Positioning Librarians as indispensible to the new Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs)

This paper discusses the explosion in the use of electronic resources by students and the development of e-books. The existing high usage will intensify as virtual learning environments (VLEs) become the primary means of interaction between students and universities. A brief outline of university library procurement in the UK is given, followed by an analysis of a recent ground-breaking tender for e-books for higher education libraries in the UK. The continuing development of a bespoke subject collection of ebooks for nursing students is explored in some detail, as is the demand for non-traditional resources for the VLE. The paper closes by discussing the information architecture necessary to streamline and unify access to resources in the hybrid library, and to lay the foundation for an architecture appropriate to the electronic library.