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Distancing Libraries: The Times They are A-Changing Margaret Zeegers Peter Macauley
Margaret Zeegers is the Director of the English Language Centre, SMB Campus, University of Ballarat. Her research interests include distance education and the provision of training for English teachers. Email: m.zeegers@ballarat.edu.au Peter Macauley is a librarian at Deakin University in Geelong, Victoria. His research interests include library services for distance education students, especially postgraduates, and the relationship of librarians in the supervision of doctoral students, a topic he is currently pursuing for his PhD. Email: petem@deakin.edu.au
Those of us accustomed to availing ourselves of the services and materials provided by academic libraries tend towards a taken-for-granted approach to what is provided by them. This paper explores the way this taken-for-grantedness has been established in Australia and the way this has shaped the provision of library services to distance students. It goes on to examine the ways in which the role of the library and its provision of services to distance students has impacted upon the provision of university education to on campus students. The paper takes as its starting point the 1957 Murray Report' consideration of academic libraries and maps the changes that have occurred up to the present time. We use the concept of deconstruction as an analytical tool applied to various Reports to illustrate just what assumptions regarding university education have been and the way these assumptions have been challenged and/or modified. We could have listed the technological developments that have allowed libraries to function to greatest efficacy in terms of online catalogue and delivery protocols, but we felt that that would be telling only a small part of the story. We have deliberately avoided any such lists, concentrating rather on the uses to which such developments have been put.
Prime Minister Robert Menzies appointed a Committee to investigate the state of Australian Universities, headed by the Englishman Murray. This committee published its report in 1957. The Committee (Murray 1957) in suggesting that 'it should be unnecessary to stress the importance of the library to the whole framework of university education' (p. 51), is making its own assumptions as to what constitutes university learning quite explicit. It goes on to render a description redolent of that cloistered, sequestered apartment reminiscent of the monastery. It is given as a 'place where [the student] is welcomed and encouraged to pursue a personal and independent search for knowledge and understanding, where his [sic] capacities for independence of thought and judgment are enlarged, and where, above all, he [sic] is treated as a scholar, to be provided with the peaceful and uncrowded conditions conducive to scholarly work' (p. 51). Books and journals are not even referred to. Desks, tables, carrels and chairs are similarly absent. This space is not peopled by librarians. The ideal is all that furnishes this space, and it is one to which students come: it is not one that emits the information it stores in the form of borrowings to remote places, or even to the students' places of study on campus. This encapsulates the perception of the university student. Its very omission of reference to distance education students tells just what the construction of that student is as not able to receive the full benefits of the ideal university education as this sort of use of the library would lead the reader of the passage to infer. It is within the parameters of such a construct that the Committee is at work, and it is a construct not confined to country, language, creed or race. It could be anywhere in the world, with any (male) student living up to the ideal. It exists as an infinitive (Zeegers 2000). The silence regarding distance education students points to the marginalisation of this cohort in Australian Universities. The entire university student population in 1957 was not a huge one, constituting an elite within the sector at a rate of 36,000 students across nine universities in a population of about 10 million people (Karmel 1992, p. 125). The numbers of distance education students were not huge either, but certainly large enough to warrant the scrutiny of the Murray Commission. These enrolments did not constitute a student body operating under the ideal conditions of university scholarship described in the Murray Report. They merit barely three pages in Murray's 133-page report. Distance education is seen as 'a most distinctive and essential feature of the Australian scene' (p. 121), but it is couched in terms of a service designed for students who 'cannot attend lectures' (p. 33). The focus of these three pages is on the University of Queensland, which had 36% of its students studying externally (and these accepted only if they were unable to attend the university for some reason) and the University of New England, which accommodated 64% of its students in this way. Both these institutions had more than one-third and two thirds of their student body respectively in distance education mode—rather substantial numbers—yet they do not figure largely in the Report's considerations. The physical attention within the document alone suggests the extent to which the distance education student is on the margins of higher education activity and concern. It further suggests the dominance of the