v.3 no 3                                                            September 1999

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The current "commodity Internet," to which Lehigh connects at 7.5 megabits per second, has become too congested to support the advanced networking applications required by the academic community, and for which it was originally built over ten years ago. In response to this need, a group of 100 universities joined together in early 1997 to form the Internet2 project. The goal of the project is to provide advanced, high-speed networking capabilities vastly superior to the current Internet, creating an environment that is both a test bed for new technology, and a functioning high-speed network platform for activities not feasible on the existing Internet. Through assistance from the federal government, particularly the NSF, along with significant contributions of money, people, and facilities by corporate sponsors, high-speed backbone structures have been established nationwide. Many member institutions in large metropolitan areas have already connected, while others in less urbanized locations (like Lehigh) are building up local access capabilities.

Lehigh will be connecting to the I2 project's private national backbone, called Abilene, operating at multi-gigabit per second rates. This connection is part of a regional consortium involving Lehigh, Penn, and Drexel (and possibly others in the future). This joint agreement, involving shared access to Abilene, offers long-term cost savings and is expected to promote additional collaborative work among the member schools. Network traffic on I2 related networks is limited to authorized applications in research and education consistent with the project's developmental nature. It will not be an immediate replacement for the regular Internet connection, which will continue to operate independently, though it will shift allowable traffic (among I2 sites) off of the slower speed link. Within a few years, it is expected that Internet2 will go through the same privatization and commercialization processes that led to the current Internet, and ultimately become "the Internet." Early planning is underway even now to continue the cycle with an Internet3.

As part of the NSF grant proposal supporting the I2 link, Lehigh identified several "meritorious applications" in science and engineering to pilot I2 services. These include: applications in remote electron microscopy (Materials Sci. & Eng. ), collaborative data and compute services in magnetic fusion research (Physics), and fluid flow analysis and simulation (ME & Mech.). Descriptions of these projects were included in the IR Connections November 1998 issue. IR has upgraded selected network connections in these areas from 10 megabits to 100 megabits per second, and plans to continue such enhancements in the future. An additional immediate bonus is that even users of existing 10 megabit ethernet connections throughout campus will automatically see enhanced throughput to I2 sites due to backbone level enhancements already completed. More information is available on the Internet2 Web page at: www.lehigh.edu/i2.

Blackboard's CourseInfo: An Overnight Success!
by Neil Toporski
Blackboard’s CourseInfo, the new academic Web “kid” on the block, is capturing a lot of interest from faculty at Lehigh.  With over 50 web-based “CourseInfo” courses already created for the 1999 fall semester — and many more expected — the success of this new product is becoming increasingly apparent.  It is English Professor Ed Gallagher’s “…sense and hope is that CourseInfo’s easy access for faculty will open the door to more experimentation with web-based pedagogy at Lehigh.” Ken Sinclair, Chair of the Accounting Department, is an enthusiastic supporter of CourseInfo. After attending the workshop and experimenting with the software, he noted that “CourseInfo is very userfriendly and full of features. I would like to see virtually all faculty use Internet-enhanced supplements like this.”

Blackboard’s CourseInfo is similar to other kinds of academic Web packages like WebCT in many respects.  However, with CourseInfo, faculty can quickly create a Web-based course by simply uploading course documents into pre-designated categories such as Course Information, Assignments, and Course Documents. These documents can exist in the Web-based course as either word processing, html, Acrobat, or text files.  Also, CourseInfo supports many types of multimedia formats such as graphics, audio, and digital video.  Lehigh students can access their courses on any Web browser, anytime, anywhere. CourseInfo, then, minimizes the fuss of printing, collating, stapling, and distributing course documents like syllabi and reading assignments.

CourseInfo also provides powerful collaboration tools such as e-mail, chat, whiteboards, threaded discussion groups, and file sharing.  Faculty can place students into groups or teams where students can seamlessly communicate among each other while working on collaborative course projects.  Students can exchange and compare documents with each other and then send their assignments directly and electronically to faculty.  Moreover, CourseInfo comes with a calendar where students can view institutional Lehigh events, course events and deadlines, while maintaining their own calendar events.

Navigation is especially friendly.  Students who will be using CourseInfo courses for the first time this year will appreciate how easy this product is to use.  Navigation “buttons” are always visible and accessible.  This familiar and consistent interface will lessen the amount of time students usually take in figuring out where information is kept on a Web site by better orienting them to site organization.

