Digital technologies offer not only vastly enhanced possibilities for learning at a distance and for rapid communications, but they also offer access to a world of information resources with an ease unimaginable only two decades ago. Fairleigh Dickinson has many points of access to global information resources, some of which are noted below:

The Global Issues Gateway web site (www.gig.org), which is expected to be launched in April 2004, is an educational website for those investigating issues arising from the rapid exchange of goods and ideas across increasingly porous geographic and cultural borders. The mission is to serve as a discriminating source of news, information, and commentary that illuminates the impact of globalization on societies, on institutions, and on the daily lives of people throughout the world, and to provide global learning resources for students, scholars, teachers, and journalists. Content will include up-to-date digests of web articles related to political, economic, cultural, ethical, and scientific dimensions of current global issues, annotated portals of major web sites related to current global issues, an archive of lectures and videoconferences featuring ambassadors to the United Nations, and columns, letters, interviews, roundtables, and reports on current global concerns by a global network of academic experts, activists, and professionals.

The Fairleigh Dickinson University Library Portal provides an access point to search for and request an endless array of global information resources. Reference librarians can offer, through the online portal, consultation on global resource access, and each of the campus libraries offers a special space with United Nations materials.

As part of our flagship freshmen year online course, The Global Challenge, students are offered a compendium of web site links for research on global issues. These are organized into ten main categories, with several useful subcategories in each.