With the proliferation of colleges, universities, and even companies that offer courses and degrees in higher education through the World Wide Web today, it would seem that the concept of teaching students who are away from the home campus arose with the omnipresence of the Internet in our culture. Actually, distance learning in the United States dates back to shortly after the Civil War when correspondence courses originated. However, there is little in the library literature on library services for distance learners prior to 1970. In the 1970s, the establishment of open learning universities in many countries and in the 1980s the growth of distance education programs in traditional colleges and universities both precipitated a substantial growth in the literature about library services in support of distance education (Slade and Kascus 1998, 262).