OIIT update, Spring 2000 / Office of Information and Instructional Technology, Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia

Office of Information and Instructional Technology Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia

Spring 2000

News Flash Articles in this Issue

Beth Brigdon Elected to Banner2000 Users Advisory Board
Beth Brigdon, Executive Director of Enterprise Application Systems, was elected to SCT's Banner2000 Users Advisory Board at the March SCT Summit Conference in San Francisco. Brigdon will function as the board's Representative for Large Enterprises and will serve a three-year term. This appointment will increase the University System of Georgia's involvement in matters of program policy, operation, and direction for Banner2000; USG personnel are encouraged to contact beth_brigdon@oit.peachnet. edu with any thoughts, comments, or concerns.
New in GALILEO

q GeorgiaFIRST is Moving Ahead q University System Provides Home Access to
GALILEO Library q eCoreTM on the Horizon q GALILEO: Georgia's Brightest Five-Year-Old q CYBER Set for Decommissioning q Banner Goes GUI q PeachNet Upgrades Infrastructure q "Mr. PeachNet" Retires q USG Conducts Public Key Information Workshop q Monthly Banner and Georgia Enhancements
Releases q On-line Training for Banner Baseline Accounts
Receivable Now Available q GIL is on the Move

EBSCO Publishing has secured rights to a variety of images from both Archive Photo and MapQuest.com. Archive Photo is comprised of ten thousand images, which have been grouped into the categories of people, places, history and natural science. MapQuest.com, which offers twelve hundred images, offers nine hundred images of maps (representing countries, states, continents, cities, etc.) and about three hundred images of national flags. When viewing the full image of the flag, users receive that country's information regarding economics, religion, products, politics, minerals, and more. The Image Collection is available in EBSCO's Academic Search Elite, Business Source Elite, Health Source Elite, MAS FullTEXT Ultra, and MasterFILE Premier databases.
The Georgia Historic Newspapers database is an outgrowth of the Georgia Newspaper Project managed by the University of Georgia Libraries. Since the early 1950s, the UGA Libraries have made a systematic effort to identify

q Georgia HomePLACE and The New Georgia Encyclopedia
q Degrees and Majors Authorized q TECH TALK q PERSONNEL Notes

and obtain copies of every newspaper ever published in Georgia and to preserve these valuable historical resources on microfilm. The project is now converting these records into digital format in order to make them available free of charge as a searchable text database in GALILEO. The database, which is still in development, currently includes portions of three newspapers: The Cherokee Phoenix, The Colored Tribune, and The Dublin Post. Other papers will be added as they become available.
OIIT Home Page | OIIT Update | OIIT News & Publications | Credits

GeorgiaFIRST is Moving Ahead
The GeorgiaFIRST project, which involves replacing the University System's legacy payroll and accounting systems with PeopleSoft applications, has made significant progress during recent months. The GeorgiaFIRST project will affect faculty and staff in all of the thirty-two centrally supported units of the University System of Georgia. Every unit has been given the opportunity to redesign its administrative infrastructure to streamline tasks.
The project team consists of Regents central office employees, Empower Solutions consultants, and many volunteers from the institutions in the University System. The first major phase of the project was the implementation of the PeopleSoft Human Resources and Payroll system. After developing a model HR/Payroll database that could meet the requirements at all thirty-two centrally supported units of the University System of Georgia, the project moved into the rollout phase. As of June 1, 2000, twenty-one institutions of the University System are in production, four in parallel, and the remaining seven in implementation status on the new PeopleSoft HR and Payroll system. Moving forward, the project team will bring new institutions up on the new system at a rate of one every two weeks.
Maintaining this aggressive implementation schedule requires significant coordination and cooperation by the project team, and the relocation of the GeorgiaFIRST HRMS project from Georgia Perimeter College's South Campus to the Athens OIIT facility in November 1999, was a major step in this direction. Consolidation of resources has enhanced the ability to provide the support, development, and database administration tasks necessary to move the project forward.

