[WEB4LIB] Re: University of Phoenix/"distance" library services

[David P. Miller]

Certainly, most distance education programs nowadays will make some use
of online materials, and specific courses may need to rely on them to a
very great extent, depending on the population. As I understand the
current question, the "University of Phoenix" is a for-profit organization
with no actual campus in Phoenix, but which seeks to represent itself as
a full-fledged university rather a corporation offering courses as its
only product. The two are not the same kind of thing, despite certain
kinds of reductive rhetoric heard in higher education administration nowadays.
Both types of entities have a place, of course. The judgement against the
UofP, then, was based in part on misrepresentation: a collection of online
resources is not a university library, as useful as it might be on its
own terms. Again, this is how I understand this situation. Others with more
knowledge about the UofP, please correct me.

Even in the case of distance education arrangements with a far-flung student
body (over many states), there are other approaches to making resources
available aside from relying only on digital materials. Institutions can
share their physical resources at a distance, with cross-enrollments that
allow students to use the campus or city libraries nearest them. Material
delivery within a region is possible. Online materials are important, but
the fact that one's class doesn't meet on a physical campus doesn't mean
there's no place or value for physical materials -- or that browsing,
serendipity, or just wandering through the stacks have suddenly become
obsolete behaviors. Again, it depends on the population served and how
the organization represents itself.

David Miller
Levin Library, Curry College
Milton, MA
dmiller at curry.edu

P.S. to the list -- sorry for appending the ugly HTML file to the original
post. I sent it directly out of Netscape and didn't notice that it would
be appended.