One particularly nice feature of CourseInfo at Lehigh is that neither students or faculty need to set up or memorize special passwords. The program is integrated with the university’s AFS authentication system, thus courses can be requested directly from the Web, and all courses can be automatically populated at the beginning of each semester.

At this time, IR is asking faculty to attend CourseInfo workshops before requesting courses to be added on the Web. In this way, faculty will be better prepared to work with this product and the outcomes will be more successful.  CourseInfo courses already created for the fall semester can be seen on the web at http://ci.Lehigh.edu.  For more information, please contact IT consultants:

Neil Toporski (86067, nft0@lehigh.edu),
Robin Deily (84988, rjd0@lehigh.edu)
Kristen O’Hara (83984, kmo3@lehigh.edu).

Through ASA, the online catalog, users can link directly to specific ACM journals, scan them year-by-year, and view/print individual articles. Alternatively, users can go to the ACM Digital Library site [www.acm.org/dl/Search.html] and search the entire collection by author, title, publication, keywords, or ACM categories.

The ACM publications are obviously of particular interest to computer science/engineering, but are also useful for business management, security, and graphics design. Speaking of graphics: the full-color illustrations are part of the package.

Since early 1998, Lehigh has been an enthusiastic participant in the University of Michigan's PEAK program, which offered electronic access to most journals published by Elsevier Science, the world's largest science publisher. Lehigh was one of twelve academic and corporate participants in the experiment, whose object was to investigate new pricing and product plans for electronic journals. The experiment ran from early 1998 through August 31, 1999. This popular program will be continued and augmented through Elsevier's ScienceDirect.

Science Direct offers unlimited electronic full text access to all titles to which Lehigh holds print subscriptions and will include rapid desktop document delivery of articles from a vast array of additional Elsevier titles. It also offers features to help researchers conduct searches of Science Direct journals, bookmark and navigate between sources, link to other relevant Web sites, and keep personal profiles and journal lists. Unlike PEAK, Science Direct will be fully available to all Lehigh users, including undergraduates. Developments in the Lehigh implementation of Science Direct will be reported at www.lehigh.edu/~intext/ejournals/restricted/peakhelp.html . Through the fall semester, links to PEAK journals in the ASA catalog will be replaced with ScienceDirect links. Seminars for faculty and graduate students on ScienceDirect will be offered on November 3 and 9.

Other major electronic journal collections added thus far in 1999 include publications from JSTOR, Wiley/Interscience, Oxford University Press, and the Royal Society of London. All titles are linked in the ASA catalog.

IR Summer '99 Photo Album
 

Librarians from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota listen as Bill Fincke explains ibrary services in the College of Business & Economics. Director Angela Maria Guiterrez [left] and Manager Ana Maria Acosts [right] interacted with Lehigh librarians during a month-long visit that was part of Lehigh's cooperative relationship with Los Andes.	The exterior of the 1878 Linderman library emrged to new life after cleaning, part of a project that also replaced corroded internal drains and leaking roofs.

 
 

The IMRC in Maginnes was upgraded with new computers, scanners, chairs and tables, as well as new language software.	The IR Fair, in its fourth year, takes place in Linderman Library and helps students "get connected" quickly to voice and data.

Dreamweaver
Macromedia's Dreamweaver 2 is a visual editor for creating and managing web pages. With Dreamweaver it is easy to create cross-platform, cross-browser pages. Macromedia's Roundtrip html technology imports html documents without reformatting the code. This software is available in limited supply through Wininstall on IR LANs in public computing sites, classrooms and departments. Contact: Kristen O'Hara, 83984.

Vellum Solids and LightWave 3D
Students using Art and Architecture's Design Arts Computing Lab will have access to two additional drafting software applications this Fall: a "soft" CAD 2D/3D drafting and modeling program called Vellum Solids, and a sophisticated but easy to learn 3D modeling, rendering, and animation program called LightWave. Contact: Art & Architecture Dept, 83610.

Green Globs and More
Several software programs were acquired for mathematics methods students in the College of Education. Green Globs and Graphing Equations lets students explore parabolas, hyperbolas, and other graphics. Geometric superSupposer lets students discover the concepts, relationships, and theorems of Euclidean geometry. Lastly, TesselMania connects mathematics to art. Students create and investigate geometrically complex tesselations. All three programs reside in the College of Education Macintosh Lab. Contact: Lynn Columba, 83237.

