(a presentation given at the WILS World conference, Madison WI, May 28, 1998, by Laura Davidson, Georgia Southern University. Slides associated with this talk are located at http://www2.gasou.edu:80/facstaff/ldavidso/)
Today I want to talk about four categories of issues to consider when starting to support off-campus programs: which programs and classes are offered, the locations, what "equivalent" service you offer, and where in the library these services reside. You'll find I'm raising lots of questions and I'll share answers I've given and that I know others have. There are no fixed, absolutely right or wrong answers to these questions. Most will depend on your own situations.
Let me start by describing some institutions I'm familiar with and a little about their off-campus programs. They'll be the basis of most of my examples this afternoon, so the background will be helpful.
Georgia Southern, where I work, is a large regional university, 14,000 students, total, 72 classes off-campus this quarter. Our president stated recently that we offer a quarter of the credit hours taken by off-campus students in the University System of Georgia. We offer several off-campus degree programs, including MBA, MPA, BSN, and graduate Education. Our offerings are currently concentrated in southeastern Georgia. Many classes via interactive TV, meet in high schools and on other college/community college campuses. For others, faculty travel to class. Local library resources available to remote students vary from quite good to nil. At our library, distance education services are bundled into the departments responsible for providing equivalent services on campus, so that, for example, my Information Services department teaches library instruction classes and provides reference support to off-campus students, just as we do for on-campus enrollees.
I'll also use a number of examples from my friend and colleague Carol Goodson at the State University of West Georgia. She and I arrived in Georgia at about the same time, both to work with distributed learners. Her institution is much like mine in terms of the numbers of students and degree programs. Our approach to off-campus services differ, however, and I find the variations useful. For example, when I first met Carol, West Georgia had a separate office for the support of off-campus programs. They've recently undergone some reorganization, but they still maintain a separate Off-Campus Services unit within the Division of Access Services. She has also shared with me samples of forms and information she has used which you'll find in your handouts.
I met Carol first while I was working at the Gwinnett Center--an off-campus campus whose library I opened in 1990. It had 3000+ students, including associate and graduate degree programs when I left in 1994--with three University System of Georgia institutions providing classes and dreaming of becoming an independent school. The Center library is independent of, but supported by all three of the cooperating institutions. It has an on-site collection of approximately 20,000 volumes and perhaps 200 journal subscriptions. The member libraries all deliver materials needed by students upon request via courier and fax. It includes the largest library in Georgia and the smallest. In a way, it is the ultimate in off campus library services--a library where students also attend classes, just for them.
Averett College is a small, private college in Virginia that I know a good bit about. About half of their enrollment is in an unusual, highly structured distance education program, offering accelerated undergraduate and graduate degrees. Degree programs are offered in Virginia and North Carolina, from the remote Appalachians to the DC area. The big difference there is that they have no public institutional network of libraries to rely on. They have four regional centers, each with a full time administrator, some full time faculty and many adjunct faculty. Most library services to students are provided by the reference librarian at the main campus, in addition to her other duties.
The other piece of background to this talk is the Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services, prepared by the recently re-named Distance Learning Section of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL). As a tool for defining the issues, these are wonderful, if somewhat overwhelming. Let me quickly summarize their philosophy--at least, my version of it:
The thing that shapes our library services to off-campus programs is the nature of the programs and classes we offer. What library resources do they require? Introductory math may not need as much support from you as Educational Research, except when the professors confuse all your expectations and an introductory math class needs biographies of famous mathematicians, or an Educational Research class focuses on statistics and survey instruments rather than literature reviews.
On campuses, there are several levels of personnel you need to know. First, there's the senior administrator overseeing off-campus programs and his staff. On our campus that's the Dean of Graduate Studies, and reporting to him, an office of off-campus programs. Then, within academic departments, you'll probably also find someone who has responsibility for these programs, especially if they are full degree programs, not just occasional courses. Finally, you need to know the faculty teaching those classes. These folks are your key to successfully serving your off-campus students. Faculty actually see the students and can deliver your offer of services and also know what the students will require, so you can prepare better for their demands. Faculty also need to know what you offer so that they can adjust their expectations (up or down) to match the realities of the library resources available (again, we're talking about equivalent, not equal services).
