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We are ALL busy. Yesterday for example, I had a plan of what I was going to accomplish at work, but then I came in to an e-mail from a student asking for articles about the Second Anglo-Afghan War (for which we had next to nothing in the databases so I really had to hunt), and after that I found out about some dead links I needed to fix on a Web page, and then I got a call from a professor whom I needed to talk through some database searches, and then I had a reference shift all afternoon. So by the end of the day, I was shocked to find that I'd barely gotten any of the things I'd wanted to accomplish done. Imagine, if this is going on every day, how I, or anyone else in our profession, can actually make time for any sort of continuing education work?

When colleges and universities are developing distance learning programs, library services are often an afterthought. Sometimes, only once the programs have started do concerns crop up about how libraries can provide services to distance learners. Obvious issues that arise when libraries provide services to distance learners include interlibrary loan policy changes, how to provide online reference services, and whether the library's online resources are sufficient to serve the new programs. However, something of equal importance is the online presence of the library.