Historically, managing access to information systems (ISs) required direct interaction with a limited number of users. Increasingly, managing access involves handling an increased numbers of internal and external students, faculty, and staff as well as partners such as workforce development centers, the U.S. Department of Education, and the…

Most UK universities can trace their current management information systems back to significant investments made in the 1990s, largely fuelled by concerns about the millenium bug and a change from character interfaces to graphical user interfaces following the introduction of the personal computer. It was during this period that institutions also…

Montana State University (MSU) Libraries (where the authors serve as web services librarian and digital initiatives librarian, respectively) is perhaps unique because it has no current periodicals room due to lack of space. As a result, finding current journals for research is difficult for its patrons, who do not always know how or where to…

How do you dynamically customize the programming language available in a context within an existing system, without changing the underlying system? This dissertation introduces a language design approach that addresses this problem. The basic idea is to structure programs as systems of multiple interacting levels of abstraction, where all of the…

The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, located on the National Naval Medical Center's campus in Bethesda, Maryland, is a medical education and research facility for the nation's military and public health community. In order to support its approximately 7,500 globally distributed users, the university's James A. Zimble Learning…

Discusses the issues influencing the design, implementation, and promotion of the Towers Perrin in-house text retrieval system. The discussion of factors influencing system design includes the organizational culture, the existing computer and communications network, and the availability of text retrieval software. Suggestions for in-house systems…

Discusses how the World-Wide Web (WWW) can be linked to the PAT system, a search engine supporting access to Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) encoded documents. Technical concepts are reviewed, and the operation of a PAT-to-Web gateway is explained using examples of how it is employed. (JKP)

This article draws on two projects funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation concerning the ways colleges and universities can support the legitimate sharing of digital learning resources for scholarly use. The 2001-03 Visual Image User Study (VIUS) assessed the scholarly needs of digital image users-faculty, staff, and students. That study led to…

FODEM (FOrmative DEvelopment Method) is a design method for developing digital learning environments for widely dispersed learning communities. These are communities in which the geographical distribution and density of learners is low when compared to the kind of learning communities in which there is a high distribution and density of learners…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the use of a non-expensive dynamic computing resource, consisting of a Beowulf class cluster and a NoW, as an educational and research infrastructure. Design/methodology/approach: Clusters, built using commodity-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware components and free, or commonly used, software, provide…

This paper describes the experience and the problems solved in the process of developing and integrating advanced World Wide Web-based services into the University of Patras (Greece) system. In addition to basic network services (e.g., e-mail, file transfer protocol), the final system will integrate the following set of advanced services: a…

Presents a 10-step goal-oriented method for establishing an electronic college. Commitment to training, support, and motivation of people is advocated, as well as technological expertise. Each of the steps is described in detail using the "TowerNet" system from the Adult Education Department at Pennsylvania State University as a case…

Project Athena is a $100 million, eight-year project to install a large network of high performance computer work stations for education and research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Organizational, legal, and administrative aspects of the project allow two competitors (Digital Equipment Corporation and IBM) to work together…

This paper outlines a process implemented at Mott Community College (Michigan) for building technology-based systems that would encourage collaboration among the staff. The first goal was communication, which included using the following technology to allow people to communicate and to make information available: e-mail, calendaring,…

The Information Services Plan (ISP) developed at Howard Community College (HCC), in Columbia, Maryland, is designed to ensure that the necessary data, equipment, and communications technologies will be available to enable the college to meet its strategic goals. The plan provides for analyses of the current information services operating…