Digital Libraries for Distance Education

The latest fashion in higher education is distance education. Like most fashions, this is not a new idea. For decades, the British Open University has provided high-quality degree programs for remote students, and correspondence courses have a fine tradition in many parts of the world. But the recent increase in the availability and number of distance education courses offered does have a rationale. Modern technology -- notably the Internet -- provides opportunities for really high-quality distance education.
Digital libraries are one of those opportunities. During the 1970s, I was a faculty member at the Open University, preparing courses for students to study at home. In those days, we could not rely on students having access to libraries. Britain has a good system of public libraries, yet many students live a long way from one. The materials had to be supplied for them, as textbooks, offprints, or specially developed course materials. With the Internet, the web and digital libraries, everything changes. Distance education programs can mount sets of materials on web servers to support each course. So long as the materials are accessible only by specified students, licensing problems are unlikely to be a serious barrier.
Many of us, however, would argue that liberal arts and professional education requires more than studying a fixed collection of materials. Real learning requires students to explore materials that they have found for themselves. For this reason, colleges and universities have general-purpose libraries, not canned collections of materials tied to individual courses.
Can digital libraries provide adequately broad library services to remote students? The range of materials that currently are in digital form is great. In some disciplines enough materials are available with open access that students already have access to broad collections. In other disciplines, colleges or universities must provide remote students with access to materials that have restrictions on access. There is nothing intrinsically difficult about providing such access, though current contracts and authentication systems are designed for campus-based education -- at least in the United States. Another intriguing possibility is that some companies are beginning to offer large collections of academic materials directly to students. Overall, it does not appear difficult to build extensive digital libraries to support distance education, but distance education suffers from the financial dilemma known as "the tragedy of the commons." Traditional universities are expensive, but they usually succeed in putting academic objectives before financial considerations. Many distance education programs, however, have a separate budget for each course, with no funds available for general services that benefit all students, such as digital libraries. Adherence to this financial model is the biggest barrier to providing good library services for distance education.
Here is a final thought. At conventional universities, a few students delve deeply into the resources offered by the libraries, but most do not. Remote students cannot visit the library, but if the digital collections are broad enough and accessible enough, perhaps more of these students will be heavy users of digital libraries.
William Y. ArmsEditor in Chief
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