Faculty are also the most elusive and hard-to-reach of all the campus personnel, and an ever-changing target as course offerings and responsibilities change. I'm married to a off-campus faculty member. He's an adjunct professor for another college--not uncommon for off-campus programs that are taught on location. His location varies, depending on the college's need. Despite all I tell him about the potentials of library services, he finds it's too much trouble, and since he's not familiar with his home campus, it's easier just to skip the library component for most courses. He arranges reserves for himself, mostly by relying on a local class member or loaning his materials class to class. Once, he arranged with the high school librarian where his class met to leave some notebooks in their library. That worked because the class he was teaching was jointly enrolled--both high school seniors and college freshmen. All this is to say that the faculty will treat your offers of assistance skeptically--even my husband doesn't believe me.
Because of this, the other two levels of administration are useful, so work with both. Starting at the top last summer, we convinced the Dean of Graduate Studies to require that all off-campus classes include the library services handout with every syllabus given out--wild celebrations! --except that edict didn't last long, and may not have carried to every college even at the outset. The mid-level program administrators are also important contacts. They do things like publish newsletters for their students and will usually welcome contributions from you. Students probably identify most closely with these people, outside of their professors. For all three--faculty member to senior administration, be sensitive to their information overload problem. All the folks I mentioned are probably deluged with "must know," "must act on" announcements, and therefor shuffle things off as quickly as possible. Your communication to them needs to be brief and frequent. By the way, administration of these programs is almost as changeable as the faculty teaching the classes.
This is a good place to talk about planning and assessment activities and the documentation prominently mentioned in the Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services. These activities are undoubtably valuable and praiseworthy, especially when accreditation visits loom. You should find out what your students know about library services, how much they use them and whether those services are sufficient. That said, I'll confess that this is a low priority for me. At some point, I want to find out if off- campus students are surveyed about library services by other offices on campus and what results we're getting back: or if not, how we could attach a few questions to their evaluation instrument. I'd like to conduct some focus groups on library services with those students and their faculty. I'd like to collate the statistics on different distance learning library activities already collected. However, I haven't found the time in the four years I've been at Georgia Southern and, to put it cynically, I definitely expect to find that time around the year 2000, two years before our next accreditation visit.
The second key to supporting these programs is to know about the locations where the classes are being taught. You'll find reference to this in the Guidelines under facilities. You need to know what is available to your students where they attend classes. You need to know what libraries are available, what resources they have, and what Internet service options your students have. Every site will be different.
At some locations, you may be offering classes at a place similar to the Gwinnett Center I described earlier, complete with an on-site library of some sort, or at least computers with Internet connections and formal operating agreements at the institutional level. With these, your life will be simple. After all, the local library staff will see your students as their primary clientele and will be good about contacting you for needed resources and support, and perceive your need for local reserve collections and short term holdings of reference works as reasonable and appropriate requests.
Then there are the other local libraries (often referred to as victim libraries). No matter where they are, your students are going to head to them so you'd better know what they're encountering. Doubtless, some of your on-campus students go to the local public library rather than deal with the larger academic facility. (In an earlier position as a public library reference librarian, I dealt with commuting students all the time who wanted our library to support their graduate work--sometimes it was fun, more often frustrating. All of them, at one point or another, got a speech from me about using the library of the school from which they were taking classes.) The most important thing you can do is get in touch with your victim libraries, especially those in areas where your off- campus students are concentrated. Talk with the local librarians and explain your programs in their area and your desire to support those programs without becoming a burden on them. I think that just letting them know who you are and that you aren't just dumping on them, but anxious to support your own, will be immensely helpful.
