When I first looked at this book I thought that it was going to be very American, but although the examples used in most of the chapters are from the US, the issues they are discussing are not specific to any particular geographic region. It starts by looking at general issues to do with supporting distance learners and then moves on to more specific topics, e.g. chat‐reference and supporting information literacy development at a distance. There is a range of papers, including literature reviews, research, and case studies giving details of how certain technologies have been implemented with tips for anyone else planning to do something similar.
The first chapter by Anne‐Marie Casey is a historical overview of distance education in the US, it describes how students at a distance have been supported by libraries and how this has changed through the advent of the internet. Although all the examples she uses are from institutions in America, essentially the same story could be told using examples from across the world.
Marie F. Jones then compares four sets of guidelines on what library support distance learners should have (from the Association of College and Research Libraries in the US, the Medical Library Association, the Indian Library Association and the Canadian Library Association) with published literature on what has been done in practice to formulate a framework for how the guidelines can be best implemented.
Chapter 3 is the results of a research project by Mary Cassner and Kate E. Adams into the web sites of a group of academic libraries supporting students at a distance. This is an interesting review of the different features and facilities which were available through their web sites at that time, and where different things were placed within the site, but it seemed to lack some comment on where to move forward from that point. I would also have found it useful if they had included comments from students about how they found using the sites to compare to their criteria of analysis.
Chapter 4 is called “Keep IT Simple” and is a good reminder of the need to keep IT systems and web sites simple and easy to use if you want students to use them. The next three chapters give details about the implementation of a chat‐reference service in three different groups of libraries. They were all about running one service across a number of different libraries, either from the same institution or from a number of different institutions in the same area, and the problems to do with training, staffing and levels of service that arise.
In Chapter 8 there is a discussion about providing online help, which gives an overview of students' expectations and attitudes to help. This would be a useful resource for anyone redesigning their library web pages who wants to increase the use of any “help” pages. Linda Lilard and Mollie Dinwiddie then explain how they have used the Blackboard virtual learning environment to support students learning about information literacy. At the end they include a series of useful tips and ways of interacting with students that could be useful for others using a similar system to support students.
Chapter 10 is an interesting look at the pros and cons of Open Source Software. It explains the things you need to think about when choosing to use Open Source Software rather than a commercial system and gives some examples of Open Source Software that are useful in a library context. Amy Brunvard then writes about an online information literacy course and how that has been developed to teach research skills at a distance. She demonstrates what has worked for her institution and how it could be used in other situations.
Irmin Allner's chapter on copyright is the main chapter, which is solely US focused, as it explains the copyright situation in the US. This means that the specific points of law are not relevant to anyone outside America, but the general points about copyright and intellectual property are similar, in most places, and so provide useful background information. The final chapter is by Christopher Cox and compares his experience using Camtasia to produce streaming video for web delivery with his previous experience using live video. He explains how Camtasia can produce streaming media much more easily and much cheaper than with a video camera.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, and even laughed out loud twice! The one problem with a publication like this is that it takes so long to be produced, that by the time it is available there are more recent studies. This means that those readers who want to know what is being done at the cutting edge of library support for distance learners will be disappointed with this book. Even so, I would recommend it to anyone who supports students through the internet, whether they are at a distance or not, as it provides a useful introduction and commentary on some of the issues around providing reference support through the web.