Spring 2000
More about GeorgiaFIRST

GeorgiaFIRST PROJECT STATUS
In Production: (21) Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Albany State University Armstrong Atlantic State University Augusta State University Bainbridge College Clayton College & State University Coastal Georgia Community College Columbus State University Darton College East Georgia College Floyd College Georgia Southwestern State University Georgia College & State University Georgia Perimeter College Georgia Southern University Kennesaw State University Macon State College North Georgia College & State University Regents Central Office Valdosta State University Waycross College
In Parallel: (4) Dalton State College Fort Valley State University Gordon College Skidaway Institute of Oceanography
In Implementation: (7) Atlanta Metropolitan College Gainesville College Middle Georgia College Savannah State University Southern Polytechnic State University South Georgia College State University of West Georgia

Spring 2000

University System Provides Home Access to GALILEO Library
Georgia's citizens are now able to bring one of the nation's most powerful research tools into their living rooms via their home computers, at no charge. At-home access to GALILEO Georgia's cutting-edge, electronic library has now been made available to the state's citizens, University System of Georgia officials recently announced. All it takes to access GALILEO is a free password, which has been made available through the state's public libraries.
"From the day GALILEO was conceived, our goal has been to broaden access to this tremendous state resource," said University System of Georgia Chancellor Stephen R. Portch. "This is a tremendous development, which extends the rich resources of the University System of Georgia's libraries into Georgians' homes. GALILEO truly makes a wealth of knowledge just a mouse click away."
GALILEO was developed by the University System in 1995 with an initial goal of electronically connecting the library resources of Georgia's 34 public colleges and universities. Since service began within the University System of Georgia on Sept. 21, 1995, the network has expanded to include the state's K-12 schools, the institutions of the Department of Technical and Adult Education, and a private consortium of colleges and universities. In addition, GALILEO access is provided to the Governor's office, three legislative research offices, and the state's 57 public library systems.
Individuals interested in obtaining a GALILEO password should contact their local public library. The passwords which change quarterly are available to Georgia residents who are registered borrowers at a specific library.

More About GALILEO
More About GALILEO Access Policies

Once an individual has obtained a GALILEO password, they can log on to the GALILEO homepage on their home computer, where they will be prompted for the password. Users then will have access to over 50 databases, including these highlights.
q EBSCOhost a set of general databases featuring thousands of full-text journal and magazine titles as well as specialized databases for business, health, high-school students, and elementary school students
q SIRS Researcher a general database with selected full-text articles
q Grove Dictionary of Art a rich source of information about artists and art history, including biographies and images
q ProQuest five different databases with thousands of full-text journal and magazine titles, including the premier full-text business database, ABI/Inform Global
q Encyclopaedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster Dictionary
q Georgia Legislative Documents, Georgia Historic Newspapers and Georgia Government Publications
The Georgia General Assembly and Georgia Gov. Roy E. Barnes have provided more than $30.5 million in funds to the University System of Georgia to implement and operate GALILEO. Up until this time, public libraries were the only participating GALILEO institutions which did not receive passwords to distribute. University System students, faculty, and staff will continue to have passwords from their institutions, but may also wish to obtain their local public library's password for access to their unique resources.

Spring 2000

eCoreTM on the Horizon
Significant progress has been made on the eCoreTM project. Implemented as a result of the June 1999 adoption by the Board of Regents of the principles and action items set forth in Educational Technology and the Age of Learning: Transforming the Enterprise, the project focuses upon the development of an electronically delivered core curriculum for the University System of Georgia. The eCoreTM project is comprised of courses leading to the completion of the first two years of an undergraduate degree. These courses will be offered by USG institutions and marketed by Georgia G.L.O.B.E., Georgia Global Learning Online for Business and Education.
The implications of eCoreTM are far-reaching. eCoreTM provides an educational opportunity to students who, for a variety of reasons, may be unable to attend campus-based classes. eCoreTM also facilitates professional development for faculty serving on course development teams. Faculty are provided with a unique forum for the exchange of ideas and information with their peers, as well as an opportunity to learn new instructional skills and strategies applicable to teaching in an online environment.
The development of the eCoreTM courses is managed by the Advanced Learning Technologies (ALT) unit of the Office of Academic Affairs. The Web Instructional Development (WebID) department of the University of Georgia's Center for Continuing Education is providing programming and production. Courses developed under this project are supported by funding from the Desktop Learning Project initiative, which implements and tests a coordinated infrastructure model for developing and delivering instruction to learners' desktops via the Internet.
The first six eCoreTM courses are in development and will

More About eCoreTM
More About Georgia G.L. O.B.E.
More About Educational Technology and the Age
of Learning: Transforming the
Enterprise

be offered to students during the fall 2000 semester. These courses include English 1101, English 1102, Math 1111, Math 1101, Political Science 1101, and Survey of US History 2111. Each course is developed through a collaborative team approach; team members include a project manager/instructional designer, six faculty members, programmers, and graphic artists.
eCoreTM is setting a precedent for the delivery of quality instruction in the online environment through the use of a collaborative development model, template, and adherence to a set of student learning outcomes and instructional, technical, and legal standards. eCoreTM will become a benchmark for online higher education instruction; not only will eCoreTM offer the core curriculum online, but it will provide guidelines for the development and delivery of online instruction throughout the University System.