Discover what sorts of collections and computer resources are available. When you have a choice, identify a library near the student that is best set up to support your students--either the library associated with the classroom provider, or a local academic library or public library. Things to consider include common governance, hours of availability and whose staff are most willing to work with you. The libraries I work closest with are those within the University System of Georgia. Broadly speaking, we share budgets and have a mandate from our Regents to work together as well as a history of cooperation. The majority of our classes are offered near these types of libraries, which makes my life much easier. As a second choice, I'd like to use a library where the classes meet, often a high school or technical school. But if the library isn't open when my students come to class or can get there, that's not good. With this lucky library, draw up formal operating agreements, and if you anticipate generating much traffic or requiring much local support, offer to pay fees. Your agreement should address things like reference, reserves and on-site collections, ILL, and computer access.
I've recently seen relationships like this pay off for us. Last summer, our off-campus Master's of Public Administration program underwent an accreditation review. One of the factors the committee cited in giving the program approval to offer degrees entirely off-campus and to expand to other sites, were the excellent library services available at the sites. Not only did we tell them about GALILEO, our statewide virtual library system, but the librarians at one of our off-campus sites made presentations to the committee in support of the program.
Finally, is there local Internet access? Are there local ISPs? If not, does your school offer Internet support to remote students--toll-free numbers, subsidized logins, etc.? What about proxy service for access to licensed web-based products? Will anyone offer the students technical support? As some of you heard me say in another session, GALILEO has really revolutionized library support for distance learning in Georgia. I know all our off-campus students have reasonable access to a good selection of database resources, no matter where they are. That means I can provide services directed toward making them more self-sufficient as researchers, just as we do on campus, rather than actually doing the library research for them and just handing them the appropriate articles. Of course, I can only do this if they can get on the Internet. In this context, another helpful statewide project was the contract the University System made with MCI. They now provide local Internet dial-in numbers for 90% of the population in Georgia. Our students, faculty, and staff are eligible to sign up for their services at a discounted rate. I use the service myself--fewer busy signals than the campus lines--and have been really happy with their technical support.
Even without a GALILEO project, you can capitalize on Internet resources to support your students and your libraries. More and more database producers and vendors offer web-based services. Of course, to offer access to these resources, you need a way to authenticate your users. At Georgia Southern this year, we began subscribing to our first web-based databases. We've not yet figured out a simple way to give those not on the campus network access to them--I'm negotiating with my computer services people now, although the phrase "Old Dominion University already does it" isn't really helping my case. I'm reluctant to offer password access to these resources because of the complexity of administering passwords. We currently subscribe to around fifteen web-based services and plan to expand from that to close to thirty by next year. On campus, we have to have IP address access--communicating 30 passwords that changed quarterly to our large on-campus population is just unmanageable: merely keeping up with that many passwords is a daunting idea, not to mention re-negotiating our license agreements to allow both IP and password access. However, my backup plan, if I lose the proxy server battle, is to set up a passworded web page and post all the passwords to all the databases on that passworded page, and use a single, well known password, probably the GALILEO password, to gain access to that page. Finally, if you encourage students to connect to the Internet, you can expect them to have computer problems and some of them will call on you for help--after all, this was your idea, wasn't it? I recommend drawing some boundaries in this area. Helping them troubleshoot searches and explaining why they might not be getting to the databases even though CNN is working just fine, is about as far as you should probably go. Don't try to help them set up their telecommunications--after all, they're paying some ISP for that service and should use it. Alternatively, your campus computer services staff should have some expertise in that area.
Internally, you're going to need to come to an understanding about appropriate ways to provide equivalent service. This doesn't mean you need to reconstruct your library at every location, but that you must adjust your practices to make up for the absence of such services so that the student is not penalized by taking classes off-campus. The Guidelines address this issue under resources and services. Here, there are many variations and I'll touch on the few I know about. Areas to consider are circulation/document delivery, reserves, reference, library instruction, and computer access. These are very much defined by existing local policies and library staff capacities. In every case, think about what your on-campus students can do, and work toward equivalency.