lecture-tutorial face-to-face mode within the system of higher education itself as what was being practised and most valued, any alternative being seen as somehow a lesser practice. It is in this way that a particular mode of university education is privileged above any other. Neither does Murray's idealised depiction of the library deal with issues of funding, storage, lending protocols, librarian and student needs in any real or physical sense. The minutiae of librarianship, as servicing on campus or off campus students, are left to languish in a silence as profound as that surrounding the distance education student. Not for him the problems of building a collection, ensuring that it is most effectively circulated among students of any kind at all, access to catalogues, professional development of librarians themselves, and so on. The public and official discourse of university libraries in 1957 thus reveals a good deal about the way in which the distance education student was constructed. The young male undergraduate studying in the face-to-face mode was constructed as the benchmark against which all other types of students were measured, thereby privileging this particular construct over any others. Any others existed on the margins of consideration as to any policy determinations as the ways in which the privileged status of the white middle class male was encapsulated in the seemingly neutral 'male' pronouns, and the ways in which the discourse maintained its silence to effect that status. This is not say, however, that the ways that constructs are determined are suggestive of a deficiency in those with the authority to speak on the matter of university students, be they distance students or otherwise. It is Foucault (Foucault 1973b, p. xv) who reminds us that it is impossible even to think of some things within a given discourse. Bourdieu (1990) emphasises this as well when he points out that '... in what is unthinkable at a given time, there is not only everything that cannot be thought for lack of the ethical or political dispositions which tend to bring it into consideration, but also everything that cannot be thought for lack of instruments of thought such as problematics, concepts, methods and techniques ...' (p. 5, italics added.). While for Murray the academic library exists in the infinity of idealisation, the problematics of underpinning distance education study through its offices can exist only on the margins of academic discourse as an unthinkable phenomenon.
In the midst of this, the Murray Report (1957, p. 7) pinpoints what is considered an immutable feature within the discursive field of the Committee's operations: the 'unchangeable value in [the universities'] work and nature'. Here we find a discourse at odds with the emerging discourse of change, a discourse of immutability that takes no cognisance of the discourses of change and impermanence, especially as they manifested in the economic and social conditions of 1950s Australia (Bolton 1967). This is an identifiable point of a disorder of discourse (Wodak 1996). The social and economic fabric of Australia had undergone profound changes as Murray began the enquiry. The world had seen major upheavals in the scope and range of global conflict and the emerging meta-national forces of global capital and the phenomena of the United Nations. Australia had not been in isolation through all of this, yet the world of the university remained a fixed point in the midst of it all. In 1957, university undergraduates accounted for only 4.7% of all 17-22 year old members of the population. Those enrolled in a variety of advanced technical colleges and institutes such as the Schools of Mines which later became Colleges of Advanced Education (CAEs) accounted for only 3% (Williams 1979, p. 5). As Bramble (1996) suggests, the University situation 'simply reflects and internalises broader class divisions in society as a whole'. This indicates a social configuration within academia that gives rise to a discourse of elitism in university education, an exclusionary device by virtue of its very taken-for-grantedness that dominates the operations of Australian universities. It is in these ways that university distance education practice is shaped; it is in these ways that distance education student as subject is constructed; it is in these ways that policy is shaped at the same time as it constructs both the distance education student and distance education itself. It is as impossible for Murray and his Committee to think of the university student other than as the discourse of the time constructs that student as it is for Prime Minister Menzies and his government to question the validity of the construct. Government policy is thus made accordingly, effectually marginalising the distance education student in the dominant discourse. The result is in effect a 'regime of truth', a discursive practice within the domain of higher education policy that 'produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth' (Foucault 1973a, p. 194). The Wishart Advisory Committee on Off Campus Studies Report (Wishart 1981, p. 3) identifies three stages in the evolution of concepts of what it calls off campus studies. The first stage it describes as being seen as 'an inferior and unsatisfactory method of teaching, to be countenanced only because of an obligation to service students who were disadvantaged by distance'. The Murray Committee deliberations on distance education would certainly fit this description.
