Quality data allow programs to provide context and meaning to research, evaluation, and accountability efforts and provides evidence to evaluate and demonstrate the effectiveness of programs. Data integration, the process of taking data from disparate systems, combining them, and transforming them into something meaningful, can increase data…

The case provides a realistic scenario that can be used in a systems analysis and design, accounting information systems or graduate level management information systems course. The case details the steps in the revenue and expense cycle processes of a health supply wholesale company providing students with the opportunity to map the business…

Thanks to intelligent solutions, schools, colleges, and universities no longer need to manage user account life cycles by using scripts or tedious manual procedures. The solutions house the scripts and manual procedures. Accounts can be automatically created, modified, or deleted in all applications within the school. This article describes how an…

Why would schools consider partnering with a vendor to operate a pilot? Why not just wait until the final product is released? For starters, pilots provide schools with a golden opportunity to get an early look at the software, take it for a test flight, and ask for changes tailored to their operating environment and business needs. In some cases,…

With their budgets under increasing pressure, many campus IT directors are considering open source projects for the first time. On the face of it, the savings can be significant. Commercial emergency-planning software can cost upward of six figures, for example, whereas the open source Kuali Ready might run as little as $15,000 per year when…

This call for action addresses the high-level benefits of adopting a university-wide policy regarding research data management. It identifies the various university stakeholders and suggests that the library initiate a conversation among them in order to get buy-in for a proactive, rather than reactive, high-level policy for responsible data…

In mid-April, Amazon EC2 services had a small problem. Apparently, a large swath of its cloud computing environment had such substantial trouble that a number of customers had server issues. A number of high-profile sites, including Reddit, Evite, and Foursquare, went down when Amazon experienced issues in their US East 1a region (Justinb 2011).…

Federal initiatives are encouraging the increase of IS graduates to work in the healthcare environment because they possess knowledge of datasets and dataset management that are key to effective management of electronic health records (EHRs) and health information technology (IT). IS graduates will be members of the healthcare team, and as such,…

One of the toughest challenges in an academic library systems office is how to manage and present the extensive selection of electronic resources from a variety of vendors. At York College of Pennsylvania, the authors participated in an admissions-driven web revision cycle and used a campus-provided CMS for 8 years. During this time, they tried…

In the past, the learning management system (LMS) was a fairly simple program. Its job was to connect an instructor to a student for an individual course. The student could track grades without harassing the faculty member, and the professor could stop worrying about the prospect of losing a student's paper-based assignment. Often, the LMS…

One of the areas where demand has remained strong for MIS students is in the area of database management. Since the early days, this topic has been a mainstay in the MIS curriculum. Students of database management today typically learn about relational databases, SQL, normalization, and how to design and implement various kinds of database…

Darien Library, where the author serves as head of knowledge and learning services, launched a new website on September 1, 2008. The website is built with Drupal, an open source content management system (CMS). In this article, the author describes how she and her colleagues overhauled the library's website to provide an open source content…

Database security is a growing concern evidenced by an increase in the number of reported incidents of loss of or unauthorized exposure to sensitive data. As the amount of data collected, retained and shared electronically expands, so does the need to understand database security. The Defense Information Systems Agency of the US Department of…

Librarianship has experienced a few growing pains over the past several years as its relationship with technology matures into a productive partnership. Being overzealous to adopt new technology can sometimes lead to more setbacks than advances in the profession. However, a recent wave of research has been discussing the benefits of integrating…

This article discusses the processes that occurred when the Library, Controller's Office, and Information Technology Department agreed to create an interface between the Library's Innovative Interfaces patron database and campus administrative software, Banner, using file transfer protocol, in an effort to streamline the Library's accounts…