What do you do about the books? Most libraries just go ahead and lend them, hoping for the best. We check out the few books that get requested to the students and mail them with a post-paid return label. This is easy for us because we don't charge fines for overdues, so timely return of materials isn't really an issue. If you do charge fines, what will you do to allow for delivery problems? A new wrinkle on our horizon is what to do about out-of-state students? I've just accidentally discovered there is a southeastern U.S. equivalent of the Western Governor's University, and it's going to offer web-based classes next fall--including some from my institution. My regular distance learning contacts aren't involved with this. I also don't know yet what we'll do when we enroll our first international student. Do we still mail the books? Probably, but it makes one think.
What about journal articles? What does it cost your on-campus students to get a copy of an article? What does it cost them to see one? What is fair to ask of the off-campus students who can't preview what gets copied? Our answer is, we don't charge. That brings on other headaches--how many free pages? What about the ED that's 500 pages long? 100? 80? My library has put a 100-page limit on the number of copies we will make without consulting with the student. For longer items, we copy the table of contents and introductory material for them, and ask them to specify what other sections they actually want. State University of West Georgia charges, and as a result, has a 50- page limit on how much they'll copy before consulting the student. Of course, consultation slows the whole process down. For EDs, they send along an EDRS form for the student to order the item directly and hope not to hear back from them. They get around the problem of paying for worthless articles by trusting in good will and cancelling bills when objections arise. Each solution has its own headaches. We don't do petty accounting, but have to come up with other means of limiting volume. West Georgia risks ill will, as well as having to account for money--although their charges are entered into the Library's online automated system, so their Circulation Department deals with the specifics of payment for all users, not just off-campus. Other issues: how many requests can a student make? We don't limit, but only act quickly on the first four we receive. What kind of turnaround time should they expect? We try to ship materials to them to arrive within four days of their request.
Finally, in what formats will you accept requests? E-mail, fax, phone requests? How will you verify the validity of the requests, if you're only providing this service to off- campus students? I heard once of an off-campus librarian who barely evaded a lawsuit because she accidentally helped one student in an on-campus class, and refused to help another in the same class; the second person had identified herself as being on-campus, while the first did not. After that close call, she decided to require that all requests be submitted in writing so that the requestor's off-campus status could be verified before the request was filled. Validation is not a big problem for us because we have access to the student information system, listing the classes they are enrolled in. It doesn't take that long to look them up, before filling their requests.
Reserves are a fairly ticklish issue, especially if you're working with a multi-site class. Copyright rules, for example, can be hard to apply. I have worked with the rule of one copy for every ten students in a class, but if there are only 12 students in the class and five locations, where do you put the copies? Electronic reserves, either with passworded access or consisting of exclusively uncopyrighted materials like old tests or class notes, are solving some of the problems. Full text databases with the articles the students need to read can solve some of the others, especially if you can convince faculty to change their reading lists to more closely match the resources easily available. Books are an even tougher issue, again, especially for multi-site classes. We've purchased second copies of high use items to place on reserve where we have concentrations of students and so far, haven't had to deal with a very small class that needs that type of service--possibly because the faculty member teaching the class realigned some of his/her own expectations. In working with remote reserve collections, you'll also need to realize that some of the libraries where you place materials have different interpretations of copyright guidelines than you do. This should be addressed in the operating agreement you draw up. All that said, I have to admit that reserve problems just don't come up that much. In our experience, faculty often take the initiative to set up their reserves on their own, sometimes finding really creative solutions. On the whole, this isn't such a bad thing--out of our control, but also not our responsibility. Don't make reserve issues the first thing you address as you plan your own services--wait for a situation to arise and then work with it.
Reference. The line, "you'll need to come in and investigate that for yourself" can't be used for off-campus students. How much will you do for them? A lot, of course, depends on what they can do for themselves. Here are two models: actual practice will fall somewhere in between...