Gaussian98 & Gauss View
Designed to model a broad range of molecular systems under a variety of conditions, GAUSSIAN 98 is used by chemists, physicists and engineers for studying molecules and reactions, including both stable species and compounds which are difficult or impossible to observe experimentally. GAUSS VIEW is a full-featured graphical user interface for GAUSSIAN 98. Both programs are available on CS0. Access Info: Mary Jo Schulze, 84590.

Matlab
MATLAB is a high-performance interactive numeric computation and visualization environment that combines hundreds of prepackaged advanced math & graphics functions. It combines numeric analysis, matrix computation, sparse matrix computation, signal processing, 2D and 3D graphics and other functions. Along with MATLAB we offer 19 MATLAB toolboxes for the SGI workstations. Matlab is also available for class use in PC classrooms and public computing sites. Contact: Jeff Lear, 83218.

Reference Manager
Reference Manager is software that keeps track of your reprint files, imports references from numerous abstract services, and helps you format references/bibliographies in the style required by whatever journal you publish in. Available, in limited supply through Wininstall on IR LANs in public computing sites, classrooms and departments. Contact: Sharon Siegler, 83068.

Lehigh Joins CORC to Catalog Web
by Judy McNally & Sharon Wiles Young
Lehigh University is participating in an international cooperative effort to catalog Web sites. The project is sponsored by Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC), an organization based in Dublin Ohio, that maintains the Worldcat database providing bibliographical access to resources of all types. The Cooperative Online Resource Catalog or CORC, as the new pilot project is known, uses a database currently separate from Worldcat but scheduled to be integrated with it in the future. Terry Noreault, Vice President, OCLC Office of Research, has noted that "The CORC project is a joint effort of OCLC and an international collection of pioneering libraries to create . . . outstanding access to all resources, both physical and digital."

Among the objectives of the project are two that are important to Lehigh. One is to extend the core function of libraries in selecting material, which is both authoritative and relevant to the mission of the institution, into the area of Web resources. The other involves using technology to expedite the cataloging process. CORC began in January 1999 and Lehigh joined in April. There are approximately 80 participating institutions. In the spring, Judy McNally, Cataloging Senior Specialist, and Sharon Wiles-Young, Team Leader, Information Organization attended a meeting of CORC participants at OCLC. At Lehigh, Client Services librarians select Web sites and catalogers create records for them on CORC and import the records into ASA (Lehigh's online catalog). To see an example with a link to the Web site, search ASA under the title Medieval English Towns. Client Services librarians are also experimenting with developing portal pages (pathfinders) to Web resources through CORC. Librarians provide feedback to OCLC through e-mail, a listserv and attendance at meetings.

OCLC is providing the technical framework for member libraries to experiment with alternative methods of cataloging that are more appropriate to the digital world than traditional practices. Selected Web resources are cataloged on CORC using a mix of metadata initiatives such as MARC (traditional library cataloging) and Dublin Core. Other useful features of CORC include flexible harvesting of resources, UNICODE support, RDF/XML import/export, automated data and keyword extraction, and link maintenance.

Information Resources (IR) is pleased to extend its computer repair service to faculty and staff who own their own computers. The IR technicians are qualified to repair Gateway, Dell, Apple and IBM (not Aptiva) computers. Repair and installation services for privately owned systems are limited to hardware manufactured within the past four years. This service will be done as time permits, i.e. Lehigh-owned equipment will receive priority. If you require hardware services, call the Help Desk (8HELP/84357) or your Computing Consultant to open a Service Request. Please see the web page below for details on bringing your computer in for service, status requests, rates, policies, and payment: www.lehigh.edu/~lucc/operations/ir_maint.html.

Once more Dell and Gateway are extending system packages offered to Lehigh students to Lehigh departments and to faculty and staff for personal purchase. We call these offerings to your attention because they are quality machines for very reasonable prices. Packages include 17 inch monitors, 8.4 GB hard drives, 450 MHz Pentium III processors, 17/40x CD-ROM drives, and more for under $1400. Please read the details for departmental and personal purchases under Purchasing a Computer on the IR web pages at: www.lehigh.edu/~inmic/purchase.html.

IR People

IR welcomes five new staff members who have joined the organization recently: help desk assistants Richard Sliwinski and Jacob Ruttle, computer operator Allen Myers, bookstacks assistant Ilhan Citak, and accounts assistant Stephen Kocis III.