The Martin Report (Martin 1964) is the result of the next major enquiry into universities in Australia. It asserts that there is 'little need for elaboration' of the 'human values associated with education' that are so well recognised within the educational field (p. 1). Indeed it is quite specific on this point of what the values are, 'the very stuff of a free, democratic and cultured society' (p. 4). Just as an examination of Murray's description of the library tells the reader just what his view of university education is, so is it instructive to examine Martin's view of education: 'sharpening the analytical powers of the mind'; making 'choices and decisions at personal and political levels which are well informed and objectively assessed'; 'stirring the imagination and developing a sense of values'; leading ultimately to 'the betterment of mankind [sic]' (p. 4). This sort of Oxbridge discourse places the distance education student in the university sector on the margins of academic discourse. In contrast with the Murray Report, though, the attention given to these in the Martin Report is not inconsiderable. Still using the terms 'external studies' and 'external students' to describe them, the Report points out that teachers comprise 83% of all distance education students at the University of New England alone in 1963 (p. 76). The Report's note on the content of the courses offered indicates some approval that both universities 'impress on external students that the factual material given in the lecture notes does not define the limits of study for the examinations' (p. 79). In terms of Wishart's identified early stages of distance education attitudes, the Martin Report too is an exemplar. It does go to some lengths to build up an image of the mainly male distance education students based on the statistics available. The median age is 26 years, compared with the full-time on campus student of 19 years. There is some ambivalence towards this student, however. Looking at what is said regarding distance education students we find the Report laudatory of 'outstanding' results achieved by successful external students. Yet it suggests that it is a mode of delivery at university level that is considered inappropriate, not surprising given the Committee's view of what university education means. Nevertheless, distance education numbers in terms of students and courses, and the institutions entering the field, continued to grow, but in an unacknowledged and underprivileged sense.
The Karmel Report (1975) description of the central role of the university is reminiscent of the sort of description that Murray gives of the university library, where scholarship is defined, and that of Martin, where the role of the university is defined. One of the first things to note about this Report is that it is to enquire into the problem of distance education provision along the lines suggested by the successful Open University (OU) of the British system. In doing so, it foregrounds the very existence of the distance education student in large numbers and details the approaches possible, desirable and appropriate or otherwise for the introduction of an OU system in this country. There is no suggestion that the studies engaged in distance education mode is somehow inferior. The Karmel Committee expresses a view of open education at tertiary level based on principles in line with the social agenda of the government, seeing the main contribution of extra-mural studies as 'removal of barriers to access to tertiary education' (p. 2). The barriers are identified as being of geographical, temporal and physical natures (p. 11), especially given that 'fees are no longer a serious barrier to tertiary education' (p. 16). The Committee also identifies 'pools of hidden demand' (p. 19), and not just for qualifications upgrade either. It suggests that such people's access to universities on the basis of a commitment to education that was in line with what the Committee perceived as the central role of the university in admitting students who 'want to study for its own sake' (p. 20). With the election of the first Labor government in twenty-five years, under Whitlam, the political discourse of reform dominates the discursive field of the political scene. An essentially revolutionary government activity in the discursive field of education results, with a shift to an instrumentalist view of all education sectors being linked to the government political and social program. The shift in emphasis is on increasing the numbers of students at all levels of education, regardless of their socio-economic background. A major shift is the abolition of university fees in an attempt to open up general access to university education. This was the first real attempt to break the class barrier, revolutionary in idea but not in fact (Hambly 1997, p. 142). Anderson, Boven, Fenshaw and Powell (1978), in their study of the social composition of students in higher education since the abolition of fees, concluded that there had been little change in universities or CAEs. There is more to the Karmel exercise than its recommendations, however. The very establishment of the Committee means that the distance