In the first model, students do their own research, getting the same assistance from the reference staff that students on campus do. Probably this will include mailing copies of pages of reference books. It assumes that your students have a means of accessing necessary databases and that they can receive some form of library instruction (one-on-one by phone, if nothing else.) The drawbacks start with the technological barriers--after all, are those computers really set up right? Perhaps the corporate intranet where they work blocks unrestricted web surfing in some sneaky way. Will the student persist? Having persisted, what quality of search will they do? My library fits this model pretty closely. We offer library instruction to classes, offer to meet with individuals, consult via telephone with those who call in, and mail pages from reference books. For example, I had an off-campus nursing student e-mail our electronic reference service asking for help. She won my heart by mentioning that she'd attended a library session with me in the winter quarter, and had applied my advice on searching GALILEO in order to find biographical information about three nurses she'd been assigned to research--but had no no luck. I tracked down brief bios with bibliographies in some of the reference sources and mailed them off to her, advising her to pick articles from the bibliographies to request. It was pretty much the same exchange I've had with on-campus students from the same class, except that I send the on-campus students off to make their own photocopies.
Alternatively, the librarian can take topical requests (such as "I've got to write a paper on gun control" ) and actually do the search for them. Obviously, the quality of the search results will go up and the frustration with technology will decline. On the other hand, did you really get that question right? And what do you do with the results? Identify what's available and copy the lot? Or require the student to get the results and separately request what is needed? One is fast and the other involves the student more closely in the process. What of each of these constitutes equivalence? Carol Goodson at West Georgia has followed this model in the past. She's moved away from it with the advent of GALILEO, but she is concerned that as a result, the quality of research the off- campus students are doing will decline, as it will.
Probably the biggest issue in reference lies in identifying and serving students appropriately. Are there limits your librarians won't pass except when the student is identified as off-campus? How will you know when you've turned away a bona fide student? Another good puzzle lies in duplication of reference resources. What do you do about the marketing class doing corporate research out in the boonies? Buy a copy of Who Owns Whom and Hoover's American Business for each off-campus site? Or are all 40 students going to have to consult individually with the off-campus coordinator or reference librarian of your choice? Does your opinion change knowing you will be offering that class off-campus frequently? Notice I don't answer these questions. My own answers change from time to time.
Library instruction is another challenge. A number of librarians on the OFFCAMP listserv have talked about developing web-based tutorials. I'd like to do the same. Self-paced instruction certainly fits the persona of the off-campus student. On a lower technological level, consider a workbook. Some campuses sell all freshmen English Composition students a library workbook as a textbook. Following this idea for off- campus students, even though the topics covered may differ, qualifies as an equivalency. On the other hand, I enjoy meeting with the classes--I see probably 5-6 per term, not far ahead of the percentage of on-campus classes we meet each quarter. I generally get some feedback about how library services are going--perhaps not the formal survey recommended by the Guidelines, but still very useful. Here the challenges are knowing the facility you teach in-- what resources are available and what do you need to bring with you? What's your backup plan? What about handouts for multi-site classes--do they have to be done and sent out in advance, or can you bring a set to fax to each location on the night of your performance? If you're on TV, get some basic advice about what to wear (or not) for TV. What about canning the presentation--a video students can watch whenever they need it. Now that you've picked your format or formats, what library resources are you going to cover, yours or theirs? If theirs, shouldn't you be contracting with a local librarian? That may depend on your contract. When I was at the Gwinnett Center, I preferred giving the orientations myself. After all, I knew better than the on-campus librarians what the realities of library research in the boonies were, and these students were my primary clientele. However, I've never asked a local librarian to teach a class for Georgia Southern....maybe I should. This is as good a place as any to remind you again about the importance of communicating with your students. I mentioned that faculty are your best points of contact. However, consider, if you can, newsletters, web pages, and other forms of communication going directly to the students.
