Cornell University Library

April 29, 2002

Present: Erla Heyns, Bill Kehoe, Ira Revels, Oya Rieger (chair), Don Schnedeker, Nancy Skipper, Leah Solla, Kornelia Tancheva.

The meeting was devoted to a review of the Office of Distributed Learning's mission and the Library's distributed learning services, policies, and plans. The Office of Distributed Learning (ODL) was created with a 3-year mission to facilitate the development of system-wide services and programs in support of faculty and students involved in distributed learning. The attached list summarizes the activity areas during the first year of the Office.

Have there been developments during the last year with potential impact on the ODL's mission?

eCornell has had a slow start and the interest in distance learning is not as high as it was a couple of years ago. It is no longer seen as the gold mine. Nevertheless, the original purpose of the Office has not been affected by these developments. Its goals were defined broadly, emphasizing the 'residential distributed learning' rather than 'distance learning.' The focus has been on providing seamless, quality services to support distributed learning at Cornell. This continues to be an important goal for the Library.

What should be the priorities of the ODL for 2002/2003?

Maintain a system-wide and cross-functional approach - The Office needs to continue packaging and marketing a wide range of services representing different units and functions.

Support our common mission - create synergy - Not every unit library is in a position to assign a staff for coordinating distributed learning activities. The Office needs to continue coordinating collaborations among unit libraries to create common strategies and programs.

Represent CUL in Cornell collaborations - The ODL provides a single point of entry for system-wide collaborations such as the ones with the Academic Technology Center.

Develop common promotion strategies to leverage CUL collections and services - Faculty members have a full agenda and the Library collections and services will be integrated in their technology-mediated instruction only if we offer "just-in-time" and readily accessible tools. The Office needs to facilitate the development of such advocacy strategies.

Support the development of faculty-created digital collections - The number of faculty-created digital collections is increasing. Assisting faculty in developing these collections is also a strategic service area. Our digital services that will support faculty in creating their own collections needs to represent all functional units. The package needs to be presented to faculty as a seamless and integrated service.

Foster cross-functional communication - Cross-functional vision requires cross-functional communication. We need to develop channels for linking reference, access services, and our emerging digital library consultancy and production services (copyright, digitization, metadata, archiving, etc.). The Office needs to continue its staff awareness programs and serve as a resource in answering staff questions about the Library's distributed learning services and programs.