ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 432 / C&RL News ■ June 1998 Neither Pandora nor Cassandra Library services and distance education in the next decade by M ark G. R. McManus T he title refers, of course, to two classi­ cal myths that warn of the possible nega­ tive, unintended consequences of the sea for knowledge. In the first instance, curios­ ity unleashes a panoply of disasters that c o n tin u e to p la g u e th e w o rld . In th e Cassandra myth, she is able to foretell the future, but people refuse to believe her pre­ dictions because they are all bad news. As a library administrator bearing some responsibility for extended campus services that are both successful and well-regarded ( not the same thing), I keep these myths in mind because it is easy to succumb to ei­ ther or both of them. My own bad predic­ tion follows: unless we are cautious in how we define and program such services, 20 years from now, distance students will sit at their home PCs and electronically debit $20 per course to the university and $400 to Time-Warner. That is, the library will not be a key player in distance education (or, ulti­ mately, on campus). A major mission for the Western Gover­ n o r s ’ [Virtual] U n iv ersity (W GU) is to broaden access to higher education by fos­ tering the use of advanced technology for the delivery of educational services (h ttp :// w w w .w estgov.org/sm art/v u /im p .htm ). This institution is viewed as a prototypi­ cal utilization of technology as a future ed u ­ cational delivery mechanism. It represents the direction many institutions are begin­ ning to take; a variety of legislators and ad­ ministrators see it as the wave of the future. rc It is the wave of the future, and for a very simple reason. In a white paper on the h Army Medical Departm ent Distance Learn­ ing Plan, Henry T. Lippert proposes that “the bottom line reason for considering the use of procedures and technologies under the rubric of ‘distance learning’ (DL) is to save m o n e y ( h ttp ://a e 2 1 7 8 .m ed .o sd .m il/sc g i- bin/library_list.pl/lib). While it may not ex­ press the lofty mission of the WGU, I sug­ gest that the Army is surprisingly realistic. Technology-mediated distance education m ay b e th e a n s w e r at th e b o tto m o f Pandora’s box; none of its attendant ills will obviate its truth. Librarians cannot simply disregard it as another bad scene predicted by some Cassandra, or gain any advantage by em phasizing negative co n seq u en ces. William Miller, past-president of ACRL, had a standard stump speech about how diffi­ cult his job becam e w hen he had to over­ come the view of state legislators that soon “everything will be free digitally on the Web” and that libraries will need no funding for acquisitions.1 I’m fairly certain every librar­ ian has a local version of the same story. As long as there are prospects, how ever imagi­ nary, for saving money on the delivery of education, that is where the money will flow. There are, indeed, many good reasons for delivering education by distance technology: program dem and may be isolated, potential learners may have environmental consider­ ations that preclude on-cam pus attendance, the market for instructors or materials may A bout the author M ark G. R. McManus is associate director o f libraries a t State University o f West Georgia; e-mail: mmcmanus@westga.edu westgov.org/smart/vu/imp http://ae2178.med.osd.mil/scgi-bin/library_list.pl/lib http://ae2178.med.osd.mil/scgi-bin/library_list.pl/lib mailto:mmcmanus@westga.edu C & RL N e w s ■ June 1998 / 433 be insurmountable locally; distance educa­ tion can overcome geographical and tem­ poral boundaries. As an administrator, I com­ monly see, read, or hear about excellent programs of library services to distance learn­ ers. Each involves a considerable investment on the parts of institutions, learners, and, particularly, librarians. Following are a num ­ ber of points I believe must be kept at the forefront for libraries (and librarians) to play a key role in distance education in a tech­ nological environment. E a rly a n d b a sic lib ra ry in v o lv e m e n t in d is ta n c e e d u c a tio n p ro g r a m s For at least two reasons, librarians must be involved early in the developm ent of dis­ tance education programs. The first can be illustrated by a problem that arises every day at any reference, circulation, or reserve desk: the instructor has assigned materials that “the library is bound to have.” While this presents difficulties on cam pus, the simple inconvenience and frustration (and concomitant ill-will) are not easily resolved for distance students. Secondly, librarians remain the experts in information/knowl- edge packaging. It has been, and continues to be, our jobs to know what students need and can use and what is available. Examples of cases where librarians were not consulted may be quite extreme: in my state, an insti­ tution offers a master of science degree over the Internet. If you go to the