Building a Campus Information Culture Copyright 1993 CAUSE. From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 16, Number 4, Winter 1993. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For further information, contact Julia Rudy at CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301 USA; 303-939-0308; e-mail: jrudy@CAUSE.colorado.edu BUILDING A CAMPUS INFORMATION CULTURE by Robert J. Brentrup ABSTRACT: Dartmouth College's approach to developing a campus-wide information system has been shaped by a long-standing philosophy of delivering computing services as a public utility. Comprehensive network connectivity for all campus constituents and a standardized workstation and set of software have facilitated the system's development, as has a collaborative relationship between the library and computing center. Delivering information resources is not merely a technical challenge, but an organizational one as well. An integrated information system benefits all parts of an institution by meeting individuals' information needs through an accessible and familiar interface. This article describes the experiences of the author and his colleagues in augmenting the campus computing culture through the development and deployment of a distributed campus-wide information system called the Dartmouth College Information System (DCIS). Based on a client/server architecture, DCIS is presently in widespread use across the institution and is experiencing rapid growth. Learning to work with the institution through its individual members and distinct communities of interest has been as important as the technical design and implementation of the system. We hope this analysis of our venture will benefit others pursuing similar goals. Computing strategy at Dartmouth Dartmouth's campus-wide information system strategy is built on four underlying elements: * The philosophy of computing as a public utility * An investment in physical network infrastructure * Standardization of workstations * Early development of "content-neutral" network services The underlying vision for computing at Dartmouth was established some thirty years ago by John Kemeny,[1] who believed that computing services should follow the example of the library, where service is provided as a public utility. At Dartmouth, computing is centrally funded and provided at little or no charge to all members of the community. All services have been designed and implemented with the goal of reaching everyone in the institution. Though the technology has changed over the years from time-sharing terminals to networked personal computers, this emphasis has not. Today everyone has a computer, a network port, a network identity, and common application software. To reach all campus constituents, connectivity was a crucial element. In 1984 an important investment in physical network infrastructure was made. An existing terminal network was expanded into a large local area network, enabling the eventual connection of all dormitory rooms, offices, and meeting rooms. A desire to maintain the ease of data and program interchange--an important feature of the central time-sharing system--prompted the selection of a standard personal computer (the Apple Macintosh) for the entire campus. Although not state-of-the-art in terms of transmission speed, the universal nature of Dartmouth's campus-wide network, connecting more than 11,000 Macintosh computers, encourages widespread use of existing network services and provides a hospitable place to continue to develop new ones. The introduction of the Macintosh was accompanied by the local development of network services. In a relatively short time, by 1986, public file servers, public laser printing, and Macintosh-based electronic mail became available to everyone. Today, these network services support the daily use of about 4,500 students, 825 faculty, 2,000 staff members, and about 5,000 people at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. The public file server is a particularly important resource. It is a large AppleShare file server providing campus-wide, publicly accessible shared file space to over 500 concurrent users. The file server is used for public information delivery, course material distribution, assignment submission, and software distribution of any Macintosh file type. It contains the same kinds of information, and has fulfilled for a number of years much the same function locally, as the popular Gopher system does at other institutions. Standardization of software is nearly as important as the choice of a standard personal computer. It is a major advantage to be able to share documents with co-workers and not have to wonder each time about whether they will be able to access the contents. Adoption of standards has simplified providing breadth of service. Software developers can concentrate on a single platform, knowing the entire community will be able to use their product--a significant advantage. This narrower focus provides the opportunity to pursue greater depth of service. Instead of investing effort in providing duplicate services on multiple platforms, services can attain greater sophistication and attention to detail. The Dartmouth College Information System project represents the next step in this evolutionary process. While the first network services, like e-mail, were content-neutral, DCIS development has concentrated on providing access to actively collected, content-laden information resources. Powerful database managers organize the data and simplify the task of locating specific information in the increasingly large collection. Need for an information system The utility of a campus-wide information system can be seen in every department and office at Dartmouth. In the academic departments, the use of electronic information sources in research has grown rapidly. Researchers routinely pursue electronic sources on the global Internet. Through the Internet they can communicate easily with their peers regardless of their physical locations. Increasingly widespread electronic information access is providing an immense collection of valuable resources available from one's desktop workstation. Every administrative office has both information it needs to manage its operation, and information to share with the community. Each office faces the need to accomplish these tasks with greater accuracy, more efficiently, and at less cost. Consumers of the information want to use it easily and in conjunction with their other computer tools. For them the computing technology must remain a secondary consideration, a tool in their work and not the focus of their efforts. DCIS project organization The DCIS project is a joint development of the central computing organization and the library. It was apparent in the initial stages that such a partnership was natural and essential. The library and computing services each supply critical skills in making the project possible and