Higher education is changing dramatically as a result of global telecommunications. This book surveys and synthesizes the material currently available on this important topic. Much of the volume provides detailed and fascinating information on experiments, organizations, and ideas related to computer networks and higher education. Other sections examine the electronic organization of knowledge, electronic textbooks, and the many ways in which students may use computer connections to enhance their educational experience. At the heart of the study is the notion of a worldwide electronic university in which students, faculty, and research libraries will be connected electronically across continents. The author begins by describing the early signs and origins of the emerging worldwide electronic university, such as the growth of courses made available through computer networks and television. He then considers some of the administrative issues involved and the responses of some corporations and organizations to those issues. The next few chapters describe and assess the value of educational exchange and the technology that makes that exchange possible. Other chapters discuss the linking of research libraries, the facilitation of international research, and emerging instructional issues. The result is an important guide to a topic of growing interest to educators and students alike.

This volume focuses on the role of the computer and electronic technology in the discipline of history. It includes representative articles addressing H-Net, scholarly publication, on-line reviewing, enhanced lectures using the World Wide Web, and historical research.

The virtual campus: Trends for higher education and trainingwas the theme of the IFIP Working Conference on which this book is based. lt was a joint event of Working Groups 3.3 and 3.6, Research and distance Education respectively, of IFIP Technical Committee 3 for Education. International dissemination and promotion of cooperation are IFIP aims that we particularly wanted to address. This is why we opened the event to non WG members and have established a virtual forum on the WEB that has been widely visited. The programme for the 27 to 29 November 97 in Madrid included invited speakers from leading institutions in the field, reviewed and selected contributions from an open call for papers, on-site demonstrations of !arge European projects and discussion sessions involving distant and present participants. The event attracted experts from 23 countries. About a hundred persons were involved, from all over the world. The spread and accessibility of information and communication technologies are rapidly changing p!"actices in learning and research activities, both in professional and academic settings. The number, variety and scale of experiences reported in recent publications shows a growing international involvement concerning not only small groups of researchers but also institutions fully committed in that direction.

Viewing digital libraries as sociotechnical systems, networks of people and technology interacting with society.

How virtual post-secondary educational organisations (popularly called virtual universities) function is the central subject in this new book based on a comparative study of five U.S based institutions.

Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets provides an ethnographic study of varmakkalai, or "the art of the vital spots," a South Indian esoteric tradition that combines medical practice and martial arts. Although siddha medicine is officially part of the Indian Government's medically pluralistic health-care system, very little of a reliable nature has been written about it. Drawing on a diverse array of materials, including Tamil manuscripts, interviews with practitioners, and his own personal experience as an apprentice, Sieler traces the practices of varmakkalai both in different religious traditions--such as Yoga and Ayurveda--and within various combat practices. His argument is based on in-depth ethnographic research in the southernmost region of India, where hereditary medico-martial practitioners learn their occupation from relatives or skilled gurus through an esoteric, spiritual education system. Rituals of secrecy and apprenticeship in varmakkalai are among the important focal points of Sieler's study. Practitioners protect their esoteric knowledge, but they also engage in a kind of "lure and withdrawal"---a performance of secrecy---because secrecy functions as what might be called "symbolic capital." Sieler argues that varmakkalai is, above all, a matter of texts in practice; knowledge transmission between teacher and student conveys tacit, non-verbal knowledge, and constitutes a "moral economy." It is not merely plain facts that are communicated, but also moral obligations, ethical conduct and tacit, bodily knowledge. Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets is an insightful analysis of practices rarely discussed in scholarly circles. It will be a valuable resource to students of religion, medical anthropologists, historians of medicine, Indologists, and martial arts and performance studies.