ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

ACRL STANDARDS & GUIDELINES: Guidelines for distance learning library services

A draft revision

Prepared by the ACRL Distance Learning Section Guidelines Committee

This draft revision of the 2000 “Guide- lines” offers proposed changes to the “Introduction” and die “Revising the Guidelines” sections. The closing guidelines committee members subsection has been incorporated into “Revising the Guidelines.” No other sections of the 2000 “Guidelines” are under revision at this time.

Introduction

Library resources and services in institutions of higher education must meet the needs of all their faculty, students, and academic support staff, wherever these individuals are located, whether on a main campus, off campus, in distance learning or extended campus programs, or in the absence of a campus at all; in courses taken for credit or noncredit; in continuing education programs; in courses attended in person or by means of electronic transmission; or any other means of distance learning. The “Guidelines” delineate the elements necessary to achieving this underlying and uncompromising principle.

Concern for the delivery of equivalent library services to college and university students, faculty, and other personnel in remote settings has been the primary motivation for establishing these “Guidelines,” since their original inception in 1963, and throughout their more than three decades of revision, expansion, and use. The “Guidelines” have been under particularly frequent revision and expansion in the past decade.

Incentive to adapt and expand the “Guidelines” has stemmed from the following increasingly critical factors: nontraditional study rapidly becoming a major element in higher education; an increase in diversity of educational opportunities; an increase in the number of unique environments where educational opportunities are offered; an increased recognition of the need for library resources and services at locations other than main campuses; an increased concern and demand for equitable services for all students in higher education, no matter where the “classroom” may be; a greater demand for library resources and services by faculty and staff at distance learning sites; and an increase in technological innovations in the transmittal of information and the delivery of courses. To these may be added shifts away from central campus enrollments, the search for more cost-effective sources for post-secondary education, and the appearance and rapid development of the virtual or all- electronic university, having no physical campus of its own.

The “Guidelines” are intended to serve as a gateway to adherence to other ACRL standards and guidelines in the appropriate areas and in accordance with the size and type of originating institution. The most recent editions of these standards and guidelines may be found by going to http://www.ala.org/acrl and clicking on “Standards & Guidelines.”

The audience for die “Guidelines” includes administrators at all levels of post-secondary education; librarians planning for and managing distance learning library services; other librarians and staff serving distance learning students or working with distance learning program staff, faculty, and sponsors of academic programs; as well as accrediting and licensure agencies.

Definitions

Distance learning libraiy sewices refersto those libraiy services in support of college, university, or other post-secondaiy courses and programs offered away from a main campus, or in the absence of a traditional campus, and regardless of where credit is given. These courses may be taught in traditional or nontraditional formats or media, may or may not require physical facilities, and may or may not involve live interaction of teachers and students. The phrase is inclusive of courses in all post-secondary programs designated as: extension, extended, off-campus, extended campus, distance, distributed, open, flexible, franchising, virtual, synchronous, or asynchronous.

Distance learning communitycovers all those individuals and agencies, or institutions, directly involved with academic programs or extension services offered away from a traditional academic campus, or in the absence of a traditional academic campus, including students, faculty, researchers, administrators, sponsors, and staff, or any of these whose academic work otherwise takes them away from on-campus library services.

Originating institutionrefers to the entity, singular or collective, its/their chief administrative officers and governance organizations responsible for the offering or marketing and supporting of distance learning courses and programs: the credit- granting body. Each institution in a multi-institutional cluster is responsible for meeting the library needs of its own students, faculty, and staff at the collective site.

Library denotes the library operation directly associated with the originating institution.

Librarian-administrator designatesa librarian, holding a master’s degree from an ALA-accredited library school, who specializes in distance learning library services, and who is directly responsible for the administration and supeivision of those services.

Philosophy

The “Guidelines” assume the following precepts:

• Access to adequate library services and resources is essential for the attainment of superior academic skills in post-secondary education, regardless of where students, faculty, and programs are located. Members of the distance learning community are entitled to library services and resources equivalent to those provided for students and faculty in traditional campus settings.

• The instilling of lifelong learning skills through general bibliographic and infoimation literacy instruction in academic libraries is a primary outcome of higher education. Such preparation and measurement of its outcomes are of equal necessity for the distance learning community as for those on the traditional campus.

• Traditional on-campus library services themselves cannot be stretched to meet the library needs of distance learning students and faculty who face distinct and different challenges involving library access and information delivery. Special funding arrangements, proactive planning, and promotion are necessary to deliver equivalent library services and to achieve equivalent results in teaching and learning, and generally to maintain quality in distance learning programs. Because students and faculty in distance learning programs frequently do not have direct access to a full range of library services and materials, equitable distance learning library services are more personalized than might be expected on campus.

• The originating institution is responsible, through its chief administrative officers and governance organizations, for funding and appropriately meeting the information needs of its distance learning programs in support of their teaching, learning, and research. This support should provide ready and equivalent library sendee and learning resources to all of the institution’s students, regardless of location. This support should be funded separately rather than drawn from the regular funding of the library. In growing and developing institutions, funding should expand as programs and enrollments grow.

