ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

The Wyoming Experience with the ACRL “Guidelines for Extended Campus Library Services”

Jean S. Johnson Head of Extension and Special Services University of Wyoming Libraries

Overview

Colleges and universities throughout the country have been offering courses to students off campus for many years, including correspondence, continuing education through conferences and institutes, and for-credit courses in any number of program areas. In recent years, many of those same colleges and universities have seen declines in on-campus enrollment, while many have seen marked increases in enrollment in off-campus courses, particularly in coursework leading to baccalaureate and graduate degrees.

Wyoming is a unique state in this area, in that it has only one four-year institution, the University of Wyoming (UW), and seven community colleges. The University has been offering correspondence and extension courses throughout the state for many years, but it wasn’t until 1975 that the University Study Subcommittee of the 43rd Wyoming Legislature directed in its report that “the granting of University of Wyoming baccalaureate degrees should be possible off campus through cooperation with the community college system.” As a result the University has developed a flexible delivery model for extended degree programs around the state.

Basically, the model is premised on the conclusion that no extended degree programs in Wyoming should be permanently established at a particular site because of the limited population base and the shifting demands of our mobile population. The University, therefore, has attempted to establish lock-step degree programs with predetermined initiation and termination dates. This means that a given extended degree program may be in a community for as much as 6-7 years until the needs have been satisfied and then may be shifted to another community. In its place another degree program may be implemented, or there may be a fallow period of 1-2 years where no organized extended degree programs are offered. The University has made a commitment to extended degree programs and includes it among the highest of its planning and budgeting priorities for the coming years.

The University’s programs are offered in a state that encompasses some 97,000 square miles with fewer than 500,000 people. Even though most instruction sites include a community college library and all have public libraries, there is no site that has extensive library resources, and certainly not one that can adequately support most upper division and graduate courses.

In addition to the 10,200 students on campus, there are more than 10,000 off-campus students around the state, with some 6,500 of the latter involved in extension and external degree programs and another 3,000-3,500 enrolled in correspondence study. The students are taught by UW faculty, accredited community college faculty, and other local persons who are approved by the University to teach UW courses.

Planning a library extension program responsive to these circumstances is proving to be a major commitment, but one with substantial rewards. A review of the literature confirmed that very little has been written about off-campus library services, except in Australia where great distances and sparse populations are factors similar to those found in Wyoming. In the July 1982 issue of the Journal of Librarianship, for example, D. Elaine Haworth published “Library Services to the Off-Campus and Independent Learner: A Review of the Literature.”¹

In the U.S., the 1982 conference in St. Louis on “Off-Campus Library Services” was the first of its kind to convene people with common interests and concerns. The published proceedings of the conference are a very helpful addition to the literature.² Finally, the ACRL Guidelines for Extended Campus Library Services³ must be examined whenever discussions occur concerning library services to students off campus.

With the commitment of the University of Wyoming to off-campus programs, and in view of the experience of others, a particular series of events has had a great impact on the University Libraries’ extension services program. First was the attendance by the author at the St. Louis conference followed by a sabbatical leave to study off-campus library services. Next came the reassignment of the author to the position of Head of Extension and Special Services, followed by an on-the-road statewide reconnaissance of off-campus library needs, and an articulation conference involving representatives from UW and the community colleges, as well as several public librarians and other interested persons. (Copies of the 50-page proceedings are available for $3 from Jean S. Johnson, Head of Extension and Special Services, Coe Library, Box 3334, University Station, Laramie, WY 82071.)

Graduate students in Wyoming public school law course taught at Northwest Community College (Powell) receive study materials from a UW professor.

Finally, the Council on Library Resources has awarded a Faculty/Librarian Cooperative Research Grant to Keith Miller, Coordinator of the UW-Casper Academic Program, and the author, to study the characteristics of non-traditional and traditional students in relation to their library and information needs in their respective academic settings.

The Guidelines

In pursuing these preliminary activities, it has been helpful to use the ACRL Guidelines.

Off-campus students are usually a different type than those on campus. Their average age is 33-35, most are employed full-time, and they tend to be highly motivated. They are generally in classes that parallel those on campus, but their environment is different. Classes are held at night, maybe once or twice a week, in a classroom that might be in a community college, a high school, or even in a library. The instructor is available for consultation only on class days and otherwise might be a longdistance phone call away. In rural communities library resources may be few and may be in more than one location, such as in the public library and in the community college library.

