1. Presentation by Bill Lantry, CUA, on joint catalog project for Washington Consortium.
a. Looking at way to using common database structure behind institutional ERP system.
b. Currently difficult for students to find courses at other universities.
c. Demo showed the difficulty.
d. Second demo for cold fusion query against the oracle database behind PeopleSoft.
e. Looking for participation in shared catalog project
f. Reynolds Ferrante: GWU talked about knowledge management project. Bring up all courses dealing with politics from all participating universities. [FOLIO 2].
g. Dynamic changes to content, but doesn't affect format.
h. Creates complete index and categorizes by functions, creates taxonomies as it is queried.
i. No limitation on size of database; very complete set of Boolean operators, handles fuzzy logic; natural language queries.
j. $200 per person; $100K for whole consortium.
k. Universal search and access
l. Possibly submit this project for FIPSE grant (October deadline). Requires collaboration to get development money.
m. Political issue about competition among universities. Why make it easy for students to take courses from our competitors?
n. See the consortial schools as allies against out-of state competitors.
o. Tech Council focus is on the technology rather than the politics.
p. Consortium is trying a two-pronged approach using Cold Fusion database and FOLIO knowledge management.
2. John Creuziger gave an overview of the Banner structure, the various servers and what kind of data is contained on each.
a. At levels one and two, the databases are integrated. At level three they are not; each application has its own database.
b. Level D, many departments have own servers and databases not maintained by ITU.
c. Banner has 4000+ tables; other databases are smaller.
d. Some discussion about use of portals and how it would connect with databases.
3. Web architecture requirements (initial brainstorming)
a. Enter data locally
b. Enter data once
c. Content management to allow content to flow in multiple directions.
d. Standards to make central repositories of information usable to the Mason community.
e. Make it possible for qualified users to update data.
f. Decide on tools that we support.
g. Find out what databases the individual colleges/departments are using. What info do they need to store?
h. Single location for information; central update
i. One authentication system
j. Decide what coding we support.
k. Suggestion for next meeting: do a more formal process to start identifying requirements.
4. Web Standards
a. Team will meet soon and report at next meeting.
b. Paras had a handout about standards currently used in E Pubs and also comparison between University standards and state standards.
5. Other
a. Tech Council WebCT site is available at webct.gmu.edu. Contact Anne for user name and password.
b. Dates of next meetings: June 17 and July 17
c. Read article in Educause Quarterly abt content management systems (available online, link is up on the Tech Council WebCT site.)
Guests
Bill Lantry,
Catholic University
Kathy Napock, Catholic University
Reynolds Ferrante, George Washington
Members Attending:
Anne Agee
Dee Holisky
Mike Behrmann
Lara Bushallow
Ann Clare
John Creuziger
Andrew Flagel
Andres Fortino
Bob Nakles (for Cathy Hubbs)
Creston Jamison
Paras Kaul
Deborah Keene
Ruth Kifer
Stephen Nash
Mel Nichols
Mike Wood
MeiHua Zhai
Stan Zoltek
Members Absent:
Farrokh Alemi
Jim Finkelstein
Scott Martin
Roy Rosenzweig