From Australia to China Online:Delivery of Online Library Services toOff-Shore Students in China

摘要

The La Trobe University Library provides library services to 28,550 academic staff, undergraduate and postgraduate students located in campuses and research centres in Melbourne and regional Victoria; as well as remote off-campus students throughout Australia; and off-shore students predominantly in South-East Asia. The University provides online library support to all patrons to support teaching, learning and research. In 2005, the University enrolled 1,125 students in off-shore programs where the teaching was carried out in the students' home country. Although the University provides face-to-face teaching in block mode, the Library provides all services to off-shore students online. This paper describes the range of services available to off-shore students, with emphasis on students in Kunming in China, and Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi in Vietnam. The range of online services includes training, catalogue and database searching, document delivery, reference service and online help. The comprehensive training options include a text based web tutorial for data-base searching, an online audio/video tutorial for document delivery, a website tailored for off-shore students, and online help via email. An analysis of online help requests received in 2005-2006 is presented.