I only finished this short article today, but it was "published" a year ago – not sure how I missed it then, or found it now – probably someone’s delicious feed. Regardless of the provenance, I’d like to recommend the following article:
Nicholas, M., Tomeo, M. (2005). Can You Hear Me Now? Communicating Library Services to Distance Education Students and Faculty. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 8(2).
Based on the results of a LibQual study at their institution (Slippery Rock University of PA) that suggested distance students were unaware of the services available to them, the authors conducted a survey "of library web sites at 100 distance learning institutions seeking to establish a checklist of best practice in terms of library resources and services provided and to establish a template for the effective distance education gateway."
Basically they wanted to find out how other institutions with DE programs made it known to students that there were library services available to them. Among the findings, they found that "only 31% of distance education program pages provided a link to the library for users and more often served the purpose of providing a broad overview or description of distance education programs or an entryway to course management software." This is true at my institution, and I have just requested that a link to my department be placed on our campus elearning page. In addition, only 21% of DE Library pages included information for DE faculty. Guilty. After reading this article I quickly created a brief page for DE faculty.
One of the interesting correlations they found was that "institutions with a distance education enrollment of 5,001-10,000+ led in offering database tutorials (29%) and course specific pathfinders (42%), as well as designating a distance education librarian (14%)." What I would’ve loved to know is whether those institutions with a designated DE Librarian had better information pages, and better links from elsewhere in the institution to the DE Library pages. In other words, was the DE Librarian doing a good job of getting the word out compared to institutions that didn’t have a dedicated DE Librarian?
It’s a quick read, and you might just get a couple of good ideas about what’s missing from your pages, or where links to your pages should be.
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