"Rent or buy?" is a question people ask about everything from housing to textbooks. It is also a question universities must consider when it comes to high-performance computing (HPC). With the advent of Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Microsoft Windows HPC Server, Rackspace's OpenStack, and other cloud-based services, researchers now have…

Paying for employee turnover costs, data storage, and multiple layers of benefits can be difficult for fiscally constrained institutions, especially as budget cuts and finance-limiting legislation abound in school districts across the country. Many traditional paper-based systems have been replaced with automated, software-based services, helping…

This paper presents a practitioner's view on student system implementations in the Australian university sector. A student information system is a core system of any university and integral to its operations and services to students. These systems are constantly on the list of major projects and at any point in time, a university is either…

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…

Uninterrupted, high-bandwidth network connectivity is crucial for higher education. Colleges and universities increasingly adopt gigabit wireless solutions because of their fiber-equivalent performance, quick implementation, and significant return on investment. For just those reasons, Rush University Medical Center switched from free space optics…

Details how a manual, nonautomated adaptation of Vernon E. Palmour's study on interlibrary loan costs, characteristics, and magnitude was designed and implemented to show interlibrary loan costs at the University of Oklahoma. Five references are cited. (FM)

This description of the use of IBM Series/1 minicomputers to implement a library automation system includes discussion of current functions of the system, the system configuration, communications capabilities, software, and cost factors. (CLB)

Energy management systems are designed to monitor and control energy consumption. A variety of these systems is described. (MLF)

Controlling copier costs begins with an equipment inventory and a survey of administrators' needs and suggestions. (Author/MLF)

Analyzes the development of small systems (under 15,000 part-time students) and introduces a new cost model to examine the importance of institution costs and course life and the economic impact of policy alternatives. It then examines aspects of management requiring special attention for these smaller systems. (EAO)

Describes the experiences of four library automation projects that involved multitype library networks. Areas discussed include forces acting on libraries, the growth and development of the library marketplace, the increasing complexity and interrelationships of automated systems and the profound impact of such systems on libraries. (CLB)

Discusses the advantages of maintaining local numeric databases, and describes the activities involved in creating a local database. The acquisition of files, user support, data storage and access, database management, costs, and planning strategies are discussed. (5 notes with references) (CLB)

This checklist provides guidance on how to measure adequacy of control and security of computer systems, identifies areas of risk, raises management and user awareness of their stewardship responsibilities, and reviews issues relative to system documentation, maintenance, integrity, and reliability. (MBR)

Computers, though they can help educational institutions manage their facilities efficiently, are no substitute for good judgment. Before computerizing, institutions should systematize their records and evaluate their information needs; they should take care not to acquire unnecessary systems or become over-reliant on computers. (MCG)

Discusses the advantages of parallel processor computers in terms of expandibility, cost, performance and reliability, and suggests that such computers be used in library automation systems as a cost effective approach to planning for the growth of information services and computer applications. (CLB)