successful. Co-principal investigators oversee the operation of the project. In the DCIS partnership, the library has primary responsibility for the selection, acquisition, and maintenance of electronic reference resources. The library staff provide content expertise and are advanced users of the information services in their everyday jobs. They also have frequent contact with the students and faculty using these services, and provide important insights and feedback to the software developers. The computing center installs, operates, and maintains the central database servers. It provides the physical network and the logical data transport between clients and servers. A small staff of professional programmers hired for the project has developed the client applications, network protocols, and server software. Development team members also act as consultants and intermediaries for other departments seeking to develop their own information resources for campus-wide delivery. Documentation and training have been joint projects of both the central computing organization and the public services of the library. The Dartmouth community has served as subjects in the experiment and in return has gained access to many new tools and resources. DCIS objectives DCIS is designed to address a number of interrelated objectives. The most obvious objective is to simplify access to information. The software eliminates as many manual steps as possible from the process of locating and using electronic information resources. For example, DCISmakes connecting to a database as simple as pointing and clicking. Each step in lowering the barrier to entry has brought more members of the community into daily use of these resources. It also seemed obvious that access could be greatly improved by harnessing the power of the personal computers available, using them as more than terminals to the mainframe systems. Local processing power has been harnessed in a client/server design that provides more functionality with less user tedium. More sophisticated presentation has been developed than was previously possible. Faster response to requests is being provided with fewer server resources. The ability to leverage individuals' existing knowledge of the Macintosh's standard program interface is an important goal. The DCIS system fits in with other Macintosh productivity applications. Skills learned in one generally apply to others. Data interchange between different applications is greatly enhanced. For example, collecting citations and formatting a bibliography for a paper can be as easy as copying a reference from the Online Library application and pasting it into a word-processed document. The ability to deal with many resources through the same user interface is another important objective. The information retrieval programs or "viewers" are able to access a number of functionally different servers in a manner almost transparent to the user. These different sources of information do have similar content. For example, both bibliographic and full-text resources can be accessed through the same viewer. Another viewer supporting statistical functions has been written for numeric databases. The effort invested in learning to use one of these viewer applications benefits the user many times on many different databases. Another objective was to help users find out what resources are available. To answer the question "what's out there?" a system-wide directory pulls together resources from all around the campus and the Internet. Users can search and browse through the resource collection, similar to the online catalog, helping them to discover useful electronic information sources. We wanted to help users locate, acquire, and maintain the necessary client software on their workstations. It is often frustrating and difficult to keep up with the latest versions of so many application programs. DCIS provides a mechanism to update its components as it is developed. Users learn about updates to the software as they use it, with the system delivering the new version automatically, if desired. In this way, new versions have propagated quickly through the community. Finally, the system is designed to be very modular and yet provide an integrated feel and operation as much as possible. Many standard Macintosh applications can be used as a viewer. In this way, we have been able to incorporate previously existing systems. This is as essential as providing new ones. This design also provides a minimally disruptive upgrade path as various parts change. Current state of DCIS system development The DCIS project has been in development nearly four years, starting in earnest in January 1990. The first applications were publicly available on the campus network in April 1991. The software has been distributed to all members of three incoming classes ('95, '96, and '97) as their Macintoshes were delivered. The library staff is now switching their daily usage from the earlier library system, as DCIS has equaled and exceeded the earlier system's capabilities. Well into the third year of production use, we are trying to cope with substantial growth in usage and demand for more information resources. Portions of the DCIS system have also been installed at a number of other institutions. Over sixty local databases and hundreds of external sources of information are reachable by the system. Five central computers running about a dozen different servers currently provide information services for more than 700 daily users. The distribution of the servers on a number of different computer systems allows us to add capacity incrementally with no user-visible system changes. Five new client applications (DCIS Navigator, Online Library, CLASS, InterNews, and DCIS Image View) have been developed and several preexisting ones have been integrated into DCIS. * The DCIS Navigator application (see Figure 1) and its system-wide directory server provide a central point of contact with a wide variety of resources. This directory is a way to "advertise" the contents of the system and to automate connecting to a resource. It also provides the software delivery and update features. [FIGURES NOT AVAILABLE IN ASCII TEXT VERSION] * The Online Library application (see Figure 2) provides sophisticated search and retrieval capabilities to the collection of bibliographies and full texts. Complex searches, local manipulation, caching, and graphical display of results are among its features. * The CLASS application provides a similar function for numerical databases; InterNews is a USENET news reader; and the DCIS Image View has been developed to display illustrations and photographs. Some resources are still accessed through terminal emulators (when a better alternative does not yet exist); the DCIS Navigator automates the steps of locating and connecting to these systems. Several protocol-translating gateway servers are also available. They provide access to WAIS and Z39.50 services at other campuses and businesses using the same DCIS Online Library application.