Bill Brichta, Team Leader for Communications & Computing was re-elected to a two year term as Director at large on the Board of ACUTA, the Assn. for College and University Telecommunications Professionals.

Sue Cady, Group Leader for Administrative Services, was appointed to the Assn. of College and Research Libraries Publications Committee. Sue also recently published an article on insuring library collections in the Journal of Academic Librarianship.

Jean Farrington and Philip Metzger were recently appointed to the newly created Library and Archives Committee of the Historic Bethlehem Partnership.  Jean, Group Leader for Staff & Resource Development, is the convener and is a member of the Historic Bethlehem Board. Philip Metzger is Special Collections Librarian.

Arts & Sciences Librarian Mary Moulton presented  "Searching, Evaluating and Post-processing Chemical Information from the Internet," at Laboratory of Technical Processes, Warsaw (Poland) University of Technology in July.

Help Desk Assistant Valerie VanBilliard presented a paper on "The Combined Help Desk" at the Council of Library/Media Technicians Conference in Detroit April 7-9.

Information Organization Team Leader Sharon Wiles Young co-presented a paper at the NASIG (North American Serials Interest Group) Conference in Pittsburgh in June. The topic was "The Convergence of User Needs, Collection Building, and the Electronic Publishing Market Place." Sharon also presented a workshop on the US MARC Holdings Format for the Associated College Libraries of Central Pennsylvania in Harrisburg during May.

Rauch Business Center, IMRC, & EWFM 292 among Computing Site/Classroom Improvements
By Roy Gruver
Starting late in the spring semester and continuing through the summer, Information Resources channeled $325,000 into improvements in several computing sites and in all hi-tech classrooms. Visitors to Rauch Business Center 50, 60, or 70, Fairchild-Martindale 292, or the International Multimedia Resource Center (IMRC) in Maginnes 470 will notice the difference immediately. IR replaced over 120 four year old computers with Gateway Pentium II, 400 MHz computers. And those faculty and students using any of Lehigh's 18 hi-tech classrooms for lecture support and/or presentations will find the same new computers. In addition, touch screen control panels, now a standard part of the classroom renovation program, permit the equipment in the instructor station to be controlled from one spot using a simple menu of control options. But the improvements weren't just about computers.

• All sites will be running Windows98.
• Personal login is now required to ensure that Lehigh resources are reserved for the Lehigh community.
• New printers, projectors, and touch screen control panels were installed in Rauch 50 and 70.
• The instructor station in Rauch 184 (Perella Auditorium) received a makeover and a new touch screen control panel.
• Drown 209 was renovated to work very similarly to Drown 210 with a touch screen control panel, laptop jack, and a new instructor station.
• The IMRC was refurbished in keeping with recent trends in technology.

Driving these major improvements was a significant commitment by IR to reduce the replacement cycle for site and classroom computers to three years. Users at the Rauch sites last academic year saw the effect of old computers—high failure rates and slower operation. A shorter life cycle has several additional benefits:

• Warranty protection is provided for the entire life of the machine.
• Larger quantity purchases yield lower per unit prices.
• Larger quantities of the same model make standardization of software easier.

If machines are replaced every three years, very good commodity computers are appropriate rather than those with the newest high-end options. Using this strategy IR has reduced the unit cost of desktop computers by 20%; however, for this strategy to be successful in the long run, some increased funding must be generated.

Computer Liaison Program Expands

A computer liaison is a department staff member nominated to interact directly with their Client Services computing consultant and provide assistance with computer-related issues. Liaisons receive extensive training and support. More than 15 new departments have responded to a late summer mailing inviting some parts of the Academic Affairs and Administrative wings of the university to participate. In January the program will be expanded to the entire university. Contact Bill Bettermann (wab3, 84619) or Stacey Alderfer (ss0k, 85004) for additional information.

Lehigh University's link to the Bethlehem emergency 911 center was significantly improved this summer when a new E-911 notification system was installed. This system, purchased from Telident, works with the university's existing telephone system to deliver specific locations of emergency calls immediately to the city's 911 dispatcher. Lehigh extensions, along with their exact building and room locations, are now displayed at both Campus Police and the Bethlehem 911 center at the time of the call. Formerly it was not possible to provide this information in real time--a problem shared by all businesses and institutions that own a telephone system. This change facilitates a speedier response by emergency personnel.