education student is for the first time constructed as a legitimate subject for government concern and investigation with a view to examining the possibilities of government support specifically directed to this end. Being a legitimate object of government concern is only one part of the construction, however. For the distance education student to operate in as rich and full academic mode as possible requires just the sort of library access that Murray (1957) appears to have in mind, although the problematic aspects of such a thing simply must be tackled. In 1978, the newly-born (out of features of existing institutions, the Gordon Institute of Technology and Geelong Teachers College) Deakin University Library closes its card catalogue and changes to a microfiche catalogue. From its earliest days, it has taken the first steps towards implementing an online acquisitions system, and the first step to allow distance students to access the catalogue without having to be on campus to do so. These steps reflect some of the tensions abroad in the wider community when organisations broach the subject (not to mention the practice) of providing educational programs and support to distance education students. The title of a paper presented by Deakin University's foundational Chief Librarian (Cameron 1988) is in itself illustrative of the situation that the University faced in developing its model for the provision of library services for distance education students. The title, A Ful Long Spoon: Library Collections to Serve External Students reflects conceptions encountered by Deakin University librarians at some institutions of students being kept at arm's length, and 'generally treated as the devil himself' (p. 223). Rejecting such conceptualisations of the distance education student as being inappropriate for its own discursive practice, the Deakin University Library initiates and maintains a policy of distance students being no different from any other students. That is, they have the right to expect reasonable access to librarians and to the materials that they are expected to use.
It is now possible to think of distance education as a viable option for student and university alike in planning for higher education. No longer just the less desirable alternative to the traditional face-to-face mode, distance education now has the force of a Committee of Enquiry set of recommendations behind it. It has Deakin University in the process of being established since 1974 and it has a growing number of successful graduates to point to. Karmel notes with some approval the manner in which the traditional face-to-face lecture plus tutorial/laboratory practical sessions combinations taken over a number of years had room for innovation and experiment to produce the desired results in distance education mode (p. 15). He also notes that those results 'compare favourably' with full-time on campus ones (p. 42). None of this is happening by accident, though. The courses may have the model of the Open University before them to guide their learning materials development, but as far as the library is concerned, the model can not work. The Open University's policy was to give library support only to academic staff locally. Their students had to rely on the public library system or other institutions' libraries (Cameron 1988, p. 223). Cameron made the point that the Open University could 'safely' make the assumption that its students would thus be adequately supported because of the quality of the British public library system. Its own 1973 study found that 87% of its undergraduates found libraries that were important to their Open University courses, that 97% had access to public libraries, and that in any case 78% found that the public libraries were the most useful ones (p. 226). The Open University was able to proceed on this basis because its own discursive practice was situated in a discursive field that emerged in the nineteenth century that saw an expansion in the British public library system, culminating in the 1850 Public Libraries Act. This was further built upon with the benefaction of Andrew Carnegie's two million pounds for public library buildings between 1900 and 1912 (Ollé 1967, p. 77). The years between 1960 and 1969 saw an investment of government funds that Ollé described as 'the greatest volume of capital expenditure' with regard to public libraries in British history (p. 82). For all of Australia's emulation of things British in the educational field, this is one aspect of British development that never transferred. A major feature in overcoming possible barriers posed by distance is the pioneering venture of the pre-paid satchel delivery service, one that came to be largely responsible for the enormous success the Deakin University Library has enjoyed in maintaining its 90% and above satisfaction rate among its borrowers from the time of its establishment (Deakin 1993) to the present time. Even so, Deakin Library is one of only a few institutions that does this. The cost of return freight payment and toll free numbers amount to no more in 1987, than the salary for a principal lecturer per annum, or the purchase costs of less than 1500 books (Bundy 1987).
