RoLES OF DIGITAL LIBRARY IN TEACHING AND LEARNING

RoLES OF DIGITAL LIBRARY IN TEACHING AND LEARNING

Libraries have long served crucial roles in learning.
The first great library, in Alexandria two thousand
years ago was really the first university. It
consisted of a zoo and various cultural artifacts in
addition to much of the ancient world's written
knowledge and attracted scholars from around the
Mediterranean who lived and worked in a scholarly
community for years at a time. Today, the rhetoric
associated with the National/Global Information
Infrastructure (N/GII) always includes examples of
how the vast quantities of information that global
networks provide (i.e., digital libraries) will be used
in educational settings [16].
This paper describes how digital libraries are
evolving to meet the needs of teaching and
learning and identifies issues for continued
development. We distinguish formal, informal, and
professional learning and argue that digital
libraries will allow teachers and students to use
information resources and tools that have
traditionally been physically and conceptually
inaccessible. We illustrate the types of information
resources that digital libraries offer to teachers
and learners and discuss some of the issues and
challenges that digital libraries present for
teaching and learning.
How do libraries support teaching and
learning?
A library is fundamentally an organized set of
resources, which include human services as well as
the entire spectrum of media (e.g., text, video,
hypermedia). Libraries have physical components
such as space, equipment, and storage media;
intellectual components such as collection policies
that determine what materials will be included and
organizational schemes that determine how the
collection is accessed; and people who manage the
physical and intellectual components and interact
with users to solve information problems.
Libraries serve at least three roles in learning.
First, they serve a practical role in sharing
expensive resources. Physical resources such as
books and periodicals, films and videos, software
and electronic databases, and specialized tools such
as projectors, graphics equipment and cameras are
shared by a community of users. Human
resources--librarians (also called media specialists
or information specialists) support instructional
programs by responding to the requests of
teachers and students (responsive service) and by
initiating activities for teachers and students
(proactive services). Responsive services include
maintaining reserve materials, answering reference
questions, providing bibliographic instruction,
developing media packages, recommending books or
films, and teaching users how to use materials.
Proactive services include selective dissemination of
information to faculty and students, initiating
thematic events, collaborating with instructors to
plan instruction, and introducing new instructional
methods and tools. In these ways, libraries serve to
allow instructors and students to share expensive
materials and expertise.
Second, libraries serve a cultural role in preserving
and organizing artifacts and ideas. Great works of
literature, art, and science must be preserved and
made accessible to future learners. Although
libraries have traditionally been viewed as facilities
for printed artifacts, primary and secondary school
libraries often also serve as museums and
laboratories. Libraries preserve objects through
careful storage procedures, policies of borrowing
and use, and repair and maintenance as needed. In
addition to preservation, libraries ensure access to
materials through indexes, catalogs, and other
finding aids that allow learners to locate items
appropriate to their needs.
Third, libraries serve social and intellectual roles in
bringing together people and ideas. This is distinct
from the practical role of sharing resources in that
libraries provide a physical place for teachers and
learners to meet outside the structure of the
classroom, thus allowing people with different
perspectives to interact in a knowledge space that
is both larger and more general than that shared
by any single discipline or affinity group. Browsing
a catalog in a library provides a global view for
people engaged in specialized study and offers
opportunities for serendipitous insights or
alternative views. In many respects, libraries serve
as centers of interdisciplinarity--places shared by
learners from all disciplines. Digital libraries
extend such interdisciplinarity by making diverse
information resources available beyond the physical
space shared by groups of learners. One of the
greatest benefits of digital libraries is bringing
together people with formal, informal, and
professional learning missions.
Formal learning is systematic and guided by
instruction. Formal learning takes place in courses
offered at schools of various kinds and in training
courses or programs on the job. The important roles
that libraries serve in formal learning are
illustrated by their physical prominence on
university campuses and the number of courses
that make direct use of library services and
materials. Most of the information resources in
schools are tied directly to the instructional
mission. Students or teachers who wish to find
information outside this mission have in the past
had to travel to other libraries. By making the
broad range of information resources discussed
below available to students and teachers in schools,
digital libraries open new learning opportunities for
global rather than strictly local communities.
Much learning in life is informal--opportunistic and
strictly under the control of the learner. Learners
take advantage of other people, mass media, and
the immediate environment during informal
learning. The public library system that developed
in the U.S. in the late nineteenth century has been
called the "free university", since public libraries
were created to provide free access to the world's
knowledge. Public libraries provide classic nonfiction
books, a wide range of periodicals, reference
sources, and audio and video tapes so that patrons
can learn about topics of their own choosing at
their own pace and style. Just as computing
technology and world-wide telecommunications
networks are beginning to change what is possible
in formal classrooms, they are changing how
individuals pursue personal learning missions.
Professional learning refers to the on going
learning adults engage in to do their work and to
improve their work-related knowledge and skills. In
fact, for many professionals, learning is the
central aspect of their work. Like informal
learning, it is mainly self-directed, but unlike
formal or informal learning, it is focused on a
specific field closely linked to job performance,
aims to be comprehensive, and is acquired and
applied longitudinally. Since professional learning
affects job performance, corporations and
government agencies support libraries (often called
information centers) with information resources
specific to the goals of the organization. The main
information resources for professional learning,
however, are personal collections of books, reports,
and files; subscriptions to journals; and the human
networks of colleagues nurtured through
professional meetings and various communications.
Many of the data sets and computational tools of
digital libraries were originally developed to
enhance professional learning.
BY MWORIA ANGEL
BAPRM 42642