Librarians

Academic Library

About the Library

The Online Library reflects a new era in information services, but also a distinctly human face for University's students and faculty members. The best of tradition combines with an industry leader at the cutting-edge of the Information Highway and new approaches to knowledge.  Open 24/7, the center contains millions of pages of books and scholarly articles licensed from the Deep Web along with “trusted” selections from the free, or Open Web. The site is even designed to inculcate Web Information Literacy--new skills required for scholarly success in the Information Age. The finest subject- and Web-specialist librarians in Online Education are available to work individually with students—as well as offer:

Librarians

Online Librarians, October 2009: Top--Dr. Fred Stielow, Dr. Carole Nowicke; Next row--Susan Hyland, Kimberly Adams, Linda Cranston; Next row--Dr. Mustafa Abdelwahid, Jeanette Moyer, Susan Gilroy; Front--Christy Stevens, Nevil Grow, Marissa Smith; missing--Priscilla Coulter
AMU/APU Librarians

When in doubt, ask a librarian. In addition to the nation's best corps of online librarians, we also have a spectacular staff to hold down the fort at the University's Charles Town headquarters. As you can see from the following list, Librarians are highly qualified scholars and busy telecommuters.

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Hours/Contact

Hours of operation:
24 hours a day, 7 days a week
Librarian Contact:
Technical support :

The Online Library is the center for the research and allied Web training that are prerequisites for a successful college career at APUS.

Advisory Committees

Each of the University's educational programs have been invited to convene Library Advisory Committees to assist with the selection of appropriate materials and the construction of its Study Portal. The general University Library Committee (Library and Learning Resources Committee) was established in September 2004 and continues with:

 Support Mission  

Acting in support of the American Public University System and its mission, the Online Library is dedicated to providing faculty and students with the information resources and training needed for their classroom and research pursuits--including special emphasis on Web materials and Information Literacy skills. Secondarily, this facility proactively promotes and displays the University's unique perspectives and research contributions to the world's knowledge.

 Vision: Library Professionalism & Faculty Partnerships

The APUS Online Library strives for academic excellence and professional leadership as part of a new wave of Academic Librarianship. This fully virtual facility is created to provide state-of-the-art research and educational support for the University; moreover, services that are available at any time of the day or night and regardless of geographic location. To these ends, the School has specially committed to professional librarians. Such staff provide personalized relationships, but also advanced subject and Web skills. APUS librarians help ensure competency and currency in Web Information Literacy, information-seeking behaviors, instructional tools, myriad of online resources, search engine applications, and study aids--as well as the display of the University's contributions to the world's knowledge. This complex role is intended to blend in active partnerships with the disciplinary/teaching expertise of faculty. The design is part of an interactive learning community with our students, alumni, and other staff--nothing less than a new idea of the university for the Web Era. 

Redefining Academic Libraries: Essay on the Launching of an Online Library

Universities and their libraries have constantly evolved in a complex ballet that balances among pedagogy, media, information resources, and technology. The following scenario looks to history for perspective on the recent state of affairs--our pioneering virtual library initiatives at the American Public University System with its flagship American Military University and American Public University.

The story dates to the 13th Century and Italy. Then, bands of students began to hire master instructors for a daring venture in higher education. Building from libraries as their first permanent structures, the results gave birth to the university in the West. The new institution focused on training a new cadre teaching masters and resuscitating Greek and Roman classical knowledge.

The first university libraries built on monastic copying traditions from the Dark Ages--the Opus Deum that preserved sacred texts after the fall of the Roman Empire. Academic libraries, however, replaced the sacred with secular codices. These costly treasures involved large format lectern readings and were often chained to study carrels. They were also the fount for the first classroom materials in the form of excerpts or exemplars from the classic texts. The demand for these offshoots fostered new guilds of secular copyists, as well as a minor communications revolution. Demand could hardy be met by the extant and prohibitively expensive parchment and vellum of the era. Fortunately for student pocketbooks, paper making arrived on the scene at the same time. [We hasten to note that commentators at the time were worried by the impermanence of paper with its annoying tendency to only last some 200 years.;-)]

Change continued with Gutenberg’s Revolution. Librarians gave up their copying duties, but took the lead as institutional purchasers of printed materials and in the process redefined their space and activities. Chains were removed, and facilities enlarged to greet the massive increase in book production. Publisher/printers, arguably the first modern capitalists, structured the trappings of the modern book and quickly expanded beyond preserving the classical knowledge. They worked with scholars to stimulate a rebirth--the Renaissance--of knowledge. Personal authorship and scholarly investigation reappeared along with the heightened analysis of the scientific method--and the powerful concept of the pocketbook to enable portable reading as opposed to Gutenberg's massive volumes.

The 19th-Century "Rise of the Masses" provided another revolutionary wave in this saga. Changes in paper and publishing significantly lowered production costs to affordable levels. At the same time, grammar school education became the norm and literacy spread. Publishers developed a variety of genre from the modern newspaper and illustrated magazines to textbooks. Moreover, a "New University" movement revamped classic Liberal Arts into the practical training curriculum and departmental structures that we know today.

The library once again redefined itself. Americans invented the public library as a "people's university," and Academic libraries appeared as monumental presences in the heart of the new campuses.  To handle the massive influx of books and equally unprecedented rise of academic journals, librarians developed innovative taxonomies for all of human knowledge (e.g., Dewey Decimal System), professionalized with a new library degree, worked in concert with vendors and opened new reference along with other types of service. Physical space was increasingly reoriented from a general space into specialized reading rooms and separate storage stacks, which could hold millions of volumes. Unfortunately for some traditionalist, these reforms even extended to defiling the hallowed halls by opening to undergraduates. ;-)

The 20th century brought an even wider array of publications and services. Libraries embraced newer technologies from indexing systems and catalog cards to telephony, microfilm, and the 1960's revolution wrought by photocopiers. The university library even led the way for the universities' adoption of computerized practices. The 1968's MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging) rules opened to cataloging applications and OPAC's (Online Public Access Catalogs) in the 1970's and 1980's. Libraries were also among the first proponents of wide-area network--including their participation in ARPANET--the U.S. military network that evolved into the Internet in 1985.

Not surprisingly, libraries are stepping to the forefront within the unfolding and revolutionary climate of the World Wide Web. With the Web's appearance in the early 1990s, libraries extended their traditional roles as bastions of integrity and reliable resources to become "trusted" information portals. The field took cutting-edge stands in the drive for Web services to all citizens, instructions in the new skills of Information Literacy, defending intellectual freedom, and a universal digital library movement to provide access to the world's electronic heritage.

As suggested by this launch of the Online Library, APUS has actively joined the developments and consciously focused on its library. Harkening to the birth of the Western university, our modern library portal seeks to establish the school's identity and pedagogical leadership. The Online Library site goes beyond the basic array of available electronic books and journals. It pushes to the forefront with high-level Information Literacy training and dynamic Department Study Portals. Somewhat like Renaissance-era departmental libraries, the latter are individually tailored for immediate service at one's finger tips. They offer an innovative package of professional literature that are licensed from the Invisible Web, as well as governmental and other "trusted" sites from the Visible Web. To such resources, we hope to add a re-engineered class of academic librarians. These Web research/subject specialists will be charged with engaging faculty and students to dynamically improve our research collections, but also enable a crucial shift toward direct course support. The overall results are projected as a harbinger of the latest stage or paradigm shift in higher education.

You are invited to observe, participate, and assist us with this most recent redefinition of the academic library and the very nature of academic research as the Online Library adapts and progresses within the Web Revolution.

Fred Stielow, Ph.D., M.L.S.
APUS Library Services
October 2005