Spring 2000

GALILEO: Georgia's Brightest FiveYear-Old
An important milestone is on the horizon for GALILEO, GeorgiA LIbrary LEarning Online: On September 21, 2000, GALILEO will celebrate the fifth anniversary of its launch in 1995. The GALILEO project has been enormously successful, increasing in use every year to over 18 million hits in 1999. Since its inception for the University System, GALILEO has grown to include all public educational communities, as well as private colleges and universities. GALILEO is now available to every Georgia citizen to use at home through passwords distributed by their public libraries.
To mark this proud occasion, the Georgia Legislature has issued a declaration naming September 21, 2000, as GALILEO Day in Georgia. An information campaign will provide information, materials, and outreach activities commemorating the anniversary to GALILEO libraries. GALILEO's fifth birthday offers an ideal opportunity to celebrate one of Georgia's greatest resources and to acknowledge a profound achievement for the University System.
A RESOLUTION
q Recognizing GALILEO day in Georgia; and for other purposes.
q WHEREAS, GALILEO, Georgia Library Learning Online, is a result of the vision and inspiration of Chancellor Stephen Portch when he called it One Statewide Library; and
q WHEREAS, Governor Barnes and Governor Miller

More About GALILEO
See related article about public library access to GALILEO

lent their enthusiastic support to this innovative venture; and
q WHEREAS, the perspicacious Georgia General Assembly embraced the concept and funded the project annually beginning in 1995; and
q WHEREAS, GALILEO provides a sophisticated level of information for all of Georgia's citizens from myriad on-line electronic information sources; and
q WHEREAS, GALILEO services and information are delivered through many types of libraries to all of Georgia's citizens; and
q WHEREAS, GALILEO is a stimulus and model for resource sharing among libraries to benefit the population of an entire state; and
q WHEREAS, Georgia set the national standard for a state-wide collaborative virtual library including public libraries, private colleges and universities, public colleges and universities, technical institutes, and K-12 schools; and
q WHEREAS, GALILEO was initially conceived and introduced on the campuses of the University System of Georgia on September 21, 1995.
q NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES that September 21, 2000, be recognized as GALILEO day in Georgia to mark this significant milestone in delivering current information, using cutting edge technology, to all citizens of the state.
q BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Clerk of the House of Representatives is authorized and directed to transmit appropriate copies of this resolution to Chancellor Stephen Portch, University

of Georgia; William Gray Potter, Librarian, University of Georgia; and Ralph Russell, retired Librarian, Georgia State University.

Spring 2000
CYBER Set for Decommissioning
A significant chapter in the University System's technology history will soon come to an end: the CYBER is in the process of being decommissioned. The CYBER 960, which is housed at the University of Georgia, is the latest incarnation of a hardware system that has been in use by USG for thirty years. A mainframe computer, the CYBER has stored an enormous amount of data for the University System, and currently contains over five hundred active accounts. Among the CYBER's USG accounts are legacy payroll, the Student Information Reporting System (SIRS), the Faculty Information System (FIS), and Regents testing. Upon decommissioning, essential information stored in the CYBER will be migrated to more efficient hardware.
The decommissioning process has been broken down into four major phases, including account auditing, file discovery and notification, migration and archiving of data, and hardware phaseout. The CYBER decommissioning project team has identified the main accounts that are currently running on the CYBER, and is now working on precise identification of the data that is housed on the machine. This phase of decommissioning is particularly arduous because of the enormous amount of information that has been stored on the CYBER over the years. Every data file must be identified, and where possible, the owners of these files will be notified of the impending decommissioning before the data can be migrated to other systems.

The Board of Regents hopes to phase the hardware out of production mode between October and December 2000. If you are familiar with a user who has information stored on the CYBER, please contact John Scoville (john_scoville@oit.peachnet.edu) immediately. The Office of Information and Instructional Technology will work with data owners to investigate locations to store their files.