[2] Links are also maintained in the DCIS Navigator to other Internet information systems like Gopher to assist local users. Locally installed Gopher and WAIS servers are being used to deliver some information resources developed or maintained at Dartmouth to the Internet community. Electronic collection development The project started with scholarly electronic databases at the library, primarily the online catalog, indexes to minor special collections, and bibliographies listing journal articles. A number of electronic general reference works have been added, including an encyclopedia, dictionaries, and full texts of standard works. They were selected because of their broad use and previous development work. The directory of resources was next expanded to include any other existing sources of information available on the Dartmouth network. These included the more usual information on campus life, such as bulletin boards for events, jobs, housing, and network news. Finally, resources provided by other institutions over the Internet have also been selected and included in the DCIS directory as a way to make them more accessible by Dartmouth users. The selection process is ongoing and has followed the same basic procedures as selecting any library materials. Both suggestions from patrons and recommendations by reference librarians covering their subject areas are collected. Possible sources are identified and evaluated according to the quality of the material, the technical effort required to deliver or access them, and the cost involved. Several collaborative acquisition efforts have resulted in obtaining materials which could not otherwise have been obtained. As awareness of the system spreads, a variety of administrative offices outside of the library and computing services have been suggesting and helping develop new resources. The success of such "collection development" projects is essential to broaden interest and increase usage of the system. Time and again we have seen someone's casual interest ("that's pretty neat") change to active involvement ("where can I get a copy?") when a resource of personal interest to them is made available. Plans are now being developed to incorporate personnel and financial systems into the mix. These sources bring with them a number of complex problems. For example, access control must often be implemented down to the level of specific fields in the database. Online update of the data, while simultaneously supporting searching, is very desirable, if not essential. Access control Authentication of users and access control arevery important parts of the system. All students, faculty, and staff members have an entry in the Dartmouth Name Directory (DND) database. The DND entry provides each person with their electronic mailbox and a unique identity used to gain access to network services. The existence of such a database makes it possible to control access to resources without creating additional individual user accounts. Each DND entry currently has a single classification field; students are identified by their class, faculty and staff are identified by their department. To implement the next desired levels of access control for personnel and financial databases, this will need to be expanded. Certain individuals need to be associated with multiple groups. To avoid duplication of information and possibly conflicting group assignments because of it, this will likely be supported in the central directory. Identification of an individual will continue to rely on the DND, which supplies sophisticated name matching, nicknames, and collision resolution features. Based on their supervisory responsibilities, certain individuals will also be granted rights to manipulate departmental and summary information. Currently the best way to accomplish this seems to be to incorporate these aggregate access rights into each system that requires them. Only the subset of individuals properly having such rights need to have them assigned. The logic of each system can then directly control the complex relationships between user identity and the appropriate span of data access provided. Security is maximized by providing such control in parallel with the data tables. Developing new information sources DCIS has provided a new, more powerful method for administrative offices to share information with the campus community. To assist offices in developing an information resource, the DCIS team usually arranges a discussion meeting to understand the resource and its audience. The data content and its size generally determine the complexity of the project and its update needs. Evaluating the office's existing process and work flow is often helpful in determining an approach. We try to involve the office in considering possible solutions from the tools available, highlighting the differences and tradeoffs. Developing some of these projects has illustrated to us how important it is to distribute the maintenance of the information sources. It is particularly important to recognize and address the variation in computer skills of the office personnel who will be maintaining the data. In contrast to the efficiency of central software development, if the originating office cannot largely maintain its own information resources, the information system developers will be consumed by maintenance tasks. Experiences with deployment We have used a "ripple-out" strategy in deploying the new systems. We have sought to identify and utilize early adopters in a department or office. Developing such an "insider" relationship can be a valuable asset. The early adopter often becomes a product champion, distributing information and channeling back other feedback. Individuals in the work group tend to be influenced more by someone in their existing group than by outsiders (like the system developers). It is important to draw experimental users into the process at the proper time. The system under development must be stable and powerful enough to be used for real work at this stage. It must provide equivalent facility when competing with an existing system. It is important to watch out for missing features that people have taken for granted and then realize they miss. To make the most of the opportunity, we are responsive to the tester's feedback and follow up on complaints and requests quickly. Gradually, more people are added to the group of testers as refinements are implemented. Finally, a public announcement is made through all available channels. The switch-over period is especially important. It is essential to support overlapping dual systems for some period of time. The dual systems have been a problem for the staff; they needed to know both methods for some time and to accommodate various special needs. Substantial functional reasons to switch to DCIS have generally been available, and these help