Back in 1999, Judith Boettcher made a number of predictions for what the world of distance education would look like in 2007 (21st Century Teaching and Learning Patterns: What Will We See?). In the most recent issue of Campus Technology (formerly Syllabus), she takes a look at those predictions in an article called, "Are We There Yet?" Not sure why she checked in again at the 5 year mark, but there you go.
This most recent article doesn’t follow the original predictions in step, nor does it follow all the predictions, but she does mention librarians in a distance context, so I thought I’d bring it to your attention.
When examining the idea that students will be savvy consumers of educational services, she points out that, "More courses
are now supported by an instructional team with a lead faculty, a course mentor
or assistant, library liaison, and often 24/7 technical support."
This is certainly true on my campus. It’s not the norm yet, but more and more online courses do seem to have this team approach, and more and more of them are utilizing "traditional subject librarians" and not just me, the distance librarian (thankfully!)
Incidentally, she does mention the library a couple of times in that original article – go ahead and read it, it took me a while to track it down in the Wayback Machine 🙂