Nicky Whitsed

Director of Library Services

Open University

Open Libr@ry: creating library services at a distance

About the OU

• 166,000 students

• Around 70% of OU students successfully complete courses each year

• Around 25,000 students studying outside the UK

• More than 100,000 students study interactively on-line

• 20,000 students using electronic library services.

• Nearly all OU students are part-time and about 70% of undergraduate students remain in full-time employment throughout their studies.

• 4000 staff, 900 academics

• 7000 associate lecturers and tutors• 13 regional offices

Middle States Commission on Higher Education

“ Is a library an absolute prerequisite for a degree-granting institution of higher education, or is it instead an indicator of some increasing level of quality above an acceptable minimum? If a physical library is not a pre-requisite what types or combinations of electronic resources could be considered acceptable substitutes………

we recognise that there may be some conflict of interest, asking this of someone who may well be committed to the traditional campus library. However times are changing …………”

What do distance learners want?Students and Libraries Project 1999

• award winning research

• 1,500 OU students surveyed

• 60% use information other than provided

• 17% used academic libraries

• 50% had access to the Internet

• very few used information research tools

• want access to OU Library staff & resources !

Open Libr@ry

• Learner support staff

• access to physical libraries (academic, public, European, British Council)

• access to databases, electronic journals and quick reference sources

• access to document delivery/bookshops

• evaluated, managed web resources for individual courses (ROUTES)

• provide training (electronic and face-to-face) (SAFARI/INFOSKILL)

• Help-desk (e-mail, telephone, conferencing - named contact)

• Advice

The Open Libr@ry

Information literacy

• Getting information literacy skills into OU courses• Ongoing work with Course Teams

• Suggest Learning outcomes

• Write materials and activities

• Web-based Information Literacy training package (SAFARI)

• Generic, multi-level, multi-disciplinary

• Input from academic units

Information Literacy

• Short course in Information Literacy• 100 study hours

• To include information skills for citizenship as well as information skills for lifelong learning

• Leads to Key Skills Assessment Framework in Information Literacy

Summary: new roles and services

• Librarians as “para-academics ”/educational technologists/ contributors to pedagogic issues

• information management skills/training in C&IT/documentation/help-desk

• information strategy/knowledge management

• advice and consultancy (e.g.web management, metadata)

• brokers/navigators/negotiators/evaluators/

• electronic information research

Issues 1: library staff

• focus on the learner/customer culture

• staff attitudes and skills (hybrid skills)

• pro-active approach

• understand different sorts of user

• work in partnership

• close liaison with academics

• act as institutional change agents

Issues 2

• Funding (who pays? new costing models, activity analysis)

• Rights (copyright and licensing)

• Bandwidth/technical standards/tomorrow’s technology, leapfrogging and scenario planning

• Change management: enabling innovation strategy

Next Steps

• Promises

• MyOpenLibr@ry

• electronic help-desk (OPAL)

• ENABLE project

• DIVA