The recession of the early 1970s and Australia's emergence from it formed the conditions under which the Williams Committee was established—in the aftermath of political, social and economic turbulence of revolutionary innovation and the reassertion of political conservatism in the wake of economic recession. The Whitlam Labor government had been sacked and the caretaker Conservative government of Fraser endorsed in the subsequent general election. The Williams Committee finds itself working in the context of a much expanded tertiary education sector, with 9.5% of 17-22 year olds constituting university undergraduates and 9.6% of them constituting CAE numbers (Williams, B. R. 1979, p. 7). Between 1957 and 1979 the number of universities had increased from nine to nineteen and the number of university students from 36,568 to 158,411 (p. 189). The Report sees the importance of the availability of part-time and external studies as a more relevant element in the changing socio-economic circumstances in which Australia finds itself (pp. 192, 199). Indeed, the Williams Committee marks its own shift in conceptualisations of higher education from those preceding it. It states, 'It is no longer sensible to echo the view expressed by the Murray Committee in 1957 that because of the requirements of industry and commerce, public and social administration, the country needs an increase in the supply of graduates of all kinds' (1979, p. 783). The emphasis now is on balancing the requirements of economic growth through linking these with education and employment. This shift is partly because of the experience of the recent recession experienced by Australia. It is also because of the fact that the Committee sees that 'the expectations that the expansion of opportunities for education would foster equality, facilitate social mobility and increase economic growth are not as strong as they were when the Murray and Martin Committees reported' (p. 783). The Committee sees educational solutions in relation to workforce skills as lying in the provision of transition education, that is, vocational education programs to alleviate the increasingly problem of youth unemployment. It is a matter of determining the economic efficiencies of the government intervention to achieve economic aims. Harris, (1987) makes the point regarding distance education becoming a major issue for governments when the cost of higher education becomes the subject of political debate and wider access to higher educations becomes desirable (p. 1). It is under this rubric that distance education begins to feature more prominently in the discussions as suggestions as to its cost-effectiveness came to the fore, with Deakin University as specifically instituted to provide distance education coming in for particular scrutiny in Williams' Report. Distance education may still be on the margins, but it is observable now where it had been virtually invisible before. The silence no longer surrounds distance education. The library field has not exactly been dormant, either. The Crocker-promulgated Guidelines for Library Services to External Students (Crocker 1982) attempts to come to terms with the needs of distance education students that are being catered for by the growing number of universities taking on this mode as part of their operations. It is an initiative of distance education librarians to codify and establish a set of principles to inform librarians' practice in this area. In that sense it is well ahead of the universities' thinking at this time, indicating by its own discursive practice a construction of a student who requires more resources than the university-produced readings and study guides allows. Indeed, Ross (1990) recommends this initiative to other libraries engaged in distance education provision: 'it is highly desirable that these Guidelines be revisited and revised, and used as the basis for a standard applicable to all distance education library provision' (p. 63). In effect, Ross is holding up the sort of library distance education practice evident in the Deakin library as something of a beacon to inform the practice of other institutions. The library not only absorbs the ideals but in its practice endorses the Open University model investigated by Karmel in 1975, adopted and adapted by Deakin University. The library sees course materials as being not just a set of lecture notes. Cameron describes these as a set of 'exigent and stimulating intellectual exercises designed to engage students actively' (p. 224), designed to enable students to manage their own learning. The Library's Mission Statement (Cameron 1993) made this quite clear: 'The Library plays an integral part in the intellectual and academic mission of the University by supporting learning, research and publication and by enabling its graduates to be skilled in finding and using information and committed to lifelong learning' (p. 1). In this, it is in line with the view expressed by (Keift 1995) that 'librarians are in the education business, not the information business ... important as it is for librarians to make the raw materials for research, reading, thinking, and writing available to students, they are finally, as educators, responsible for achieving other goals' (p. 17). The Chief Librarian's submission to Deakin University's Appreciations 1986 (Deakin Library Appreciations Group 1986) reflects this view of the library as 'a learning instrument' and 'not merely a collection of books' (p. 95). By 1981, the whole 140,000 strong collection is online.