Banner Goes GUI
By September 2000, all University System of Georgia institutions using Banner will be required to transfer from character mode to Graphic User Interface (GUI). Although many institutions have already made this transition, several schools are still running in character mode and are working to complete the transition by the September deadline.
As of the September release of GaMods 3.5, OIIT will no longer provide support for character mode transactions. The current transition to GUI will prepare institutions for the March 2001 release of Banner 4.0, which will not support character mode at all. Moving to GUI now means that users will obtain experience with GUI and will not be required to implement both a new version of the application and a new interface at the same time.
To expedite each institution's efforts to compile and install the GUI forms, OIIT is packaging the required software for download to campus file servers as was facilitated for the GeorgiaFIRST project. To obtain support for this transition, users should contact the OIIT Helpdesk. For assistance in GUI navigation, institutional users are encouraged to use the Banner GUI navigation training module in ABLE, the Asynchronous Banner Learning Environment, which offers self-paced training on the desktop. Enterprise Applications Systems will also schedule a small number of instructorled GUI navigation training sessions during the coming months, the dates of which will soon be announced.

Spring 2000 More About ABLE

Spring 2000

PeachNet Upgrades Infrastructure
Reed Davis, Acting Director, Division of Telecommunications and Networking
As previously reported, the main focus for PeachNet during recent months has been upon stabilizing the network and providing the most reliable service possible to PeachNet's users. Congestion on both the network backbone circuits which carry aggregated traffic to and from institutions, and at the gateway to the general Internet has affected response and reliability for System data communications.
Therefore, much-anticipated improvements to the network backbone are underway. New, fiber optic OC3 circuits, with a hundred times the capacity of the older, copperbased T1 circuits, have been installed between Atlanta and the major hubs of Athens, Augusta, Albany, and Savannah. An OC3 circuit upgrade to the Macon hub is scheduled for the near future. The capacity of the gateway to the Internet is being tripled with two additional OC3 circuits. The first of these two circuits is due to be installed by the middle of May, with the second to follow later in the summer.
The Campus Electronic Crossroads (CEX) project calls for increasing the capacity of the connection between the campus and the network backbone. The project includes establishing a new CEX value for the minimum bandwidth capacity that a campus should be allocated for sending and receiving digital communications. This standard is based on four institutional classifications universities, comprehensives, two-year/four-year, and smaller locations such as centers. The current CEX values were set in 1994. Funding for increased allocations is being sought for the new fiscal year, focusing on those institutions that are experiencing the greatest congestion.

More About PeachNet

"Mr. PeachNet" Retires
Tom Maier, Executive Director
If you ask Jerry Segers about this event, his comment is likely to be "quit fussing and get on with it." In essence, this captures Jerry's approach to dealing with what has been a series of successes in spite of the odds. After a long career at Georgia Tech, where he was responsible for Tech's mainframe computing and the development of the campus network, Jerry agreed to participate in the development of the fledging organization now known as OIIT. His vision was to develop a means for connecting all of the campuses (in fact, all of education in Georgia) to each other and the outside world through a wide area computer network. He recounts the time he had to sell this concept to the Regents, but had no name to call it. As the story goes, after many hours of struggling with a suitable name ("BORNET" was rejected for obvious reasons), one of Jerry's assistants, Cathy Cruger, came up with the idea of calling this network "PeachNet" after seeing a can of peaches at her home. And so with the support of the Regents, development of PeachNet began back in 1988.
True to form, Jerry's vision of this network went far beyond the conventional wisdom of the late 1980s to embrace a protocol called TCP/IP. In addition, he developed a structure of point-to-point connections using new technologies (bridging and later, routing) to control traffic. The rest of the world scoffed at the idea that any of these technologies would last. Well, as Jerry predicted, both TCP/IP (often abbreviated as IP or Internet Protocol) and routing became fundamental features that have led to the success of today's Internet and the corresponding explosion of e-everything.
Jerry accomplished much of the development of PeachNet with his own hands and those of a student assistant-

