While working collegially, academics usually maintain an objective distance from the work of their peers. Higher education institutions also tend to differentiate themselves from other institutions and define their own special niche in the marketplace. These attitudes are concerned with establishing uniqueness and they contribute to an academic culture that pervades the education system from the individual academic to the institution level. This culture rewards teachers for designing unique courses. In Australia in particular, this personal course development is accepted practice to the extent that cross-institutional formal evaluation and comparison of courses does not generally occur. An academic will not normally adopt another academic's course without personalizing it. Individual academics (or small groups) put together courses and computer-aided learning packages. Consistent with the cultural practices, few other academics in the same discipline at other institutions adopted these inflexible courses. The conclusion is that the uptake of learning programs by teachers and institutions will only occur if the programs are consistent with the academic culture and are customizable. A recent development in Australia, the National Teaching and Learning Database (NTLD) project is designed to provide access to educational resources. Course developers submit a URL of the location of those learning materials, but ownership is retained by the institution that developed the original material. The NTLD is a distributed database that provides access teaching and learning materials to be customized, assembled, and utilized in a manner that suits the individual academic or institution style. (AEF)