My off-campus library colleagues and I constantly allude to the pervasive anxiety we feel regarding our present professional responsibilities. Our days are successively packed with ever-changing computer hardware, new versions of "enabling" software programs and applications, plus a variety of new "teaching-learning" course configurations. Regardless of how our own institutions define "distance education," our collective futures will remain centered in student information skills and support.

Learning via distance education can be synchronous or asynchronous; reaching students place-centered or place-independent; as a group, individually, or combining the group/individual experience. The U.S. Conference on Fair Use (CONFU) Distance Learning Working Group provides a useful set of delivery system examples that typifies the technological diversity of distance education. Their list presently includes "telecourses, audio and video teleconferences, closed broadcast and cable television systems, microwave and ITFS, compressed and full-motion video, fiber optic networks, audiographic systems, interactive videodisk, satellite-based and computer networks" (USPTO 20). Other sources offer similar listings. For example, the 1997 edition of "The Oryx Guide to Distance Learning" has 22 delivery system categories, including CD-ROMs, the Internet, Labs Without Walls, and voice mail.¹

Given this dramatic technology mix that is now shaping course content creation, exploration, interaction and learning outcomes, what are the major trends/issues we will encounter in the next five years? What are the strategies and tools we can use to remain professionally viable and expert? I've identified five for consideration. They are my "High Five for the Next Five."

Trend/Issue #1: We will engage in more frequent, sustained collaboration with instructional and technical teams responsible for designing and delivering distance education courses.

As Donald Riggs, Library Director of Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida recently wrote: "The enabling technology has added substantive value to our institutions, and it is dramatically changing the way the library's mission is realized. Librarians are the one group on the campus that knows how to navigate the information networks to locate, filter, and customize information for users" (113-14). I would add that librarians who work with remote users in any capacity are already used to spanning unit boundaries and working collaboratively with individuals who are using new technologies. These include faculty teaching via interactive TV, faculty and instructional designers developing Internet multi-media learning experiences, and course web chat masters and server masters. Our roles in this process will intensify and our support expand.

Trend/Issue #2: In the United States at least, copyright issues related to the new technologies will remain legislatively murky. Decisions in other countries on copyright will also impact U.S.- originated distance education programs.

As technologies expand the potential geographic reach of distance education, attracting diverse, fluid, international student enrollments, issues of intellectual property protection become critical. Regrettably in the U.S., pre-legislative efforts to reach limited consensus on such issues have revealed a tremendous range of opinion and/or inability to cope with the many ways in which constantly changing technologies are creating new situations. For example, the CONFU Distance Learning Working Group decided it was not yet feasible to draft guidelines dealing with asynchronous delivery of distance learning over a computer network because the area was "unsettled." They have suggested that the issue of fair use guidelines using this course delivery mode "be revisited within three to five years" (USPTO 6).

In order to deal with the absence of agreed upon guidelines, librarians in the in the U.S. will spend more time following copyright views and endorsements of various groups and associations. Excellent sources for news and links to relevant documents are the Copyright Management Center website at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis <http://www.iupui.edu/it/copyinfo/> and the Association for Research Libraries' home page <http://www.arl.org/>.

Trend/Issue #3: Library vendors offering electronic access and/or digitized content will increasingly seek our expertise as they try to tap the market potential of distance education.

In their book, "Transforming Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century," Michael Dolence and Donald Norris cite one estimate of the size of "FTE Information Age learners" who will be in the U.S. work force and those of nine other industrialized countries by the year 2000. The number is over 100 million (8). Obviously only a fraction of these learners will go to a traditional campus. Yet, each learner will have some level of institutional affiliation as s/he pursues his/her education. As individuals, they will also be more reliant on electronic access to and delivery of information.

During conferences and sales visits, many of us already have spoken to vendors about the invisible users we routinely serve. We need to emphasize the difficulties our users face when product access/delivery is based on a library-as-building mentality (e.g. network IP range or the provision of one authorization/password for all users). We must skillfully educate vendors about our programs, stressing the need for simplified connectivity and placing of information on the "anywhere" desktop.

Trend/Issue #4: Higher education's institutional framework is changing radically due in part to the versatility of distance education delivery modes and their perceived economy. Consequently, our most important future professional colleagues may emerge from new academic structures or partnerships--corporate universities, for-profit universities, virtual universities.

The traditional public or private university no longer is the only provider model. In the U. S., the new educational providers are such entities as Motorola University, the University of Phoenix, and America OnLine. Some new providers are our own institutions, as they enter into partnerships with other like or unlike entities. The Western Governors University, an academic non-profit corporation involving 13 Western states, falls into this new model category. Permanent or transitory, these organizational arrangements offer us rich networking opportunities and chances to create collaborative test projects with librarians and information specialists connected to these emerging models.

Trend/Issue #5: We will become more comfortable with and reliant upon asynchronous electronic sources for professional development.

What comes to mind here is the use and sharing of personally identified electronic sites, sources or listservs that address our individual and collective development needs. Some valuable resources to look at are:

Edupage, a free electronic news service from Educom <http://www.educom.edu/web/pubs>

AAHESGIT listserv sponsored by The American Association for Higher Education <http://www.aahe.org/aahesgit.htm>

OFFCAMP, a listserv for discussion of issues related to providing library services to remote users <http://www.tile.net/listserv/offcamp.html>

NetLinks, at <http://netways.shef.ac.uk/netlinks.htm>

D-Lib Magazine at <http://www.dlib.org>

My high five issues and trends list is completed for now -- but it's an open-ended completion -- open to our imaginations and realized through desire and action.

Notes

¹ Kinzie, Magon. Oryx Press. Telephone interview. 25 March 1997.

References

Dolence, Michael G. and Donald M. Norris. Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century. Ann Arbor: Society for College and University Planning, 1995.

Riggs, Donald E. "Why Is It That? Ironies, Paradoxes, and Subtleties." Editorial. College & Research Libraries 58 (March 1997): 112-14.

United States. Patent and Trademark Office. Conference on Fair Use. The Conference on Fair Use: An Interim Report to the Commissioner. December 1996. http://www.sla.org/govt/confu.html or http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/dcom/olia/confu/interim.html

Maryhelen Jones
Central Michigan University
E-mail: maryhelen.jones@cmich.edu

Maryhelen Jones is Director of Off-Campus Library Services at Central Michigan University. In her 20-year career as a library practitioner and administrator, she has held both public and technical services positions in academic, corporate, government and public libraries. She holds an M.L.S. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an additional graduate degree in International Relations from East Carolina University. She is active professionally within ACRL, escpecially its Extended Campus Library Services Section; and in UCEA, the University Continuing Education Association.