Witness the Wishart Report (Wishart 1981) presenting its own description of distance education: 'Off campus studies is a mode of teaching and learning which, for the most part, allows the student to choose the time, place and circumstances of learning. It requires the design, production and delivery of self-instructional materials and the provision for student access to educational resources designed to support independent study' (p. 1). The description does not resort to on campus comparisons, just as it does not use the concepts of lecture/tutorial/seminar/laboratory practicals and so forth as means by which a student is to learn. The self-referential nature of the Oxbridger is not even mentioned here. There is no room for the view of the philosopher-scholar in this way of describing distance education: there are no apologies for the distance education mode of higher education in the universities, no saving graces of economy as offsetting perceived disadvantages, no suggestions of its inferior status. The Report tends towards educationally-based assessment of distance education as a mode which requires greater care as to the design and presentation of learning materials, increasingly sophisticated support systems for both staff and students working in this mode, and greater concern as to the quality of education (p. 4). What has changed is not the characteristics of the mode—it is the expression of a positive view of this mode of study. Wishart notes that in the five years between 1975 and 1980, the total of enrolments in higher education had increased by 8%. The total of external enrolments had risen by 54% (p. 7). Of the 88 higher education institutions in operation in Australia, some 41 offered some sort of distance education (p. 2). The Report sees off campus mode as emphasising the role of students as 'managers' of their own learning 'to a much greater extent than is usually true of 'on' campus students'. Similarly, it sees the role of educational institutions in providing appropriate resources as facilitating self-managed learning' (p. 1). The Report identifies this period as the third stage of distance education development in Australia, a stage where equality of this type and mode of higher education is accepted as equal to the traditional on campus mode. It suggests that the marginal status of distance education and the distance education student has changed, with a shift towards the mainstream of higher educational discourse suggestive of equality status.
With the changing economic circumstances arising from the financial difficulties of the 1970s, a further discursive formation within the university education field opens up, which encompasses that of the economist. Conditions develop for the emergence and dominance of economic rationalism over all other possible discourses in the higher education field, giving rise to 'mutual incomprehension' (Marginson 1993, p. 124) regarding educational discourses. This is evident not least in Education Minister Dawkins' educational policies of the 1980s. In 1957 there were 36,600 students in 9 universities in Australia, and 20,000 in senior technical colleges and teachers' colleges in courses at roughly higher education levels. In 1987 there were 394,000 students in 19 universities and 45 CAEs. Allowing for population growth, it shows participation in higher education had multiplied more than fourfold, with a great diversification of institutions and courses. Higher degree work had risen from negligible levels to 15,000 students doing higher degrees by research and 13,000 by course work (Anwyl 1987). The Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) had reintroduced tuition fees for Australian students as a proportion of the total cost of degree courses, while overseas students were to be charged full fees. It had all been done by the minister himself, a politician removed from the processes of higher education. Item 4.2 of the White Paper deals quite specifically with distance education, or external studies as it was still being called. According to Dawkins (1988), distance education 'has a key role to play in achieving the government's objectives of growth and greater equity in education' (p. 30). A specific role is envisaged for distance education as part of the whole higher education package, one as much a part of the system as traditional face-to-face had been. The 1988 numbers given by Dawkins show an increase from less than 18,000 students in 1975 to nearly 48,000, 'a wide range of people who find on-campus unsuited to personal circumstances' (Dawkins 1988, p. 30). It is a significant shift in attitude—not only do people opt for distance education as their preferred mode of study, they do so because they find that on campus mode of study does not suit them rather than the other way around.