Spring 2000

become-graduate engineer named Alan Brown. This pair, sometimes with the help of Tom McMullan and others, traveled the state in a van loaded with peach-colored cabinets containing the equipment to connect the campuses to PeachNet. I remember the day he came to visit me in 1988, at the then Atlanta Junior College. After rolling the equipment in and checking the connections so that all the appropriate lights were blinking, Jerry declared that the campus was now connected and it was our job to figure out what to do with it. Well, I guess we and many others did figure out what to do, as indicated by use of PeachNet increasing from a few thousand bits of data a day to today's billions.
As the network grew and flourished under Jerry's direction, PeachNet became recognized as a national leader in statewide higher educational networking, and has become an essential component/foundation in the development and distribution of services for the University System. Services such as GALILEO and PeopleSoft, and instructional technologies such as WebCT rely on PeachNet, and the consequences of this reliance are now becoming evident. As Jerry predicted, the demands on PeachNet have outpaced support. Nowhere was this better captured than in the presentation by President Rossbacher of Southern Polytechnic State University to the Board of Regents last year, when she said the committee of presidents focusing on Information Technology had three recommendations: bandwidth, bandwidth, and bandwidth. With Jerry's guidance, PeachNet is poised to meet increasing bandwidth demands (ask him about his idea of the "blue light special" sometime).
Thanks Jerry. You've done so much to contribute to the University System, not only to the legions of students, faculty, and staff who have benefitted from your creation PeachNet, but also to the mentoring of individuals around the state who will carry on your teachings. We'll miss not having you right here, but please don't go too far. I know we'll want to call on you frequently. And yes, we'll quit fussing and get on with it.

Spring 2000

USG Conducts Public Key Information Workshop
On March 2-3, 2000, consultants from The Burton Group conducted a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Strategy Workshop on the Georgia Tech campus for the University System of Georgia. Some forty representatives from six member institutions, the Board of Regents, and Emory University participated in the workshop. The purpose of the workshop was to educate representatives from participating institutions on the technology and policy issues surrounding PKI and to develop an understanding of the University System's application environment and potential uses of PKI products and services. As more and more of the System's business processes take place in an online environment and expectations increase regarding ease of financial and other transactions, it will be necessary for the System to have a centrally coordinated PKI mechanism.
PKI allows the conducting of business electronically with the confidence that the person sending the transaction is the originator, the person receiving the transaction is the intended recipient, and that data integrity has not been compromised. A Public Key Infrastructure is a set of servers, software, protocols, and application programs used to manage the Private Keys and Public Keys of a group of users. A Private Key is a secret key and a Public Key is a publicly distributed key, both used in asymmetric encryption. Asymmetric encryption is a form of encryption where keys come in pairs; what one key encrypts, only the other can decrypt. Each key is one half of a matching keypair, and they are mathematically equivalent. Public Keys are frequently certified by a third-party Certificate Authority, so that users of this key can verify its authenticity. Users are generally able to create and update their own key pairs, and a Certificate Authority is used to assign new Public Keys.

More About the USG PKI Workshop

The workshop addressed the myriad of issues regarding the implementation of PKI technology in the University System. The Burton Group emphasized the need to distinguish between Public Key security and the Public Key Infrastructure that will be necessary to manage it. In their summary report published on March 22, The Burton Group concluded that "PKI will serve the University System of Georgia best when it's part of a comprehensive security architecture that includes general-purpose directory and authorization services. In addition, it's important to understand that PKI isn't just technology. It involves people, process, policy, and law. The industry has yet to sort out many issues, including complexity, manageability, and legal precedent, so caution is warranted."
Although various campuses have begun the process of implementing the infrastructure necessary for PKI, much work must be done before PKI will be useful for the University System. As stated in the Burton Group report, "today, PKI isn't ready for organization-wide deployment for University System institutions...the University System institutions must prepare for PKI by first planning and implementing the overall infrastructure that will support PKI, and then deploying PKI applications with clear scopes and goals. Simply put, each institution and the University System as a whole should be planning its PKI strategies and policies, viewing those efforts as an essential part of creating e-business infrastructure."

