Library Services for Off-campus and Distance Education:
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Lynn Copeland
VOL. 10, No. 2, 119-121
The objective of this bibliography is “to provide a comprehensive record of the literature on library issues pertaining to distance and open learning” (p. ix). Abstracts are provided for materials written after 1989 and for materials missed or revised since the earlier publication of the same title. In addition to the 14 sections in the previous work, a new section on “Remote Access to Electronic Resources” has been added. Four indexes (author, institution, geographical, subject) significantly enhance access to the citations, as do cross-references at the head of each section and at individual entries. The indexes cover both volumes. An introduction provides a useful summary of the field, and it distinguishes several related concepts (open learning, distance education, distance learning, extended campus education, off-campus education). The introduction and abstracts are clearly written; abstracts provide more detail than, for example, those in ERIC. The organization of the material, indexes, and general layout enhance the usability of this work.
Geographic coverage is primarily of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India, Australia, and the Caribbean. With the exception of four articles, coverage is limited to English language publications. Few citations from Europe or from Quebec are included. A discussion of the reasons for this limitation would have been useful.
The Bibliography represents a very useful tool for the study of traditional library services for those interested in distance education: neophyte, administrator, distance education service providers, and the distance education librarian interested in exploring the field beyond his or her own institution. It brings together a wide variety of sources that would be time consuming and difficult for the interested individual to assemble on his or her own.
As in any narrowly focused work, decisions were made about the breadth of coverage beyond the central theme as reflected in the literature. During a period of rapid transition, the result may limit the usefulness of the work by not addressing potential future directions. Notwithstanding the continuing need to provide library books and dedicated materials to distance education students, the advent of electronic journal requesting and delivery and the resultant opportunity for convergence of some services to on- and off-campus students will lead, I believe, to significant changes in library services in the late nineties. For example, all British Columbia postsecondary institutions currently have access on-line to the full text of Canadian Business and Current Affairs articles, and many have access to those of UMI Powerpages. For many academic disciplines, this the near future if not the present.
In this regard, the potential for providing more effective and efficient document delivery services by combining delivery of distance education library materials with Interlibrary Loans and electronic document requesting and delivery is being seriously considered at Simon Fraser University. In such a context, it is important to continue to support public service reference and bibliographic instruction services appropriately to both on- and off-campus students. Notwithstanding the differences in providing delivery to individuals rather than institutions, and the requirement to deliver library materials specifically collected for distance education students, the delivery issues are the same for these services.
Commercial electronic requesting and delivery services such as CARL Uncover, OCLC First Search, CISTI, and Ebscodoc can provide distance education students with equivalent services to on-campus students; these services are well documented in the literature. Other local, province-, or state-wide document requesting services, such as those offered by Ohiolink, Illinet, and the ELN’s OJAC service, are also well documented in the literature and provide important models for service to distance education. Although not so widely known, the burgeoning availability of electronic journals and government documents is also of great significance.
The limited coverage of these issues in the Bibliography is in part a matter of timeliness. The explosion, for example, of World Wide Web access to electronic journals and on-line reference tools as opposed to networked CD-ROM services, has occurred in great part subsequent to the book’s cutoff date of March 1995.
These omissions demonstrate the difficulty a work of this nature has in recording the rapidly changing possibilities for service and the further difficulty of providing full coverage of related issues. Despite the success of this bibliography in documenting the literature of library services in distance education, the librarian or information provider concerned about the potential for electronic delivery services to change distance education should investigate these issues beyond the contents of this book.
Lynn Copeland
Manager, Library Systems, Data, and Resource Sharing
Simon Fraser University
Telephone: (604) 291-5861
Fax: (604) 291-3023
E-mail: copeland@sfu.ca