Introduction

Dowling College is a 43-year-old, liberal arts institution located on the south shore of Long Island. It serves 6,000 nontraditional, primarily commuting undergraduate and graduate students and specializes in education, business, aviation and transportation.

A major project was initiated in October 1995 to move the Library from dependence on CD-ROM versions of databases to Web-based access where possible. Limited space and finances suggested that an appropriate strategy for our Library would be a heavy reliance on electronic resources. Because we had a relatively small collection with limited depth, we sought access to more full-text information. This conversion was intended to provide much faster access to more up-to-date information and to improve service to Library patrons. The project did not come to fruition until January 1998 and required fortitude, patience, and humor. This paper will examine the sociological, technological and managerial lessons learned.
 
BACKGROUND AND DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT

Prior to this project, the Library housed 13 public access 386-based microcomputers connected to a LAN networking 22 CD-ROM databases and the online library catalog. Since the project's implementation, the LAN has been upgraded to Pentium-based computers workstations with access to an expanded networked tower of CD-ROMs and with Web access to the Library's homepage and online databases.

Most of the databases were in CD-ROM format and needed to be updated frequently. Because our outsourced Computer Services Department performed this update irregularly, we deemed it necessary to seek an alternate solution that would better serve our customers and provide more up-to-date information.

We upgraded our CD-ROM tower for more speed and space allowing greater campus-wide access to materials that did not need frequent updates. This upgrade provided additional new space that permitted us to convert periodical subscriptions to electronic CD-ROM forms, eliminating the time consuming management of paper subscriptions. We also converted from access to CD-ROM programs at one stand-alone station to campus-wide network access.

We saw a golden opportunity when major vendors announced that they would no longer support DOS. This was a compelling argument to update our resources and convince administration that we must convert from DOS to Windows versions of our databases and migrate to Windows 95 / Office 97 in the Library.

The Library's organizational chart is unique. There is no library director. Seven full-time, faculty librarians share professional library management decisions. An additional 10 part-time librarians assist in staffing the reference desk, teaching Information Instruction, conducting research and suggesting specific service improvements, but are not part of the Library's management team. All facility management and clerical staff management fall under the auspices of a non-librarian Information Services Director who holds an MBA. The group of librarians and the Information Services Director report jointly and equally to the College Provost.

Outsourcing is a significant feature in the background of the project. The entire Computer Services Department is outsourced to one company, which manages both hardware and software systems for the College. A completely separate company hosts and manages the Web site for the College. Part of the challenge in this project involved communications between the College and these two companies.

During the course of this conversion project, key personnel changes occurred. The Associate Provost/College Information Services Administrator, the immediate boss for librarians, resigned to take a position elsewhere. The outsourced Computer Services Director left and was replaced. The outsourced Computer Services Department project manager quit. The college-wide web master resigned, as did a long string of students hired to update the web page.

Lastly, the library budget was hit by major budget cuts. An initial budget cut of 15% of the previous year's allotment was followed by an additional 40% cut. These budget cuts had a significant impact on the speed of implementation of the project and increased the necessity of moving to electronic sources.

LESSONS LEARNED

This section lists the lessons we learned during the course of the project. Taking a sociotechnical perspective, the lessons fall into three categories: social, managerial, and technical.

Social Lessons

The social lessons revolve around using clear and frequent communication to overcome resistance to change and to invite everyone to participate enthusiastically.

• It is vital to enlist support for the project from every level. You will need it. It is important to understand that we all have different mental models. You will encounter that when you are trying to enlist the support of everyone involved. Some will be enthusiastic. Some will be obstructive. You will need to help them appreciate your vision. Be patient. Remember that while you may have been mulling this conversion over for some time and have been eating and breathing it for months, they have not.

• Get your peers involved at the ground level. They need to buy into the project if you want it to fly. You will need their involvement in many ways. The project will impact on them and the way that they interact with your customers. If you provide an Information Instruction program, it will have to be completely revised because of your project. If you do reference work or research for your customers, your project will impact on your staff's efficiency because all of the interfaces will have been changed. Remember that if there are budget cuts that are necessary, it is entirely possible that it is your peers' budgets that will be impacted. So be patient and be sure to keep them informed.

• Be sure to keep your administrators informed about your project. They are much more apt to support it if they have been consulted and kept apprised of the benefits of the conversion. You need to prove that your plan will benefit the library and your organization. It will need to be cost effective, as well. You will need their financial support as well as their influence with the powers that be.

• Be careful whose advice you take. Know your resources, both people and reference. One of our goals has been to provide electronic library resources campus-wide. When we were having difficulty with providing access to the multiple formats we have to deal with, one person said to just say, "It's only available in the library." To do that would have been breaking a trust and going 5 steps backward. That was not an option. That was not good advice for our situation.

The managerial lessons include using good communication skills but also suggest that good planning and thorough training is essential to the success of a project like this.  

• The project needs to be justified to the administration. They need to understand that it will benefit the entire community served. In planning the project, we noted that with funds being tight, we would have to cancel the subscriptions to journals that were available from our new full-text source. We would also have to cancel redundant databases, in other words, databases that indexed the same journals as our full-text source. We budgeted for new hardware to run our system and upgrading our CD-ROM tower. What we did not count on was a budget cut of 15% of, not the proposed budget but of the smaller budget for the previous year. This smaller budget was later cut by an additional 60%. These budget cuts made the decision to cancel redundant subscriptions very easy. If the project was to be at all viable, this was a good place to start. Next we had to attack our individual budgets. This was where cooperation among colleagues proved extremely helpful. Everyone wanted the project to succeed. Everyone cut her budget. We determined to lease the computers and to cut the multi-user licenses for databases where we could. Once we proved to the Provost that everyone was behind the project, we got his approval.