Monthly Banner and Georgia Enhancements Releases
Linda VanSickle, EAS
Banner and Georgia Enhancement releases are now scheduled on approximately a once-a-month basis. The new schedule is an effort to make the releases more predictable and to reduce the time involved in technical preparation and installation. EAS will release Banner baseline upgrades and patches, along with Georgia Enhancements, around the first of the month. The exact date each month will depend upon SCT's release dates, outcomes from the testing, and the impact of the release. Mandatory, deadline-driven releases, such as some of the financial aid upgrades, and time-critical patches will continue to be released when needed.
Release notices are posted to GaBEST in a standard format to make it easy for users to identify the impact, module, defect number for patches, problem corrected, release dependencies, and location of the application and its documentation. In addition, the notices are posted and indexed on the EAS website; this index was begun in November 1998, with the release of Banner 3.1 and the Georgia Enhancements 3.0 and is updated regularly. Also available on the EAS website are test plans for each release, the most current version of the Georgia Enhancements user documentation, and release notes for the Georgia Enhancements.

Spring 2000
Release Notices Documentation and Release Information

On-line Training for Banner Baseline Accounts Receivable Now Available
Linda VanSickle, EAS
Enterprise Applications Systems is pleased to announce the release of another Asynchronous Banner Learning Environment (ABLE) module. The ABLE multimedia training module for Banner Baseline Accounts Receivable is now available for any-time, any-place learning.
Several units of the Office of Academic Affairs collaborated in the design, development, and implementation of this pilot project. The Desktop Learning Project initiative provided the impetus and funding for Advanced Learning Technologies (ALT) and the Office of Information and Instructional Technology's Enterprise Applications Services (EAS) to develop desktop training modules for Banner2000 and the Georgia Enhancements cooperatively with SCT and institutional users. These modules have been developed using the WebCT course management system.
If users have not tried the other ABLE training modules, they might also be interested in an Overview of Banner, Banner Navigation, and the Sleep-Wake Process. Multimedia training for the Georgia Enhancements to Accounts Receivable is in development and nearing completion. To access the new Baseline Accounts Receivable module or any of the ABLE training modules, users can go to the ABLE website and select the link to create a new account or access a current account. Instructions for first-time users are provided. Users who already have accounts do not need to create new ones to view the new module. After accessing ABLE, the Banner2000 Training Sessions icon provides access to all modules.

Spring 2000 More About ABLE

GIL is on the Move
Phil Williams, Director of Virtual Library Support, VLCIS
The University System of Georgia libraries are closing out their Phase II conversions to Voyager as part of the GALILEO Interconnected Libraries (GIL) initiative. Phase III will begin officially on July 1, 2000. This final phase will move the six remaining USG libraries and complete the USG migration to the same library management system. In addition, a cooperative development project with Endeavor Information Systems, Inc. has moved the Universal Catalog beta testing into its initial phase. The libraries involved in the Universal Catalog and later Universal Borrowing beta testing are Bainbridge College, Coastal Georgia Community College, Columbus State University, the Medical College of Georgia, and the University of Georgia. We ask the faculty, students, and staff on these campuses to be patient if there are interruptions in service because of the beta testing. The efforts being made by these five libraries will benefit all of the University System starting in 2001. Keep your eyes open for information about the "How, When, and Where" for Universal Borrowing and the Universal Catalog.
As of May 1, 2000, twenty-three USG libraries are live with Voyager, while seven more are planned to be in production by July 1 (including Gwinnett University Center and the State Department of Archives & History). It is anticipated that all USG institutions will be part of GIL and in production with Voyager by February 2001. In addition, the Universal Catalog and Universal Borrowing beta testing will be completed and ready to move into full production in 2001. For information about your library's participation in GIL, contact your library's reference department or information center.

Spring 2000 More About GIL

Spring 2000

Georgia HomePLACE and The New Georgia Encyclopedia
Philip McArdle, GALILEO Services, VLCIS
The history of Georgia will soon have a new home in GALILEO. Georgia HomePLACE, a joint project of the Office of Public Library Services, the Georgia Department of Archives and History, and GALILEO, will make digitized versions of local and genealogical records from Georgia's past available to all Georgia citizens. Together with two other upcoming databases, The New Georgia Encyclopedia and the Georgia Books Project, Georgia HomePLACE will offer Georgia's citizens an array of historical information that has never before been so easily accessible.
Georgia HomePLACE (Providing Library and Archives Collections Electronically) will draw its contents from the Department of Archives and History's vast resources and other collections of materials located throughout the state. In the current phase of the project, the Department of Archives and History is digitizing marriage records for the eleven Georgia counties represented by the project's pilot libraries. Early county maps and photographs from the department's Vanishing Georgia collection that document these counties' histories are also being added to the database. The first examples of these materials will be available to the public through GALILEO toward the end of this year.
Future phases of the HomePLACE project will see similar records added for all of Georgia's 159 counties. Other materials from the Department of Archives and History's collections will also be added, and libraries around the state will begin to identify and submit valuable materials from local collections for inclusion in the database. By the end of the project's six-year span, Georgia HomePLACE