How can these students get the same quality of education for a baccalaureate or graduate degree as students do on campus? The ACRL Guidelines may work in states where large populations are located throughout, and where local library resources are adequate or can be easily supplemented by the main library to meet the needs of the students. Or they may work if the off-campus site is only a few miles from the main campus and the students can visit the college or university library on weekends. But what about the students who live several hundred miles from adequate library resources? Can the main library be expected to provide enough services and resources to meet students’ needs?

The University of Wyoming is faced with such a dilemma and the Libraries must come to grips with providing service to as many students scattered around the state as there are on campus. Admittedly, the off-campus students are not full-time, but they are taking many of the same courses as those on campus: nursing, elementary education, engineering, business, and arts and sciences.

Planning

According to the Guidelines it is most important that proper planning be initiated and carried out on a regular basis in order to develop a strong offcampus library services program. The Guidelines address several points concerning planning, including needs assessment, preparing a written profile, developing written objectives, and involving “appropriate extended academic community representatives, including the faculty, in the formation of the objectives and the regular evaluation of their achievement.”

University of Wyoming planning has included all of this preliminary work. In addition, contacts have been made with extended academic community representatives through the School of Extended Studies, which now provides a copy of the extension course approval form so that contact is possible with the faculty members who will be teaching courses.

Financing

The Wyoming experience confirms the need to “provide continuing financial support for addressing the needs of the extended campus community. ” The UW program has an allocation from the Libraries’ acquisition budget and there are also funds for travel and staffing. In other words, the Libraries are operating under the assumption that off-campus library services require basic funding which is related to the required planning documentation.

One area that is not addressed by the Guidelines, but should be explored by academic libraries where extended degree programs are becoming an important part of the institution, is that of financial cooperation by other departments on campus. If a university has a strong commitment to provide extensive credit courses off campus, then careful examination of the financial basis for such a program should be made. We are looking at and will be discussing with the School of Extended Studies ways that the School might financially help the Library better provide library services to those 10,000 students.

Personnel

The ACRL Guidelines state: “Qualified library personnel should be employed to plan, implement, and evaluate library programs addressing the needs of extended campus students and faculty.” Historically, UW was unable to provide adequate library extension services until the personnel commitment was made. Eventually additional staff may be needed, depending on the scope of the program, including those with specialized skills. Initially a great deal of time is required to meet with administrators and extension faculty to determine the library requirements of courses. Further, faculty on campus do not fully utilize the library in their teaching; it is expected that this may be more of a problem with extension faculty, and depending on potential needs, a selling job might be necessary.

The UW Libraries have attempted initially to meet the off-campus library services personnel needs through reassignment of full-time staff and additional funding for part-time staff. The University has also provided funding for staffing the UW- Casper Library, funding which did not come from the Libraries’ budget.

Facilities

The UW situation demonstrates what can be done with this section of the Guidelines to “provide facilities and equipment sufficient in size, number, and scope to attain the objectives of the extended campus programs.” Except in large population centers where a sufficient number of courses are offered, branch libraries are not practical. Therefore, it is important to assess local library facilities to see what needs to be done to augment them. Cooperative agreements for the use of local facilities may be required as described in the Guidelines.

Last spring, for example, the University worked out an agreement with the Natrona County Public Library in Casper to remodel space in the basement to house a branch collection of UW holdings. Because Casper is the largest community in Wyoming and is some 150 miles from Laramie, where the University campus is located, it has the only resident UW academic program outside of Laramie. With the cooperation of the public library, a branch library of the UW Libraries system now exists there. Cheyenne is the only other city of any size in the state, but since it is less than 50 miles from Laramie, there is no need to consider establishing another branch. However, cooperative relationships must be maintained with all libraries in the state, since one never knows when a course may be taught in a community as small as several hundred people, and it may be necessary to place library resources in the local library or another location for a semester.

Library hours are important: if a student works all day, has class two nights a week, and the only library in town is open during the day, one night a week (one of those nights the student is in class), and three hours on Saturday, the student may become very frustrated when wanting to use the library. Will some type of cooperative arrangement be required for the library to be open additional hours during the semester?

One of the most important considerations when developing an outreach program, according to the Guidelines and the UW experience, is to make the main library accessible to off-campus students. If it is too far for students to visit the campus easily, then a toll-free telephone number should be made available. If the main reference department, for example, is only a phone call away, then students might not feel so isolated when doing research.

The UW Libraries program installed a toll-free telephone line into the main reference department of the campus Libraries. Calls coming in may be transferred, as needed, to any department within the Libraries.

Resources

One of the prime necessities of a strong offcampus library program noted in the Guidelines is for student and faculty access to library materials. Either a printed, COM, or online main campus catalog is essential. (A COM catalog is planned for UW, and the new Geac statewide circulation system scheduled for installation in the spring of 1984 will further enhance the program’s capabilities.)