• The originating institution recognizes the need for service, management, and technical linkages between the library and other complementary resource bases such as computing facilities, instructional media, and telecommunication centers.

• The originating institution is responsible for assuring that its distance learning library programs meet or exceed national and regional accreditation standards and professional association standards and guidelines.

• The originating institution is responsible for involving the library administration and other personnel in the detailed analysis of planning, developing, evaluating, and adding or changing of the distance learning program from the earliest stages onward.

• The library lias primary responsibility for iden- tifying, developing, coordinating, providing, and assessing the value and effectiveness of resources and services designed to meet both the standard and the unique informational and skills development needs of the distance learning community. The librarian-administrator, either centrally located or at an appropriate site, should be responsible for ensuring and demonstrating that all requirements are met through needs and outcomes assessments, and other measures of library performance, as appropriate, and as an ongoing process in conjunction with the originating institution.

• Effective and appropriate services for distance learning communities may differ from, but must be equivalent to, those services offered on a traditional campus. The requirements and desired outcomes of academic programs should guide the library’s responses to defined needs. Innovative approaches to the design and evaluation of special procedures or systems to meet these needs is encouraged.

• When resources and services of unaffiliated local libraries are to be used to support information needs of the distance learning community, the originating institution is responsible, through the library, for the development and periodic review of formal, documented, written agreements with those local libraries. Such resources and services are not to be used simply as substitutes for supplying adequate materials and services by the originating institution. The distance learning library program shall have goals and objectives that support the provision of resources and services consistent with the broader institutional mission.

Management

The chief administrative officers and governance organizations of the originating institution bear the fiscal and administrative responsibilities, through the active leadership of the library administration, to fund, staff, and supervise libraiy seivices and resources in support of distance learning programs. As the principal and direct agent of implementation, the librarian-administrator should, minimally:

1. assess and articulate, on an ongoing basis, both the electronic and traditional library resource needs of the distance learning community, the services provided them, including instruction, and the facilities utilized;

2. prepare a written profile of the distance learning community’s information and skills needs;

3. develop a written statement of immediate and long-range goals and objectives for distance learning, which addresses the needs and outlines the methods by which progress can be measured;

4. promote the incorporation of the distance learning mission statement, goals, and objectives into those of the library and of the originating institution as a whole;

5. involve distance learning community representatives, including administrators, faculty, and students, in the formation of the objectives and the regular evaluation of their achievement;

6. assess the existing library support for distance learning, its availability, appropriateness, and effectiveness, using qualitative, quantitative, and outcomes measurement devices, as well as the written profile of needs. Examples of these measures include, but are not limited to:

a) conducting general library knowledge surveys of beginning students, re-offered at a mid-point in the students’ careers and again near graduation, to assess whether the library’s program of instruction is producing more information-literate students;

b) using evaluation checklists for librarian and tutorial instruction to gather feedback from students, other librarians, and teaching faculty;

c) tracking student library use through student journal entries or information literacy diaries;

d) asking focus groups of students, faculty, staff, and alumni to comment on their experiences using distance learning library services over a period of time;

e) employing assessment and evaluation by librarians from other institutions and/or other appropriate consultants, including those in communities where the institution has concentrations of distance learners;

f) conducting reviews of specific library and information service areas and/or operations which support distance learning library services;

g) considering distance learning library services in the assessment strategies related to institutional accreditation;

h) comparing the libraiy as a provider of distance learning library services with its peeis through self study efforts of the originating institution;

7. prepare and/or revise collection development and acquisitions policies to reflect the profile of needs;

8. participate with administrators, library subject specialists, and teaching faculty in the curriculum development process and in course planning for distance learning to ensure that appropriate library resources and services are available;

9. promote library support seivices to the distance learning community;

10. survey regularly distance learning library users to monitor and assess both the appropriateness of their use of services and resources and the degree to which needs are being met and skills acquired;

11. initiate dialogue leading to cooperative agreements and possible resource sharing and/or compensation for unaffiliated libraries;

12. develop methodologies for the provision of library materials and services from the library and/ or from branch campus libraries or learning centers to the distance learning community;

13. develop partnerships with computing services departments to provide the necessary automation support for the distance learning community; and

14. pursue, implement, and maintain all the preceding in the provision of a facilitating environment in support of teaching and learning, and in the acquisition of lifelong learning skills.

Finances

The originating institution should provide continuing, optimum financial support for addressing the library needs of the distance learning community sufficient to meet the specifications given in other sections of these “Guidelines,” and in accordance with the appropriate ACRL Standards and with available professional, state, or regional accrediting agency specifications. This financing should be:

1. related to the formally defined needs and demands of the distance learning program;

2. allocated on a schedule matching die originating institution’s budgeting cycle;

3. designated and specifically identified within the originating institution’s budget and expenditure reporting statements;

4. accommodated to arrangements involving external agencies, including both unaffiliated and affiliated, but independently supported, libraries;

5. sufficient to cover the type and number of seivices provided to the distance learning community; and

6. sufficient to support innovative approaches to meeting needs.