IRDigest is a new electronic service offering computer, library, media, and telecommunications resources and updates. It's a good way for students, faculty and staff to keep up on changes in Information Resources. The "issues" will come to your email. Entries are brief, timely and practical. There are usually links to more information about the topic as well. At the end of each issue there is an opportunity for users to provide feedback and to suggest topics to cover in future issues. The first issue came out in April and two more issues are scheduled for September.

TO SUBSCRIBE TO IRDigest:
Send email to listserv@lehigh.edu with the following information in the body of the message:
subscribe irdigest <your name>.
Call the IR Help Desk (84357) if you have any difficulty in subscribing.

• History of Costume slides: Information Resources has recently acquired a collection of 1491 slides that will be housed in Zoellner. This excellent resource covers costume from 3100 BC through late 20th century. The images are drawn from the extensive collections at Yale University and the Fashion Institute of New York.
• Encyclopedia: IR has acquired the latest, and last, print edition of the noted German-language encyclopedia, Brockhaus.
• Videos: Among many new humanities-oriented video series, three mark the end of the 1900s—The Century: Events that Shaped the World (MC VC LU2515), The Century: Decades of Change (MC VC LU 2514), and People's Century 1900-1999 (on order).
• Local history: Over 150 titles for the collection of local and regional history before1900 have been acquired thanks to a gift from Richard A. Bitting '74 and family.
• Electronic services: Literature Online from Chadwyck-Healey has expanded to include two new full text databases: Twentieth Century American Poetry (1901-1997) and Twentieth Century African-American Poetry (1901-1998).

Friends of the Lehigh University Libraries Calendar of Events for Fall 1999

Sept. 17th
The Suspense Novel: Classic Genre or Popular Pulp?
Friday, September 17^th 12 noon Brown Bag Lunch, Bayer Family Room (3^rd floor west), Linderman Library
Lehigh Valley author Jody Carr recounts her journey from children's author to an assault on the great American novel to her recent successful mass market paperback thriller, Monday's Child, (HarperPaperbacks, 1999.)

Oct.12th
Humor in the Workplace
Tuesday, October 12^th,  12 Noon Brown Bag Lunch, Room 200 (2^nd floor east), Linderman Library
Economics Professor Robert Thornton, author of L.I.A.R. (Almus, 1998) and radio personality/ structural engineer Richard Herschlag, author of Lay Low and Don't Make the Big Mistake (Fireside, 1997) offer boss and employee perspectives, all in good fun.

Nov. 18th
Into the Future: On the Preservation of Knowledge in the Electronic Age
Thursday, November 18^th  4:00-5:30 pm, Room 200 (2^nd floor east), Linderman Library
CSEE Professor Don Hillman; Preservation Resources President Meg Bellinger, & Lehigh librarian Roseann Bowerman discuss the issues raised by the new documentary film, Into the Future. How will digitally stored information and knowledge, an increasingly important part of our cultural record, be preserved ?

Exhibit
Lehigh University at the Turn of the Century
September 1999 - January 2000, 1st floor exhibit cases, Linderman Library
What was the fin-de-siècle like at Lehigh? An exhibit, drawn from Lehigh history resources in Special Collections, shows student activities, academics, and buildings between 1895 and 1905. Prepared by assistant Marie Boltz and librarians Philip Metzger and Kathe Morrow.

Campus Recognizes Outstanding IR Staff
 
 

This past spring students, faculty, and staff recognized the IR staff members listed here for their outstanding service. Special commendation went to Bill Bettermann and Robin Deily. Many teams were also recognized for great service with special commendation to the Academic & Administrative Department Team led by Stacey Alderfer. In the spring IR staff members Stacey Kimmel and Ronald “Obie” Oberdoester received the Library Perry Zirkel award and the ERAC award respectively.  Bill and Robin are shown at left during a rare moment of respite from their work.

 

Alderfer, Stacey Bernhardt, Blair Bettermann, Bill Booth, Monica Bowerman, Roseann Brams, Johanna Deily, Robin Edmiston, Sandy Feldman, Debbie Fincke, Bill

Frederick, Kathy Fritsche, Gale Gazzo, Nicole Herrera, Monica Johnson, Jean Kendi, Bob Larkin, Patrick Lear, Jeffrey Lichak, Steven Misinco, Marge

Moyer, Daniel Oravec, Doris Pecsek, Anne Roseman, Stephen  Siegler, Sharon Silvius, Rich Ward, Patricia Wehden, Fred