Once students know what they want, the material should be easily available. Some duplication of material will be necessary to satisfy the needs of offcampus students while, at the same time, not depriving students on campus. Care must be exercised in order not to build too large a collection of duplicates that may be useful for only a limited period. Separate book and periodical allocations should be made in order to monitor those costs in the program.

How library material is delivered quickly to distant locations is another Guidelines concern. Since many students on campus wait until the last minute to write papers, it is unlikely that off-campus students will do much better. Therefore, it is imperative to determine the quickest and most cost effective way to get material to them. The UW mail is sometimes abysmally slow, and it has been determined in Wyoming that parcel service does not always make deliveries any more quickly, even at its best. Bus lines are another option, but pick-up and delivery to the bus station must be considered. Finally, a delivery van might be a possibility; however, when long distances are involved, more than one day might be needed to make deliveries over a wide area and the costs of delivering only a relatively small number of items may skyrocket. Telefacsimile transmission of some materials is also an option. Once a situation is analyzed, however, it may be appropriate to use a combination of these choices.

Services

Library services to off-campus students probably need to be more varied and extensive than to those on campus. As mentioned earlier, a toll-free number is necessary, and if there is only one available for the main campus, it must be routed to reference. Local libraries may not have the broad reference collections as do libraries on campus, and students are likely to have many reference questions. As we tend to encourage students on campus to start with the reference department, it seems logical to encourage off-campus students to do the same. Also, the reference department has far more open hours than, say, interlibrary loan or the extension librarian’s office. Since most off-campus students work full time they are more likely to call at night or on weekends.

Local libraries are unlikely to have the broad range of indexes that are included on campus. If practical, some additional indexes might be provided by the main campus. An alternative is to provide a terminal and database searches. Database searches do not give students experience in doing their own index searching, but if the world of the future has a personal computer in every home that can access databases, maybe that experience is not so important. A factor that must be considered is cost. Will the library underwrite all or part of the database expense or will students be expected to assume the cost? The UW program anticipates the installation of online information retrieval systems in Casper which will link students with the Laramie campus and information databases.

Research projects that use indexes or database searches will, of course, lead to periodical articles, many or most of which will not be in local libraries. Obtaining photocopies from the main library will be necessary and then, of course, the issue of copyright will arise.

One of the greatest concerns with off-campus library services is that too often students may be spoon-fed information and not have enough handson experience to do research later. However, as long as a college or university develops an offcampus instructional program in rural and semirural areas, spoon feeding, to some degree, is a pitfall that is difficult to avoid.

Library instruction is another important part of the services needed by off-campus students. Library resources and services are not located in one library or on one campus, but may be in more than one type of library in a community as well as on campus. Library instruction must be designed for that type of situation with emphasis on what is available in the community and where to go for additional help.

Conclusion

This article has attempted to point out some of the factors involved when considering a library service program for off-campus students, and to point out what one state, Wyoming, has done in five months to develop such a program. The 1982 ACRL Guidelines were used as a basis for many of the comments. In general, the author finds no major fault with the Guidelines if they are interpreted and used based on the assumptions stated, particularly the third assumption: “Effective services for extended campus communities may differ from established practices. The requirements of the instructional program rather than tradition should guide the library’s responses to defined needs.”

The main point in the Guidelines that should be stressed is “personnel.” From the UW experience, there is no doubt that at least one person must be responsible for off-campus library services if a continuous and effective program is expected. There are too many contacts to be made and too many situations to address in developing such a program to allow it to be a secondary part of one or more librarians’ responsibilities.

When reviewing all of the necessary factors of an off-campus library service program, it is very clear that such a program is neither simple nor inexpensive. If a college or university administration makes a commitment to a program for off-campus students, then it must also make a proportional commitment to library services. The library, in turn, is obligated to make a clear and concise case of what such a commitment entails. A detailed plan of action must be prepared with current and projected expectations and costs of a program as it develops. Understandably, it is difficult to anticipate demand, but some initial review, assessment, and experimentation will help. The investment in offcampus library services can have a profound effect on departments throughout the library and the university.

Notes

1. D. Elaine Haworth, “Library Services to the Off-Campus and Independent Learner: A Review of the Literature," Journal of Librarianship, 14 (July 1982): 157-75.
2. Barton M. Lessin, ed., The Off-Campus Library Services Conference Proceedings. Mt. Pleasant, Mich.: Central Michigan University Press, 1983.
3. “Guidelines for Extended Campus Library Services,” College and Research Libraries News, 43 (March 1982):86-88.