Evolving Best Practices in Library Services for Distance Learners: A Comparative Study of IGNOU and UKOU

Government has put special emphasis on distance education because that is the best route to significantly and cost-effectively reach out to large number of learners in a country like India. IGNOU has a quarter century of nation wide operation in the country bringing substantial credibility for open learning activities. Distance education activities in the country got a sea change from the correspondence courses paradigm to distance learning practices which stand today as good as regular stream in many disciplines and even professional fields like management, computer science and library science. IGNOU was set up based on the UKOU as a lofty model and this paper presents the current status of library operations in IGNOU basing the best practices adopted by UKOU which has comparatively excellent IT enabled information facilities among distance learning institutions.