Successful Inter-institutional Resource Sharing in a Niche Educational Market: Formal Collaboration Without a Contract
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Successful Inter-institutional Resource Sharing in a Niche Educational Market: Formal Collaboration Without a Contract Elizabeth H. Dow
Published online: 19 June 2008 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2008
Abstract Funded by an Institute for Museum and Library Services National Leadership grant, five universities developed a system to provide archives education courses—a niche curriculum—to each other. They use compressed video over Internet 2 in a resource-sharing collaboration across five states and two time zones. The original grant ran from 2002–2005, during which time the collaborative offered eight courses to 140 students. Between 2006 and 2008, it offered eleven courses to 177 students. This article details the administrative model, based solely on school- and department-level agreements, which have enabled this resource-sharing collaborative to thrive after grant support ceased. While developed for archives education programs, the model could enhance any niche curriculum program. Key words resource sharing . administration . distance education . collaboration . higher education Allan Hayduk (1994) explored the concept of niche curriculum markets in campus-based education. Among other factors which create niches, he recognized “the small institution which is unable to offer senior-level or specialized courses because specialized teachers are unavailable or because they must be directed to more pressing, larger enrolment courses.” He then suggested that “distance education...is ideal for meeting curricular-niche market needs.”(p. 44) While he focused on undergraduate education, his observations apply to graduate education as well. This article describes the administrative structure of a successful strategic alliance among five universities which use distance education technology to support archives education—a niche curriculum market in graduate education. While developed for archives education, the model lends itself to other niche curriculum programs very readily.
Elizabeth H. Dow holds an M.A. in history from the University of Vermont and a Ph.D. in Library Science from the University of Pittsburgh. She teaches the archives track in the School of Library and Information Science at Louisiana State University and specializes in description of archival materials and intellectual access to electronically published historical documents. E. H. Dow (*) Louisiana State University, School of Library and Information Science, 267 Coates Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA e-mail: [email protected]
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Innov High Educ (2008) 33:169–179
The Problem Today’s archivists face the challenge of identifying, organizing, providing intellectual access to, and preserving traditional physical media: paper, tape, vinyl disc, and film-based documents. In addition they must do the same for a growing variety of electronic media including word-processing formats, relational databases, digitally produced audio materials, still images, video formats, electronic mail, and all manner of personal expression formats on the world wide w
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