But if the distance education student has been a marginalised subject within the discourse, so has the library upon which that student is so dependent for the materials that Martin warns of as being necessary if that student is not to be completely reliant on the factual materials of the lecture notes. The libraries have been active in the field, it is just that nobody had really noticed their activities. The first major report on Australian academic libraries is delivered by Ross to the National Board of Employment Education and Training (Ross 1990). The Ross Report canvasses areas of actual as well as perceived needs, strengths and weaknesses in the Australian academic libraries system. It goes on to identify major historical changes, such as the perception of the library as a monument in which was stored the accumulated knowledges and wisdom of various social orders to that of one of a mechanism for linking informational needs to some form of document supply (p. 30). It also identifies 48,000 students, that is, 11% of all students in the higher education system, as being distance education ones, with possibly as many as 75% of these in cities, 'the rest genuinely, even extraordinarily remote' (p. 63).
1993 sees a 432% increase in the total number of students in higher education in Australia, a number which indicates universities as having moved from an elite to a mass education system (Moses 1997, p. 176). By 1995, though, Cavanagh, (1995) is reporting the fact that the library surveys show that while the catalogue could be accessed electronically, and while 80-85% of students have access to a computer, only 17-21% own or have access to a modem. 'Clearly, at this stage, the electronic super highway and the new electronic age through the Internet are outside the thinking of most off campus students', he concludes (p. 11). By 1996, the number of modem-using students had increased to 29% and growing (Cavanagh 1997). The distance education student plays a pivotal role in the university education discourse from 1997 onwards. The major shift is that from universities being centres of knowledge to centres of purchasable education as part of lifelong learning based on principles and practices of flexible delivery (West 1997). This shift in attitude suggests a reconfiguration that enables the construction of the distance education student as the fleximode student in the discursive formation emerging within the new dominant discourse. David Kemp produces his Green and White Papers (Kemp 1999a; Kemp 1999b), taking the universities' own discourse of research training and tying it to economic outcomes. What is of note as far as the construction of the distance education student is concerned, however, is that this student no longer figures to any real extent as a separate entity in any of such reports. The information-literate, online student is THE distance education student of today. The library thus has had to adjust its activities to balance the requirements of print-based educational materials that goes beyond the self-contained packages. The exploitation of the developments in technological advances can give students optimal access to the collection, their very library activities serving to develop their skills as 'information workers', or 'knowledge workers' lauded by the likes of Drucker (1993; 1995). These workers must be information literate. A guiding definition of information literacy is provided by one the authors: 'An information literate person knows when they have a need for information; can identify information needed to address a given problem or issue; can find, evaluate and organise the needed information; and can use the information effectively to address the problem or issue' (Macauley 2000). With this comes a new skill for the librarian to foster and the library user to master. This indicates a shift in the construction of the university student in general, and not just the distance education one in particular, as developing a competency critical in the emergent policy emphasis on lifelong learning. This is not just a concept to do with keeping one's intellectual faculties alert and occupied with the learning of new things, though. It means the transformation of the concept from this to one of upskilling or multiskilling to adapt to the changing workplace demands of the new information or knowledge workers. It is the modifier 'off' in the term 'off campus', the one that has for so long been the Other of 'on' in the term 'on campus' that is worth considering. As the modifier of 'campus', it served as an indicator of disadvantage, yes, but also of a great deal of motivation in basically flat characters constructed out of statistics as to age, gender, geographic location and so on culled out of the data bases of Distance Education Centres and their precursors. Use 'off' with the 'line' and it indicates a technologically incompetent, non-self-determining student, an uninformed and therefore limited consumer of higher education at a time of so much choice in the diversity provided by online courses. The off-line student is now effectively the on campus student, the one who hasn't made the paradigmatic shift to the dominant online discursive practice of the postmodern university (Zeegers 2000). The mode is still distance education, but it has taken a different form. Nipper's (1989) description of online education as 'third generation distance education' indicates that distance education is hardly a dead issue in the higher educational field. By 2000 the distance education student has been integrated into the discourse as an essential feature of Australian universities rather than the aberration that such as Murray presented in 1957. The times they surely have changed.
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