Abstract
The geographically, culturally, and academically diverse student population of Southern New Hampshire University encompasses more than 30 time zones and includes students enrolled in Bachelors, masters, and doctoral programs. There is a constant challenge to reach out and make them aware that they have at their disposal an academic support resource such as the university’s Shapiro Library. Although the Internet is an integral part of how our off -campus students“get to class”, its search engines also remain a means for conducting much if not all of their academic research. RoboDemo (now Captivate) tutorials are continuing to be developed to attract and inform our students about the library’s capabilities to assist them with their academic work. Housed in a Blackboard OCLS Resource space for SNHU Online faculty, these tutorials are available for downloading and insertion in individual classes. The tutorials are also available directly to students for viewing via the Shapiro Library Web page. This session will walk attendees through the deciding factors behind their development and the accompanying“learning curve” of lessons picked up along the way.

Edward has been the Off-Campus Service Librarian at Southern New Hampshire University since 1990. Begun initially as a survey to identify our continuing education center students’ library resource needs, off-campus services has continued to develop through the CD-ROM era into full blown Internetbased resources and services. There continues to be personal contact with a number of centers in the New England area that provide face-to-face and hybrid instruction in the form of BI, reference, and resource support. Added to that is library support in varying degrees for international programs in Malaysia, Dubai, UAE, and Thailand as well as a number of cohort programs in Alaska, Wisconsin, Vermont, and Mexico. The final component of off-campus library services at SNHU is addressing the needs of more than 1,800 online distance education students enrolled in six 8 week terms throughout the course of the year.

Southern New Hampshire University has 4,800 students.