Personnel

Personnel involved in die management and coordination of distance learning library services include the chief administrators and governance organizations of the originating institution and the library administration and other personnel as appropriate, the librarian-coordinator managing the services, the library subject specialists, additional professional staff in the institution, support staff from a variety of departments, and the administrator(s), librarian(s), and staff from the distance learning site(s).

The originating institution should provide, either through the library or directly to separately administered units, professional and support personnel with clearly defined responsibilities at the appropriate location(s) and in die number and quality necessary to attain the goals and objectives for library services to the distance learning program, including:

1 a librarian-administratorto plan, implement, coordinate, and evaluate library resources and services addressing die information and skills needs of the distance leaning community;

2. additional professional and/or support personnel on site with the capacity and training to identify informational and skills needs of distance learning library users and respond to them directly;

3. classification, status, and salary scales for distance learning library personnel that are equivalent to diose provided for other comparable library employees while reflecting the compensation levels and cost of living for those residing at distance learning sites; and

4. opportunities for continuing growth and development for distance learning library personnel, including continuing education, professional education, and participation in professional and staff organizations.

Facilities

The originating institution should provide facilities, equipment, and communication links sufficient in size, number, scope, accessibility, and timeliness to reach all students and to attain the objectives of the distance learning programs. Arrangements may vary and should be appropriate to programs offered. Examples of suitable arrangements include but are not limited to:

1. access to facilities through agreements with a nonaffiliated library;

2. designated space for consultations, ready reference collections, reseive collections, electronic transmission of information, computerized data base searching and interlibraiy loan seivices, and offices for the library distance learning personnel;

3. a branch or satellite library; and

4. virtual services, such as Web pages, Internet searching, and using technology for electronic connectivity.

Resources

The originating institution is responsible for providing or securing convenient, direct physical and electronic access to library materials for distance learning programs equivalent to those provided in traditional settings and in sufficient quality, depth, number, scope, cunentness, and fonnats to:

1. meet the students’ needs in fulfilling course assignments (e.g., required and supplemental readings and research papers) and enrich the academic programs;

2. meet teaching and research needs;

3. facilitate the acquisition of lifelong learning skills; and

4. accommodate other informational needs of the distance learning community as appropriate.

When more than one institution is involved in the provision of a distance learning program, each is responsible for the provision of library materials to students in its own courses, unless an equitable agreement for otherwise providing these materials has been made. Costs, services, and methods for the provision of materials for all courses in the program should be uniform.

Programs granting associate degrees should provide access to collections which meet ACRL’s “Guidelines for two-year college learning resources programs” and the “Statement on quantitative standards.” Programs granting baccalaureate or master’s degrees should provide access to collections that meet the standards defined by the “ACRL standards for college libraries.” Programs offering doctorate degrees should provide access to collections that meet the standards defined by the “ACRL standards for university libraries.”

Services

Tire library seivices offered to the distance learning community should be designed to meet effectively a wide range of informational, bibliographic, and user needs. The exact combination of central and site staffing for distance learning libraiy services will differ from institution to institution. The following, diough not necessarily exhaustive, are essential:

1. reference assistance;

2. computer-based bibliographic and informational services;

3. reliable, rapid, secure access to institutional and other networks, including the Internet;

4. consultation seivices;

5. a program of library user instruction designed to instill independent and effective information literacy skills while specifically meeting the leamer- support needs of the distance learning community;

6. assistance with and instruction in the use of nonprint media and equipment;

7. reciprocal or contractual borrowing, or inter- library loan seivices using broadest application of fair use of copyrighted materials;

8. prompt document delivery, such as a courier system and/or electronic transmission;

9. access to reserve materials in accordance with copyright fair use policies;

10. adequate service hours for optimum access by users; and

11. promotion of library services to the distance learning community, including documented and updated policies, regulations and procedures for systematic development, and management of information resources.

Documentation

To provide records indicating the degree to which the originating institution is meeting these “Guidelines” in providing library services to its distance learning programs, die libraiy, and, when appropriate, the distance learning library units, should have available current copies of at least the following:

1. printed user guides;

2. statements of mission and purpose, policies, regulations, and procedures;

3. statistics on library use;

4. statistics on collections;

5. facilities assessment measures;

6. collections assessment measures;

7. needs and outcomes assessment measures;

8. data on staff and work assignments;

9. institutional and internal organization charts;

10. comprehensive budgets(s)

11. professional personnel vitae;

12. position descriptions for all personnel;

13. formal, written agreements;

14. automation statistics;

15. guides to computing services;

16. library evaluation studies or documents;

17. library and other instructional materials and schedules; and

18. evidence of involvement in curriculum development and planning.

Library education

To enable the initiation of an academic professional specialization in distance learning libraiy seivices, schools of library and information science should include in their curriculum courses and course units in this growing area of specialization within librarianship. ■