Goodson, 'CONTINUING CHALLENGE FOR LIBRARIANS: MEETING THE NEEDS OF DISTANCE EDUCATION STUDENTS', MC Journal 0401 URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/mcj/mcj-0401-goodson-continuing GUEST EDITORIAL A CONTINUING CHALLENGE FOR LIBRARIANS: MEETING THE NEEDS OF DISTANCE EDUCATION STUDENTS by Carol Goodson MC Journal: The Journal of Academic Media Librarianship, v4#1, Summer 1996:1-9. Judging from the comments voiced at the 1995 ALA program on services to off-campus students in Chicago (http:/fringe.lib.ecu.edu/Newspapers/ECLSS/report.html), and discussions on the LIBREF-L listserv librarians all over the country are becoming increasingly frustrated in their attempts to help distance education students meet their course-related needs. Such students are becoming a problem for public libraries especially, which are simply not equipped to meet the kinds of demands being placed on them by college students. In the 19th century public libraries served as the first tax supported agencies that helped foster (self or continuing) education among the members of their communities. To some, the role of the public library was "to serve as a supplement to the public school system." (Lee 1968, 90) This notion of the public library as a kind of "people's university" subsided as compulsory school attendance became the norm and the general educational level of the population increased. As Lee indicated, "The educational objective gradually changed from emphasis on helping adults to make up for their lack of formal schooling to encouraging all adults to use their leisure creatively and . . . to educate themselves continuously." (Lee 1968, 93) With the explosion of distance education in the 1990s, however, not just public libraries, but nearly ALL types of libraries are being called upon to provide educational support to the public. Like other successful American enterprises adapting to the service economy of the 1990s, higher education administrators realize that they have to make it convenient for consumers to buy their product. Therefore, the college customer is no longer necessarily required to drive long distances to *Page 1* reach the campus: instead, the campus is "delivered" to the individual's own neighborhood. These developments inevitably increase the strain on nearby libraries, as these "library-less" students struggle to meet the need for research materials which normally accompanies any type of college-level study. Educational institutions engaging in the trendy field of distance education provide widely varying degrees of library support for their off-campus students. In the Southeast, the regional accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, (SACS) has taken one of the strongest positions in the country regarding the level of support required in order to maintain accreditation for off-campus programs. SACS Criteria 5.2.5 states that, "At any off-campus location where credit courses are offered, an institution must ensure the provision of and access to adequate learning resources and services required to support the courses, programs and degrees offered. The institution must own the learning resources or provide them through formal agreements. Competent library personnel must be assigned duties in planning and providing library resources and services and in ascertaining their continued adequacy" (SACS 1988, 33-34). The State University of West Georgia, located in Carrollton, Georgia has been providing off-campus classes since the 1970s and now sends instructors to over twenty sites in the northwest part of the state. Within the past few years, the College has been beaming classes to an even wider area via satellite. The experiment in extending classes *Page 2* beyond the Carrollton campus was so successful, that in addition to the graduate education courses originally offered, two full-fledged external degree programs were also established within the state, allowing individuals to receive a degree from the State University of West Georgia without ever setting foot in Carrollton. At the present time, nearly one-fourth of West Georgia's 8,000+ students are off-campus. In the early days, the library support provided for West Georgia's off-campus students was not very substantial consisting mainly of a few remote reserve collections. However, when the new SACS Criteria were published the library administration realized that a substantial off-campus library support system would have to be in place by the time the College came up for its ten-year accreditation review in April 1993. A new professional position, Coordinator of Off-Campus Library Services, was approved in 1990 and filled in 1991. Since there was no established program to follow, we experimented about a year before finally settling on a full-service model, meaning that we propose meeting all the library needs of off-campus students to the extent possible from our own resources, using the principle of equivalency as a guide. At the beginning of every quarter, all instructors scheduled to teach an off-campus or satellite course are sent a packet of materials. Included in the packets are (1) a one-page summary of library support services available to distance education students; (2) a form for requesting placement of reserve materials near the class site; (3) a form for requesting Joint Borrowers' cards* for all class members; (4) enough Off-Campus Library Services Request forms for each student; and (5) email account applications for every