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136 ORGANIZACIJA ZNANJA 2009, LETN. 14, ZV. 4 best seen as a specialised function that can be carried out better by specially trained tutors, often working part-time, than by the faculty who developed the course. Such division of labour is clearly essential when student numbers in a course become too large for an individual instructor to cope with. LIBRARY SERVICES Library services are a vital element of student support and I shall devote the rest of this talk to them. Until the Internet came along providing library services to distance learners was a challenge that institutions approached in essentially two ways: making courses self-contained and mailing books to students. When the UK Open University was set up the first rector, Walter Perry, told his staff to design their courses for a lighthouse keeper off the coast. Such a person received mail or visited the mainland only rarely, so the course package had to include everything necessary for the course. By comparison the University of South Africa, UNISA, another large open university, kept dozens of copies of key course reference books in its library and mailed them out to students on demand. The return rate of books by students was very high, but such a process took time. Ethical issues Today there are many other alternatives, but before I explore them I want to refer to a paper on Ethical issues in providing library services to distance learners by Gill Needham of the UK Open University and Kay Johnson of Athabasca University, a smaller open university in Canada where I also once worked. The paper begins with three examples of distance learners whose studies are hindered by poor library services. The authors then developed a list of institutions’ responsibilities to distance learners in providing library services, starting from their professional codes of ethics as librarians and any guidelines they could find. Their list contains ten items of which I cite five: • institutions must take responsibility for providing library support to their own distance learners; • distance learners must have access to equivalent levels of library services and support as students on campus; • distance learners may need library services that are more personalised than those for on campus students; • defend intellectual freedom and avoid bias; and • respect the integrity of information and intellectual property. These are a demanding set of principles. The first stresses that it is not ethical simply to refer students to other libraries, even if the student’s university has agreements with them. Students may live a long way from any library and, in any case not all libraries will have the specialised collections necessary to support advanced courses. Academics should discuss the library support needs for the courses they are developing at an early stage so that a support plan can be worked out. This is the home page of the UK Open University library. You can see that it refers students to videos about how to use the library and also offers online tutorials in how to use the library. Right at the bottom you can see that some resources are available to people who are not registered students. Here is the home for the Athabasca University library with a list of the services that it offers. The second principle, of equivalency of service, is even more demanding even though equivalent must not be taken to mean identical. However, networked technology has made things much easier. Indeed, changes in student profiles, with more part-time and employed students taking courses on campus, mean that all students are accessing more library services and resources online. One area of difference is that distance learners are less likely to receive explicit instruction in how to use a library. Librarians should work with faculty to build in some exercises in library use for distance learners, who are even more in need of training in how to use online resources than regular students. Let me digress for a moment here to say that faculty who are teaching at a distance need help from librarians just as much as students. Although academics will generate much original material for their courses they will also cite and use third-party material. Librarians have an important role in helping them find appropriate material, especially pictures and multi-media material, and ensuring that the institution has appropriate permissions to use the material when it is under copyright. Open Educational Resources Librarians should also be ready to help faculty deal with the new world of Open Educational Resources. These materials, which are usually in digital formats and freely available for adaptation and use, will become a tremendous asset for universities embarking on distance teaching. However, most faculty members do not have the skills of finding them and understanding the various versions of the Creative Commons licence that Open Educational Resources use. Librarians can be very helpful here. Let me note that UNESCO and COL are working in partnership with some external funds to educate government officials and university leaders about the