Distance learning and digital libraries: two sides of a single coin

Experience teaching a graduate class in Old Catalan language and literature from UC Berkeley to UC Irvine and UC San Diego, Fall semester 1995, demonstrates that such an approach can lower the per‐pupil cost of teaching exotic foreign languages as well as make instruction in those languages more widely available. The class would not have been possible without being able to use the World Wide Web to replace, at least partially, some of the traditional functions of both the library reserve system and the course reader. However, it would be prohibitively expensive to replicate the model used, because of the amount of staff time necessary to develop the Web site as well as to digitize materials for it. The only reasonable option is to develop tools that will allow faculty members to provide such materials themselves. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.