student. *Page 3* Off-campus students simply have to send in their requests - Off-Campus Services will do the rest. An 800 number is available and widely advertised so that students can reach Off-Campus Services from their workplaces (from which long-distance calls are often forbidden); however, since we require that requests be made in writing, most arrive by fax or email. The request may be for copies of specific articles or books, but more often, it consists only of the individual's research paper topic and an estimate of the number of sources needed. The Coordinator conducts literature searches in the appropriate databases and whenever possible, returns the search to the student (usually by fax or email) so that s/he can review the citations and select the relevant items. At this point the student may decide to obtain items identified in the search at a convenient library, or s/he may choose to return the search to us, in which case we retrieve the documents desired and send them by Priority Mail (when necessary, we will also fax up to five articles to a student at no extra charge, or the individual may elect to pay for optional UPS Next Day Air delivery). If time is short, we will even choose what seem to be the most useful items from the search ourselves, but we prefer that the fulfillment of requests be more interactive. If the student's timeline permits, we initiate Interlibrary Loan requests on his/her behalf--or if not, we identify other libraries in the student's vicinity which have needed materials the West Georgia library does not own. The only exceptions to this procedure are the students enrolled in the two external degree programs mentioned earlier. The College has a contract with the Learning Resources Center on the junior college campus which is the site of one of those programs, and another with the public library serving the *Page 4* town in which the other external degree program is located. In both cases, those libraries have agreed to serve State University of West Georgia off-campus students as if they were their own clients. In return, West Georgia spends several thousand dollars per year on the purchase of materials to support the instructional programs at those sites, and provides a special, expedited intra-library loan service for their own local use rs. In the case of the junior college, the materials purchased with University funds actually become the property of that institution. At the public library, the University has established a collection--now numbering nearly 10,000 volumes--which is housed in a special section of the public library, completely open to borrowing by their patrons. For this collection, however (which we catalog, process and list in our catalog) West Georgia retains ownership. Computer terminals connected to our online catalog were placed at both libraries so that users can browse the West Georgia collection and request materials, which are sent to the libraries by weekly courier service for patron pickup. The junior college Learning Resources Center, as an academic institution, already owned an adequate selection of bibliographic databases on CD-ROM; but it was necessary for us to place a ProQuest workstation at the public library so that our students could access at least one periodical database which was on an academic level. As a result of the special relationships established with these two libraries, and West Georgia's desire that these subsidized agreements be fully utilized, our Off-Campus Services policies require that external degree students try to meet their needs at one of those libraries first before they may submit a direct request to us. If their efforts are *Page 5* unsuccessful, reference librarians at both locations have supplies of the Off-Campus Services Request forms which the student can fill out on the spot and fax to us directly from the library. Our association with the librarians at these cooperating libraries is excellent. Surely a major reason is the existence of a written agreement. After all, the college providing the class has an obligation to meet the library support needs of these students, but other libraries do not. This issue becomes especially relevant if one considers the cost involved in serving off-campus students, a cost which in fairness should be borne by the college or university which is collecting tuition from these students. In our case, these services are heavily subsidized. Because our goal is to provide library support for distance education students which is equivalent to that available to on-campus students, off-campus students are not charged for delivery of materials, since there would be no such expense were they able to come to the West Georgia Library personally. They pay only the amount which an on-campus student would pay to acquire the same information. Unquestionably, providing this level of support is fairly expensive. Although we have never actually added it all up, we would at least have to count my salary as a full-time professional librarian, the salary of a half-time paraprofessional, the hourly pay for an army of students who pull books and journals from the shelves and photocopy materials, Priority Mail postage rates for all packages, mileage for weekly courier service to two sites, monthly charges billed to the 800 number, etc., etc. This does not take into account the various costs buried in other budget lines designed to support the Library's normal infrastructure, such as increased demand for