to overcome a user's natural reluctance to change a routine. To assist the adoption of a new system, we have tried to recognize and address the variety of individual approaches to learning and the computer abilities of persons in the community of interest. Training and documentation attempt to support the range of those who "jump in" and experiment (the early adopters), those who like to read about how the whole thing works as they try it, and those who need a demonstration of it before they'll begin to use it. In response, we have provided online help in each application, printed extensive user guides, and run "minicourses" and hands-on training workshops. The Macintosh interface has enabled users already familiar with the Macintosh to use the system with less training than earlier mainframe systems. Part of this effect is generational. The students are more likely simply to try the software, and they manage to get useful results. Of course, new students have not invested time in learning the previous system. The faculty and staff require more assistance and need to make comparisons against the previous system. Keys to success We think the DCIS project has been quite successful. A number of similar systems on other campuses have been in development for longer periods of time and others have been released and subsequently withdrawn. We think one of the keys to success is to stress performance and quality in the software. At the beginning, we had to trade these against quick results. Performance and quality allow others to use the software as a tool in the performance of their "real" jobs. The use of "industrial strength" tools and design techniques, especially object-oriented programming technology, has leveraged our development efforts in a very visible way. Being able to draw from a collection of reusable components has accelerated our progress. Common components help provide underlying levels of common features that look and act the same in different applications. DCIS is designed to change incrementally as it is developed. This allows great flexibility in integrating preexisting resources. A large number of resources have been assembled in a short time. In some ways, our strategy to implement a "seamless feel" with separate components has worked too well. New users have been confused about which application they were interacting with. Their mental model sometimes does not keep up with where the system led them. The advantage of having a "standard" workstation has been substantial. It has been difficult enough to account for the variety of models and software versions in one line of development. DCIS software is starting to influence equipment purchases. Workstation performance became noticeable to those who had entry-level models with some deciding to upgrade. People now ask for equipment recommendations, because they want to have a workstation that can take best advantage of DCIS. At the same time, moving much of the computation to the workstation has allowed the same central computer to serve more people than before. But the library's central computer has also been upgraded to keep up with increased demand. The client/server nature of DCIS can make the system appear more responsive during some high usage times. Since the client workstation is handling operations like keyboard input and scrolling instead of having the server interacting with a terminal, users don't notice slightly longer pauses at times when they are already used to waiting for a few seconds. Spreading the news is still a significant problem. Certain pockets of the campus are still not aware of what is available. Providing a new resource for a particular community of interest has been the most successful way to add new users. Word of mouth has been the next most effective device. Printed and electronic publications (that is, newsletters and electronic bulletins) tend to reach the same group of regular readers. By working closely with the various organizations that have information to distribute, we have tried to ensure a stable base through which many more resources can be provided. The partnership we have assembled seems to provide an efficient way to develop and maintain such an information system. As people have started to use what is available we have received many requests for other resources. The electronic mailbox we set up to collect bug reports and suggestions has received a number of complimentary notes. Users of DCIS have reported enhanced productivity in teaching and research. The most apparent effect has been large increases in the number of people using the system. Usage doubled from summer to fall in 1992 and has more than doubled again since then. Building a campus information culture is an evolutionary process. Each individual approaches the use of information technology a little differently. By lowering the barriers to entry by several more steps and by trying to cater to a wide variety of experiences and needs, DCIS has been a significant step forward in library and computing services at Dartmouth College. ======================================================================== Footnotes: 1 In 1962, John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz, mathematics professors at Dartmouth, proposed forming a computer center to implement their vision for computing. They successfully garnered the support of the College to implement the idea. Dr. Kemeny became president of Dartmouth College in 1970. 2 The Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS) system is a client/server information retrieval system developed by Thinking Machines, Dow Jones, Apple Computer, and KPMG Peat Marwick. Its purpose is to help end users find and retrieve information in many forms from networked databases supplied by different vendors. The client-to-server conversation uses an extension to the Z39.50-1988 standard protocol. Z39.50 is a U.S. ANSI standard protocol for information retrieval. It defines a client-to-server network protocol that is being implemented by many different organizations and vendors. For the end user it is significant in allowing a single client application (the user interface) to search a variety of different servers. ************************************************************************ Robert J. Brentrup is the project director for the Dartmouth College Information System (DCIS), directing system design and development. DCIS is a joint project between the Dartmouth College Library and Dartmouth Computing Services to develop a client/server-based campus- wide information system. Mr. Brentrup has been involved in software development and project management for a wide variety of computer systems, most recently at Lotus Development Corporation. He holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Michigan Technological University and a master's degree in computer engineering from Boston University. ************************************************************************