THE ROLE OF E-LIBRARY IN EDUCATION

THE ROLE OF E-LIBRARY IN EDUCATION

There are three distinct roles that e-library play in education:

• As an environment for learning (student experience);
• As an authoring space (again, in support of student experience e.g academic research);
• As a resource for teaching (course development).

All libraries – physical and digital – are service organizations, based upon the fundamental requirement to serve their users. When examining the applications of digital libraries in education we need to consider the needs of various users and stakeholders: students, teachers, educational authorities, including governments and teaching standards organizations. Each group has different requirements for the content and organization of educational digital libraries.

Material on the Internet can be used in educational applications, but will not be presented in the same controlled environment as material in a E-library. Teachers may appreciate the limits that curated collections set for students because they can: specify resources to focus student activity, limit access to some resources (for reasons of student age or content type) and monitor the usage of resources.

The organization of content for teachers in educational E-library depends on the metadata of the elements of the collection. Educational metadata is organised around concepts that are useful for teachers, whereas the metadata of many libraries tries to cater for a wide target audience, such as the general public. A categorization that supports access by one group of users might not be useful for another group, such as teachers.

E-library present educators with many exciting new opportunities. They can incorporate a huge variety of different content types. While one naturally thinks first of textual documents, upon reflection digital libraries cancontain any media type – for example, images, maps, audio, video, even virtual manipulatives. So can conventional libraries, of course, but it is more difficult for them because of physical packaging and different viewing requirements for library users. Digital libraries are viewed on general-purpose computers, which can present all kinds of media in a relatively uniform way. Moreover, they are not restricted to conventional media: digital libraries can include raw data and even interactive software modules, as we saw in the example of the NLVM. Another opportunity lies in the possibility of global access: now teaching material can be shared on a scale that transcends the wildest dreams of a generation ago.

In addition to expanding the format of information (e.g., multimedia, simulations), digital libraries offer more information than most individuals or schools have been able to acquire and maintain. Digital libraries are accessible in classrooms and from homes as well as in central library facilities where specialized access, display, and use tools may be shared. Remote access allows possibilities for vicarious field trips, virtual guest speakers, and access to rare and unique materials in classrooms and at home. The promise is one of better learning through broader, faster, and better information and communication services. These physical advantages promise several advantages to teachers and learners by extending the classroom, however, as with all technologies; there are costs and tradeoffs to these advantages.

One clear difference between traditional libraries and E-library is that digital libraries offer greater opportunity for users to deposit information as well as use information. Thus, students and teachers can easily be publishers as well as readers in digital libraries. The number of student-produced “Mosaic home pages” and gopher sites continues to grow as teachers and students not only bring digital library information into the classroom but move the products of the classroom out into the digital libraries. Just as distinctions between publishers and readers are becoming less clear in networked environments, Internet access in classrooms blurs distinctions between teaching and learning. Students bring interesting and important information to class discussions and in many cases lead teachers and classmates to new electronic resources and tools. Teachers’ increasingly will find themselves in the important roles of moderator and critic, modeling for students how to examine and compare points of view and look critically at information. Teachers who have begun using networked materials in their classes are early adopters of new ideas and technologies and are comfortable sharing power with students. Just as “authority of information” has become an issue in professional communities that leverage networks, the authority of information in classrooms that has traditionally rested solely with teachers will increasingly be challenged by students locally and remotely.

Clearly, E-library have important roles to play in teaching and learning. Existing physical schools and libraries will continue to exist since they serve cultural and social roles as well as informational roles. There will always be a need for physical objects and social settings in learning; the vicarious is not enough. Parents will continue to demand child care, assurances of organized and shared culture beyond television, and human direction and guidance in learning at all levels. These demands will also be augmented by digital environments. Digital libraries will allow parents, teachers, and students to share common information resources and communicate easily as needed. In special cases, work, school, and play may become one–novice and professional learners collaborating with common information resources to solve real problems. In many respects, digital libraries will become digital schools. This represents a return to Alexandria, where learners of all types come together to share and explore information and expertise.