Where does library support for distance learning reside in your library? There are two models to consider--the independent, usually one- or two-person show--interacting with all facets of the library, and the integrated approach. Each has real strengths and real weaknesses. The independent unit will be an advocate for off-campus students within the library and probably on campus. Because of the central role of off-campus issues for them, they will be familiar with developments in the field, changes in campus administration. They will be effective faculty contacts, knowledgeable about technology, and a reliable contact point for students. They will also probably be one or two person units, working without much backup--what about vacations, illness, etc.? Do things grind to a halt? The program can also get buried, far away from top administrators' awareness, especially when it is running smoothly. In the integrated approach, all departments get involved in support, just like for other students. Everyone in the library will have some awareness of the resources and issues although no one has a complete mastery of the topic. There's plenty of backup, and a way to cope with sudden increases in demand, and well as plenty to do when distance learning support needs are slow. On the other hand, the advocacy role fades, because this is just one of many things the librarians are dealing with. If responsibility for the programs doesn't reside with top administration, support can disappear, again. Also, communication within the library becomes important. Who the students contact--reference desk for research assistance, document delivery for materials--gets more complicated. Although it may sound like I'm running the second model down, it's is really my preference. That's how Georgia Southern operates. My own department handles reference and library instruction. Another provides document delivery and reserves. Thus, students are given two points of contact. We have problems remembering to communicate changes in how we're handling things to each other, and details get overlooked, like building a web page for off-campus--but on the whole, I'm happy with this way of doing things. My fellow department head and I take turns sitting on the campus distance learning council, and we use the internal problems that arise (such as when reference librarians are shocked at how much we "give" to a DL student) as educational moments for the whole library. When I was at Gwinnett, the remote campus I've told you about, I have to say, I found working with the libraries who used that model was frustrating--my really important problems were their aggravating details. I recognize now that they gave great service, but hated having to remember who to talk with about what issues. Once you've settled on an operating model, review what the Guidelines say about finance, personnel and facilities.
Let me take a moment to repeat myself once again on the subject of communication. Off-campus programs, especially new ones, are constantly changing. Personnel change, students change, locations change, library staff and policies change. It never hurts to repeat yourself. After all, we're all dealing with a deluge of information and things get overlooked regularly. So you have to find ways of communicating to students, faculty, staff and administrators. Newsletters, web pages, training sessions for new faculty, inserts for syllabi and handbooks can and should all be used to get your message across. Take some advice from the communication professionals and keep your most of your messages brief, so that they get read. Also, listen, don't just talk. When I teach a Library Instruction session for off-campus students, I always ask how things are going, if they've gotten what they need in the past. The adjunct faculty member may know more about what is being planned in his/her area than the top level administrator. Local librarians are another group you need to stay in contact with. They need a point of contact when they encounter problems, and some understanding that you will support your own students. Of course, I don't really practice what I preach, here. All this takes time and who has lots of that to spare?
Summing up, I've covered four categories of issues to consider as you start your own off- campus programs. First, what programs and classes will your school be offering? These will define the demands placed on the library and their administrators and faculty will be your primary conduit for contacting off campus students. Second, where will classes be offered? You need to be familiar with local resources available to your students, and anywhere you have concentrations of students, you need to have formal operating agreements with their local library. Third, define what your library will offer as equivalent services for off-campus students. Finally, decide administratively where these services will be carried out. To assist your program planning, spend some time with the Guidelines from the Distance Learning Section of ACRL and subscribe to the OFFCAMP listserv. On the following handout, I've listed some other resources, mostly culled from the OFFCAMP discussion, that I think you'll find useful. Most are available on the Web, so you can get to them easily. I also recommend formal affiliation with ACRL's Distance Learning Section. This group plans interesting programs at American Library Association conferences and produces useful documentation, such as the Guidelines. Thanks for your attention.
Library Services to Distributed Learners Resources
ALA/ACRL Distance Learning Section
http://caspian.switchinc.org/~distlearn/
Journal of Library Services for Distance Education
http://www.westga.edu/library/jlsde/
Resources for Distance Learning Library Services
http://www.lib.odu.edu/services/disted/dersrcs.html
Libraries' Support for Distance Learners
http://www.lib.usf.edu/~ifrank/dl.html
Laura Davidson
Head of Information Services, Georgia Southern University
E-mail: ldavidson@gasou.edu
| Copyright © 1999 - All Rights Reserved. All commercial use requires permission of the author and the editors of this journal. |
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The Journal of Library Services for Distance Education <http://www.westga.edu
/library/jlsde/>
State University of West Georgia - Carrollton, Georgia Vol. II, No. 1 - July 1999 - ISSN: 1096-2123 |