Breeding the new information literate on campus

- a burning issue for higher education and research -

A new department, Human Resources Development Department, was established in NACSIS in last April, and Education and Training Division of Administration department was reorganized with its three sections into a division of the New Department. A the same time, four researchers of Research and Development Department were concurrently appointed as the staff of The Office of Education and Training for Science Information Systems, which was also created in the Department.

There are six different courses NACSIS has been offering for last 10 years to the variety of NACSIS users, including the courses of network, NACSIS-CAT operators, NACSIS-CAT instructors, NACSIS-ILL, NACSIS-IR and NACSIS-MAIL, of which no program so far can fulfill the demands of participating users 100%. On the contrary, in the case of network training course, only 20% of the applications are accepted a year. For the fiscal year 1994, 82 courses were offered in 232 days (116 days at NACSIS schooling facilities and 116 days at local cooperating university facilities), and 1,701 users, that stands for 59 % of applications, were accepted in total.

Moreover, the pressing demands for new types of expertise on campus besides university libraries have been arising along with the current nation-wide spread of so-called campus LAN and the construction of the nation-wide backbone network. This is the very reason why the new department, especially the Office of Education and Training for Science Information Systems was established in which launching some R&D projects for the breeding of new expertise on campus, feasibility study of new programs, tests and pilot studies for implementation will be carried out. Among the new programs currently outlined are:

1. A program for drawing up a long range vision of human resources development on university campus
2. Library and Information Science Seminar, suspended since 1986, will be reopened in which totally renovated curriculum will be offered to new breed of trainees to educate fresh leaders on campus. A term of 20 weeks is proposed.
3. A program to support the enhancement of the information literacy of graduate students, that is, end users in the near future. They may be qualified as NACSIS student users in the near future. Development of model curriculum as well as course wares are also included in the program at the outset.
4. A proposal to develop a system of remote access higher education by means of SINET is going to be launched. Necessary facilities to correspond with the proposal will be installed in the NACSIS new hardware systems. Possibilities of on-demand courses and on-demand curriculum will also be exploited.
5. A survey of the production and uses of Video tapes and discs for the courseware in Japanese higher education will be conducted so that NACSIS can maximize the efficiency in its own production of the courseware and resource sharing.

Electronic environment of higher education and research has been remarkably changing even day by day. Needs for education and training of users are not only increasing, but also diversifying according to the environmental change. Universities, information service agencies, and educational research organizations do realize the needs and their transition and started to collaborate to cope with them. NACSIS is hopeful of taking part in, and of following up the movement starting this year.