Content area
Full Text
The Global Virtual University John Tiffin and Lalita Rajasingham Routledge Palmer London 2003 166 pp. ISBN 0-415-28702-2 £22.50
Keywords Virtual organizations, Academic libraries, Digital libraries, Distance learning
Review DOI 10.1108/00220410510585304
The twin themes of the book are that universities must become global and must simultaneously become largely, though not totally, virtual. The two themes are blended and balanced well, as the authors attempt to answer their opening question, what will universities be like in the knowledge society of the future. And, indeed, much of this book is about knowledge, and its communication, in one form or another.
The jacket describes this book as a "unique, visionary text", and a contributed foreword tells us that it "offers a magnificent, virtual vision": this is a lot to live up to. While they may not entirely succeed, Tiffin and Rajasingham do offer a very well-written, nicely illustrated and exemplified, interesting, and at times provocative, view of the future of higher education, with a pleasing historical look back where appropriate.
The entire book rests on a contention that not everyone would agree with, or see as desirable: that "virtual universities are globalising, democratising and transforming knowledge". In one of a number of illuminating historical asides, we learn that Cardinal Newman coined the term "virtual university", using it to mean not an educational institution but rather the developing metropolitan areas of the Industrial Revolution. The dynamic exchange of ideas and viewpoints in places was sufficient, in Newman's eyes,...