program ’s hom epage and click on the icon for library access, you get the following: Library Research Facilities While pursuing y o u r … degree a t xxxx you w ill fin d th a t m any o f y o u r course assign­ ments w ill require you to research a particu­ la r to p ic in m ore detail. I f yo u live near a major library, then you may use the resources available a t th a t library in y o u r research e f­ forts. I f you do n o t have access to a research lib ra ry where you live, then you can access inform ation on the Internet using any o f the fo llo w in g services: Excite I Infoseek I Lycos I W ebCrawler/ Yahoo! The institution does have an on-campus library and is a participant in the University System of Georgia’s GALILEO project that provides Web access to more than 110 data- … 20 y e a rs fro m now , d is ta n c e s tu d e n ts w ill s it a t t h e ir h o m e PCs a n d e le c t r o n ic a lly d e b it $20 p e r c o u rs e to th e u n iv e r s it y a n d $400 to Tim e-W arn er. bases online, including full-text of more than 2,000 periodicals. This is a program with many difficulties to overcome, I suspect, since preparation and availability of course materials for distance students is of utmost importance to the successful completion of either courses or programs. Yet, the second edition of the Oryx Guide to Distance Learn­ ing: A Comprehensive Listing o f Electronic a n d Other M edia-Assisted Courses (1997, William Burgess, ed.) is depressingly full of courses and programs where students are left on their own to find whatever library resources they can to complete the require­ ments for their distance courses. The le a r n in g cu rv e is h ig h e r th a n w e t h in k Computers and information technology are generally pandemic within higher education in the United States, but the capacities of students are not yet generally high. Patently, no students will enroll in Internet classes if they d o n ’t have access to the Internet. But at my institution, we spend an inordinate amount of time explaining on the telephone how to dow nload and configure plug-ins (e.g., telnet software or pdf readers), how to print, how to save or ftp files. I view this as the logical result of librar­ ians’ frequent claims that “Our library is easy to use; if you have problems just check at the reference desk.” We have often acted as if the library were a shopping mall. In fact, libraries are difficult places to navigate. They can be fu n , but they are not fun because they are easy. They are fun in the same way that solving puzzles is fun. Both require work to solve, however. Distance students d o n ’t usually have the luxury of recourse to a reference desk. This is primarily a rationale for the extension of library instruction to the electronic environ­ ment. If we fail to work with the distance instructors to provide the kind of naviga- 434 / C&RL News ■ June 1998 … p ro g r a m s d e s ig n e d f o r o n e g r o u p o r a n o th e r (on c a m p u s o r o ff) in v a r ia b ly le ad us to in t e ­ g r a t e th o s e s e rv ic e s in to b e tte r lib r a r y s e rv ic e s to a ll s tu d e n ts a n d fa c u lty . tion tools and instruction necessaiy to allow distance learners to be successful “electronic library consumers,” my Time-Warner scenario will become reality. Someone else will pack­ age material in a readily consumable, mall­ like retail package (even if it doesn’t include “learning”). Lib ra ry se rv ice m u st be m ore th a n p o in tin g to reso u rce s Librarians must begin to view the library as an intellectual, learning exercise, rather than as a warehouse. Distance education can make good or bad use of information technology. What is dis­ tinctive about good education is the reflexive engagement of students into the whole pro­ cess o f le a rn in g . T he U n iv ersity of Pennsylvania’s Project Vision appears to be a good example of library and curricular instruc­ tion that engages students and that continu­ ally challenges both instructor and student to determine that education rather than training is taking place. A lthough the Internet is a m arvelous mechanism for presenting, we don’t know how to make it a learning instrument. As in educa­ tion TV, we must be cautious not to replicate the most unsatisfactory “talking heads” or “sages on stages” aspects of traditional educa­ tion. Since, by common agreement, much of what is on the Internet is junk, librarians must be able to prove that they are successful in imparting critical thinking skills, in introduc­ ing notions of authority and judgment into use. In traditional library services, the arcanities of library “theory” as rule-driven activities don’t much matter. If push comes to shove, we can get up from the reference desk and walk stu­ dents to the materials they need. That has never been true in distance learning, and it will be­ come increasingly untrue in an electronic environment. My 15-year-old daughter, a straight-A stu­ dent, can m ake her way to the ultimate world in a video game