Educational institutions typically have data filed in many forms in many locations, making the task of gathering relevant data for any purpose a difficult process. The Davidson Community College approached the problem by studying management information systems in other North Carolina institutions, searching ERIC, and pursuing leads in journals of education and data processing as the first part of a two-year Occupational Education Research Project. Registration, grade reporting, and student records constituted the bases for the data bank since these areas are the repetitive, large volume bases for any educational management information system. Of the many systems that would serve their needs, they chose one based on the principle of collecting data only once, at the original source; recording the data on punched cards; and transferring them to computer center random access disk files where access was available by computer terminal. This system makes available data otherwise unavailable, which can have far-reaching effects. The report documents the searches and computer programs studied. Correspondence and sample documents are included in the appendixes. (AG)