More About Georgia HomePLACE

will have become a rich, wide-ranging, and accessible resource for all citizens interested in the genealogical and local history of Georgia.
The Office of the Governor, the Georgia Humanities Council, and the University of Georgia Press are working with GALILEO to provide another impressive historical resource for the people of Georgia: The New Georgia Encyclopedia. Text, images, audio, and video will tell the stories of Georgia's past and present, and information aimed at both the general reader and the academic researcher will be assembled with a strong emphasis on scholarship. The encyclopedia's creators aim to develop an on-line reference work that is both accessible and authoritative. Articles will cover topics ranging from architecture and education to technology and tourism, giving the work an unprecedented scope for a state encyclopedia. The New Georgia Encyclopedia will make its debut in GALILEO at the end of 2000, and it will continue to grow in the following years.
While The New Georgia Encyclopedia will be an electronic resource from the beginning, making it the first state encyclopedia not to originate in print, GALILEO's Georgia Books Project database will be devoted to the preservation of Georgia's history as it has been recorded on the printed page. Staff of the University of Georgia Libraries began digitizing items from the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library's Georgiana Collection two years ago with the intention of making them available as searchable, full-text documents in a GALILEO database. This database will eventually include one hundred or more rare novels, biographies, histories, memoirs, government publications, genealogies, and reference works.
The GALILEO initiative will be enriched through the participation of Georgia HomePLACE, The New Georgia Encyclopedia, and the Georgia Books Project. Through these three resources, GALILEO is helping to ensure that records of Georgia's past are preserved far into the future.

Degrees and Majors Authorized
Big changes are in store for an information system of which many people are unaware: Degrees and Majors Authorized (D&MA), the centralized data collection system administered by the Division of Academic Affairs' Office of Planning and Policy Analysis and supported by Enterprise Application Systems. D&MA is the primary archive system for all Board of Regents approved degrees and majors, and it identifies the characteristics of those degrees. As such, all graduation records in SIRS are edited against D&MA to validate graduation. Reports from D&MA are used by both institutions and students as a record of which degree programs are offered at specific universities. D&MA currently contains over 1,880 active degrees and majors.
D&MA is a dynamic system, and it currently cannot be easily used to generate a history of degrees that have been offered in the University System. For example, information about a degree that was offered ten years ago may no longer be available. Also, D&MA runs on the CYBER, which is in the process of being decommissioned. Thus, D&MA is being redesigned as a web-based application.
The new system, the design of which is almost complete, will produce searchable reports available on web pages similar to those from the new Faculty Information System. New data elements will be contained in the database, such as information about the accreditation agencies that are responsible for accrediting a degree or degree + major combination. Most importantly, D&MA will be able to capture changes and report on history. EAS hopes to have a prototype available within a month.

Spring 2000

Tech Talk
Computer Viruses: Unclear and Present Danger
This Just in from the Trenches: Correspondent Rand Raynor Reports on the OIIT Customer Services Helpdesk

Spring 2000

Spring 2000
PERSONNEL Notes
New Employees: Karen Minton, Virtual Library Development Specialist, Virtual Library, Customer & Information Services Kervin Powers, Systems Support Specialist III, Enterprise Applications Systems Mark Rooker, Systems Analyst II, Enterprise Applications Systems
Retiring: Jerry Segers, Division of Telecommunications and Networking
Promoted: Dr. Shary Karlin, Director, Instructional Design and Development, within the Advanced Learning Technologies unit of the Office of Academic Affairs

Winter 2000
Publication Information and Credits
OIIT Update is published four times a year as a web-based newsletter reporting on all OIITrelated activities.
Suggestions and contributions are encouraged. Unless otherwise noted, permission to reprint articles in whole or in part is granted provided appropriate credit has been given. Many of the articles in OIIT Update are based upon USG documentation, including press releases, presentations, proposals, and reports.
Executive Editor: Jayne Williams Managing Editor: Lauren Fancher
Writers (unless otherwise noted): Lauren Fancher, VLCIS Tim Brown, VLCIS
E-mail: Tim Brown Phone: (706) 583-2630