with no directions, but my library makes no sense to her at all. Until we can make the library (mostly) a self-teaching experience rather than a stack of bricks and books, game makers will get propo rtio n ately m ore developm ental re ­ sources than we do. We need to review and use and probably conduct considerable re­ search in areas of learning processes, con­ struction of effective teaching materials, self- paced instruction, and a variety of other educational psychology issues. We need to be able to dem onstrate the added value of the academic library to the educational pro­ cess. L ib r a r y s e rv ic e s f o r e x te n d e d an d lo cal s tu d e n ts in te rp e n e tra te I suggested above that my institution has a successful and well-regarded off-campus li­ brary service. It received specific com m en­ dation during the last accreditation process. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools requires that planned adequate li­ brary services m ust be offered to students at distance sites, equal to the services on- campus students receive. (The “Principles of Good Practice,” http://www.srec.sreb.org/ s tu d e n t/s r e c d o c s /p r in c ip le s /p o g p .h tm l, adopted by the Southern Regional Educa­ tion Board for its Southern Regional Elec­ tronic Campus—a southeastern coordination of existing programs and courses offered as a counterpart to the Western Governors’ Vir­ tual University—are not nearly as stringent.) But what w e ’ve found, in addition to satis­ fying external mandates, is that programs designed for one group or another (on cam­ pus or off) invariably lead us to integrate those services into better library services to all students and faculty. We developed WAN access to databases so that distance students could get the same service that on-campus students get. Yet, that meant that faculty can get access in their offices, and on-cam pus students can get it from campus labs or even from home. We reinvigorated a library instruction program with a credit course, and we are working to put it online so that we can offer it to off- campus students. More and more of our class handouts are made available on the Web so http://www.srec.sreb.org/ C&RL News ■ June 1998/ 435 that students can use them at their leisure; they automatically become available for all library users. We started dial access for our catalog for distance learners; that effectively opened the catalog 24 hours per day. When we added Web access to our catalog and other resources, it was an easy step to make it available on campus and off. We currently have Internet licenses for students and fac­ ulty that utilize IP domain authentication, but since many of our students (and fac­ ulty) use non-university Internet service pro­ viders, we have to develop authentication tables that allow password access to data­ bases. This means that on-campus students can use whatever ISP they prefer, and that fac­ ulty can have access when off campus. Since we offer ILL request generation through e- mail forms, it will be a relatively simple extension to make this service available to off-campus students through a Web-based form. Since we provided a document deliv­ ery service to off-campus students, w e’ve developed a program for on-campus delivery of books and articles (prototyped for faculty users). We expect that electronic delivery will soon follow, as will service to all students, regardless of location. Our experience has been that, as we enhance the services for one group or the other, we enhance services for all. In the increasingly electronic environ­ ment I believe we will face, I also believe that the opportunities for providing equi­ table and better services will be greater. When I first started working in libraries in the mid-1970s, library schools were abuzz … "th e b o tto m lin e reaso n fo r c o n s id e rin g th e use o f p ro ce d u re s and te c h n o lo g ie s u n d e r th e ru b ric o f 'd ista n c e le a rn in g ' (D L) is to sa v e m o n e y " … with the news that a (probably apocryphal) Ivy League university library had publicly announced that it could no longer collect everything it deemed necessary to provide a quality education for its students. Today, even Harvard College Libraries recognize the necessity for the academic libraries to trans­ form themselves into Gateways o f Knowl­ edge (MIT Press, 1997). If librarians and libraries don’t become pedagogical players in the information and education enterprise, then turning to the Internet as the first source for information will make sense to more and more students a n d university administrators. I think that distance learning, information technology, and libraries have too much to offer for that scenario to become true. Yet, libraries must be active, political, effective builders of learning knowledge structures if the money that legislators and administrators save is not at their expense. N otes 1. Miller, William, “Point of V iew ,” Chronicle o f Higher Education (August 7, 1997): A44.