It's the money, honey.

The librarians in my social and professional circles sound like broken records. We need more money. Money for staff, money for resources, money to keep the lights on and the building functional. The library is probably one of the biggest money pits on campus. (As an aside, the two year college librarians in Alabama use a return-on-investment form that can be found here: http://al2yclib.pbwiki.com/Return+on+Investment .)

With all of the computing and information technology out there, many faculty members and college administrators feel that funding for libraries should be dropping. One of my own administrators said to me, "The library of the future will be in a brief case. Everything is available online, why do you need books or database subscriptions?" I see this as a failure in his information literacy training, but that's another story.

When it comes to information literacy, there is a push to not only be electronic and self-guided, but to try to take the librarian out of the picture all together. An information literacy program, if properly set-up, shouldn't require any tinkering. After the set-up, the librarian can return to his or her other duties as assigned -- computers, after all, can present the materials and give and grade tests. Little or no quarter is given to simple facts -- things like websites changing and software going into different versions.

While no administrator would ever suggest that a literature course be teacher-free (okay, I'm sure there's one out there somewhere...), information literacy is seen as different -- perhaps because it is seen as teaching skills, not theories.

When an instructor is approved or suggested for such a course, the computerized aspect of instruction is seen as a money saver. This seems to be true in a lot of the computer-based instruction literature I'm reading, not just in information literacy. Since the instructor doesn't have any "face time" with the students, online courses or components are seen as easier and often, I read about (and experience) administrators saying that an instructor should be able to handle twice the students in an online class. After all, classroom size isn't holding anyone back.

I think of my dad. He is a computer programmer. His boss didn't understand why my dad would get unhappy as his workload increased -- after all, it was just playing with the computer. When the boss finally got that it was work, he decided that most of the work was done by the machine with the man just watching. This attitude seems to be trying to taint distance education, now.

How do you feel? Do you feel pressure to serve more students with less (staff/funding/time)? Do you think computers can help you bridge some of these gaps? Do you think the work you do on the computer is seen less as "work" because of the machine involved?