talking about to a single student sitting at his/her computer in Canandaigua for $700 unless you're able to consider changing the whole way you look at library services.

Is the public library becoming the peoples' university again? I don't think so. Of course, in the recent Hennan American Public Library Rating Index Georgia came in 49 out of 51. Still, I take the instructional role of librarians as faculty, with specific areas of subject expertise, deathly seriously. In some areas public libraries may become gateways to other traditional institutions. At one of our off-campus centers we contract for library services with a local public library. I can also see them forging contractual relationships with new, for-profit educational institutions and with traditional non-profit organizations like zoos and museums..

Do distance learning students need access to a library? Generally, I think the answer is yes. There are instances on your own campuses right now, however, in which you provide very little service to some disciplines, or at least to some courses. Introductory laboratory courses in the physical sciences, for example, probably have minimal demand for library services or materials. In general, if what is being taught by distance technologies is a counterpart of on-campus courses or programs, our regional accreditation body, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, makes clear that there should be a direct equivalence of services and collections offered on- and off-campus. Their newest criteria for accreditation includes the statement "Of more importance are the quality, relevance, accessibility, availability and delivery of resources and services, and their actual use by students, regardless of location." Additionally, "For distance learning activities, an institution must ensure the provision of and ready access to adequate library/learning resources to support the courses, programs, and degrees offered. The institution must own the library/learning resources, provide access to electronic information through existing technologies, or provide them through formal agreements." My answer will be (and we come up for re-accreditation in about two years) that distance learning students need the library as much as our on-campus students do.

Three questions together: do distance learning students need library instruction? How do they get it? Do we make special arrangements for distance learning students? Yes, distance learning students need library instruction: many of our distance students are non-traditional, returning to academia after a time in which much has happened to change the whole face of library services. This is becoming less true as time goes on. The mechanical aspects have become noticeably reduced in just the last couple of years, as the public schools and home ownership of computers create, at least, computer literacy. Still, although our students are getting brighter and brighter, the intellectual work of academic research is not something many come to us with: and, again, that's why our largest division is called Instructional Services, instead of Public Services: I'm convinced that injecting students into the process, of preparing them adequately for scholarly communication, is the greatest value academic libraries provide in the educational process. Like on-campus students, off-campus students need instruction and orientation: SACS again has a clear mandate on this issue: "Basic library services must include an orientation program designed to teach new users how to access bibliographic information and other learning resources." And, "Libraries...should provide point-of-use instruction, personal assistance in conducting library research, and traditional reference services." More important than the mandate from SACS, we find our students do, indeed, require instruction to succeed. How? We provide 1-800 telephone and fax service, we have paper hand-outs, online instructions, and courses that are available to distance students. Do we make special arrangements? Of course.

What is the relevance of the topic to the profession? I understand that the state of Arkansas has tried to contract with the University System of Georgia for GALILEO (as have other states). That's their solution to library services to distance education students. As I hope you believe , there is much in GALILEO that is truly valuable. But, like many recent listserv discussions have proposed, any information packages, massively bundled by vendors, contain a fair amount of crap. Having access to Golf Digest, Back Packer and the CRC Manual of Chemistry and Physics won't help me become a successful history major. SACS standards say that library resources and services proffered to distance students must be "pertinent to the programs offered by the institution and include provision for services and resources which support the institution's programs -- in the field of study and at the degree level offered." I contend that GALILEO is designed to provide a level playing field, for establishing minimum requirements for Georgia students. There is a danger, even within the state, that some institutions will accept it as the maximum they will provide. I also repeat my earlier point that the provision of services is as important as the proffering of content. Earlier, I mentioned two Georgia acronyms: GALILEO and GIL. A third will be making an appearance next year: Georgia GLOBE: Global Learning Online for Business and Education. This is a project from the Board of Regents that the system librarians did not propose. It is being designed to offer job-enhancement distance education to non-traditional students through any delivery mechanism appropriate. By March 2000, the CEO "plans to have a web site in place where students may register, pay tuition, and order textbooks for the new Internet courses. Students will become "owned" by one of the existing System schools. By April 2000 the state will begin offering freshman-and sophomore-level courses on the Internet. By April 2001, the state will begin offering junior- and senior-level courses online." In his initial discussions, Dr. Richard Skinner, the CEO of the new program, suggests that there is the expectation that GALILEO will be the cornerstone of providing library services to these students. Students should be able to complete from a menu of courses culled from whatever sources necessary, the core curriculum of their undergraduate degrees and transfer into senior institutions after two years. While I am sympathetic to legislators' concerns over the transferability of student credits from one institution to another, the whole issue begs the question that my institution has, probably, about 5 or 6 core curricula depending on major. I believe that legislation and marketplace forces will place great stress on professional concerns for quality delivery of library services, instruction, and materials.

The final question: are we dealing with multiple modalities? Is distance education so different that its students have different needs? This question gets at the heart of my concerns over the Georgia Globe project. When educational goals are only market driven, or if we necessarily expect different results from different delivery mechanisms, then I am concerned that what we are looking at is a very different product from what we would recognize as a college education. The reason West Georgia distance education emphasizes (and I endorse) the Southern Association's standards for accreditation is that they assume a comparability between instruction and services delivered on- and off-campus. I'll be the first to admit that we don't know enough about delivery mechanisms' impact on the learning process. When we ported the Library Research course to WebCT, we were careful to test portions of the online course in the traditional classroom setting; we will administer pre- and post-tests to students in courses using both delivery mechanisms: we want to be certain that what we want to teach is what we are teaching in both scenarios. I can certainly see questions arising about the necessity or desirability of teaching distance learners in semesters, or in semester-hour increments of instruction. I don't know that there's anything pedagogically sacrosanct (or even sound) about being tied to those units. I think the safest path though, is to maintain the correspondence between on-campus mechanisms that we believe work, and off-campus services. The speed at which we have redesigned the whole foundation of library services at West Georgia is sometimes overwhelming. I believe we have taken a prudent path, however, and I believe that Ingram Library is well positioned to provide an information and a service gateway to our students whatever additional changes the next few years require.

Prepared document presented October 15, 1999 as an invited paper at the 8th Annual Long Island Library Resource Council Conference on Libraries and the Future, Dowling College, Oakdale, New York by Mark McManus. Remarks may have varied from the written text.