Interlibrary Loans, long distance charges incurred when calling students or faxing materials to them, Fedex charges for reserve materials picked up and returned to us, and so on. *Page 6* Surprisingly--although we know we are making contact with nearly every distance education student affiliated with West Georgia through quarterly distribution of publicity materials--most of our nearly 2,000 off-campus students choose to go it alone and take care of their library needs themselves. We survey our students regularly, and the results indicate that the overwhelming majority do not use either Off-Campus Library Services or come personally to the campus library; rather--despite our best efforts--a large number of our distance education students are also presumably burdening the libraries which are most convenient to them instead of utilizing the resources they have actually paid for through their tuition! In our first survey in 1991, we learned that 35% used a public library and 51% used some other academic library besides West Georgia's (those percentages overlap because some students used both public and academic libraries). In our most recent survey, conducted during Spring Quarter 1995, we learned that there had been only a slight drop in the number who used a public library (31%), but this time, only 40% had used some other academic library. We hope that this encouraging decrease in the use of other academic libraries may perhaps be accounted for by the fact that in 1991, only 8% used West Georgia's Off-Campus Library Services, while by 1995, that percentage had risen to 17%. We were amazed to learn in the 1991 survey that nearly half (46%) had access to a computer and modem. These results prompted us to begin offering email accounts for off-campus students, and we are currently working on establishing a procedure whereby all off-campus students will automatically be assigned accounts without having to apply for one. This year's survey revealed a disappointingly modest increase in the number of *Page 7* "connected" individuals; the percentage of those with a computer and modem has risen to 59%, but we had hoped for more. The reason why this was so discouraging was that in 1995, Georgia arrived at the cutting edge of information technology when the Legislature funded a major University System project, a Web-based statewide virtual library known as Georgia Library Learning Online (GALILEO). Users of any University System library now have access to a wide variety of databases (two containing some full-text articles) through GALILEO, plus a myriad of others accessed via the Internet from OCLC FirstSearch. Although the intention is to include all public library headquarters throughout the state in the project, at this point the public libraries are connected to the system but do not yet have the full range of databases. Meanwhile, the GALILEO system will obviously have a major impact on the provision of services for distance education students in Georgia, since most of them can now reasonably be expected to at least do their own database searching. Although a student needs only to walk into any University System Library to use GALILEO, if the individual has access to a computer and modem, GALILEO can also be used from home or office with an institution-specific password available to all registered students and faculty. As more and more research materials become available on-line in full-text, either on the Internet or through state or regional initiatives like GALILEO, it is very possible to imagine that at some point the demand for specific off-campus library support will no longer even exist. For the foreseeable future, however, these easily overlooked students are out there in force, and they still very much need and deserve our help. It is an exciting professional challenge to try to figure out how we can best serve them and frankly, the effusive and unsolicited expressions of *Page 8* gratitude we routinely receive from our off-campus clients make us realize how much the help of librarians is needed and appreciated by distance education students. * For many years, the University System of Georgia has operated a Joint Borrowers' card program whereby any person enrolled in one of the units of the University System may obtain a card at the home institution which, when presented with a validated student I.D. card, entitles the bearer to borrowing privileges at any library within the University System. REFERENCES Lee, R. E. 1968. "Adult education." In Encyclopedia of library and information science, edited by Allen Kent et. al. New York: Dekker. Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Commission on Colleges. 1988. Criteria for accreditation. 5th ed. Decatur, Georgia: SACS. Carol Goodson received her MLS degree from SUNY Buffalo in 1972; she was the first SILS graduate ever hired by the SUNYAB University Libraries. She subsequently joined the St. Louis Public Library, and later became a Community School Coordinator for the St. Louis Board of Education. She has been with the State University of West Georgia since 1991; in 1996, she also earned an MA (English) from West Georgia. Her e-mail address is: cgoodson@westga.edu; web site: http://www.westga.edu/~cgoodson/ MC Journal: The Journal of Academic Media Librarianship ISSN 1069-6792 v.4#1, Summer 1996 June 1996 This article copyright (C) by Carol Goodson. All Rights Reserved. All commercial use requires permission of the author and the editors of this journal. *Page 9*