APUS December 14, 2009
Posted by A.M. Tammaro in open university.trackback
What does APUS do? Is it an Open University? I have found many interesting books of you, two in particular: the one on Virtual library, early in 1999 and the one on Digital Archive, more recently. What is the relation between the digital (virtual) library and the digital archive? Do you feel a librarian or an archivist?
APUS is a fully online Open University with two brand names: American Military University and American Public University. We currently have more than 60,000 enrollees–most tied to the American military–in 130 countries.
The curriculum is much the same as any American university, but with added specialities in Intelligence, Homeland Security, and Military Studies.
Our library is also fully virtual with about 80,000 e-books and multi-year runs of some 30,000 scholarly journals. Aside from the different perspective of the Internet, it operates on the surface much like any other Academic Library–as a free service to the students. Our main difference is the need to be entrepreneurial in a for-profit context and re-engineer the facility for the revolutionary environment of the Web.
In our case that means making the Library part of a three-legged redefinition of course materials for the University. We have taken over the Bookstore and are building a Press.
The library portion looks to use our holdings and Open Web resources as classroom reading material, which can augment or replace textbook whenever possibile. In addition to enhancing quality and currency, this approach involves significant cost savings (approximately $3 million this year) since the University pays for our undergraduates’ course materials. With these directions, I’ve been able to hire a dozen subject specialist librarians over the past 4 years. And, we’ve also been able to increase usage from around 3,500 to more than 80,000 a month in the same period.