• Let your Computer Services Department know what you are investigating. You will need their advice on hardware specifications and their technical expertise when it comes to making the shift. Despite what we think, migrating from DOS to Windows and CD-ROM to Web access is not a simple process. It can be a time-consuming, tedious endeavor and it is not you whose time you are volunteering for the project. It is the Computer Services Department's. So keep them informed.

• If you plan access from your web page, it would be wise to get control of your web page as soon as you can. Whoever is working on it should understand your goals and understand that your web page is a dynamic unit. You need to be in sync. When there is an update to be made, you need it to be done in a timely fashion.

• Create a plan with clear lines of authority and areas of responsibility. Define milestones and remember to adjust the plan as you go. This is vital. There may be key personnel changes that you have not anticipated and they can seriously impact your project. After we had worked towards our "conversion" for two years, the Chief Information Officer, an enthusiastic supporter of the plan, resigned. We then had to report directly to the Provost. This created the need to convince the Provost that we had a viable plan and that it was fiscally responsible. That meant the creation of a new proposal and, ultimately, a Technical Plan for Information Services. In addition to that key personnel change, we also had the director of the outsourced Computer Services Department quit. The Computer Services Department project manager for our project quit right after having signed off on a half re-built but not yet working CD-ROM tower. The web master quit. And there were a total of 8 different students working on our web page, each of whom needed time-consuming orientation to the idiosyncrasies of the page.

• Preview all software and ask the vendors about authentication, display, licensing, and costs. Authentication refers to how you will limit access to the database. Will it be by password or by IP address? If it is by password, how will you control access to that password? How will you distribute it? Can you provide dial-in-access? What will the display be? Will it be just the items to which you subscribe or will it be everything that they offer with that particular database? If it is not limited to your subscription, what happens when a customer tries to access that part? Will you have a disgruntled customer or will you get a surprise bill? Will the display be what you have been used to? Can you control the default settings? Or will it take a two month battle with the vendor to have it changed to your specifications? What is the cost of the number of user licenses that you will need? In most cases converting from CD-ROM to Web access was no more expensive. There were, however, instances that the number of user licenses available was reduced. For instance, Wilson CD-ROMs provided for unlimited licensing. Web access to the same databases is more costly and unlimited licensing was not available. SilverPlatter costs were the same whether online or CD-ROM.

• Training is a vital part of the project. It will contribute to its ultimate success. This must be planned from almost the beginning. You must remember to train the trainers. We have already provided many in-service sessions for the librarians but plan to do more. They may be very comfortable with the old resources but the new ones have very different interfaces despite the fact that the content is the same. They need help in understanding the best way to approach the databases now. Remember that everyone has a different learning style. Some are visual learners. Some are auditory and some learn by doing. Make allowances for each style. And be patient.

Handouts and manuals will have to be prepared. Your Information Instruction program will have to be revised. Faculty need to be approached and educated. We volunteered to teach one of the faculty colloquia. We have been scheduled to present at the next Administrative Council. This spring we will offer campus-wide workshops. We have learned that it is more successful to offer sessions by category rather than to expect that the groups will mix. Therefore, we will offer some sessions for faculty, some for staff, etc. We speak about our new program at every opportunity both to inform and drum up support.
 

• Plan for the transition. It will probably be your most difficult time during the project. Even though you have been warning people that the new system is coming, they never believe you until it is actually here. Keep in mind that the CD-ROMs will be gone from use while your technical person has to map them. Until the whole system is up and running, you will still have some of the old and some of the new. Prepare your staff. Let them know what is happening. Give them a chart of what programs will be eliminated; what will now be available on the network; what will now be online. Let them know what will now have full-text information. We kept referring to the project as the "full-text project" which created the misconception that everything would be full-text. While you are in transition, you may keep the old CD-ROMs and use them on the network even though you have started using the new Web access. Just remember to let everyone know that the CD-ROM disks are out of date. That may be enough of an impetus to get your staff to stop using them. As soon as you have completed the project, get rid of the old databases.

We have found that planning and communication are absolutely essential to preventing and solving technological problems

• Thoroughly investigate your options. The technological lessons have been interesting. When we decided to upgrade the software, it was a logical step to go from DOS and Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 and Office 97. This conversion was complicated by a non-standard installation of Windows 3.1. Upgrading the software required a hardware upgrade. We determined to go with Dell Pentium 2 computers with 2.1 gig hard drives. They would replace 386 machines in the library. Ultimately, the librarians got the new machines and their old Pentiums were placed in the LAN because they did not have enough hard drive space for Office 97. That was a glitch in advice. Leasing the hardware made sense because it meant that the equipment would be kept current.

The decision to rebuild the CD-ROM tower, however, was probably penny-wise and pound-foolish. We chose to expand the number and speed of the drives of the tower and had been advised that it would be as good as new. The project director signed off on the tower before the installation was complete. Dead fans resulted in a dead power supply. The boards were wrong. The planes were wrong. The tower overheated and kept crashing so the air conditioning needed to be redone The new version of CD-Commander caused the tower to crash. The network card was wrong and caused the tower to crash every 10 minutes. All of this delayed the implementation by 3 to 4 weeks and caused the loss of hours and hours of labor.

• Standardize your environment and allow plenty of time for the project. A non-standard environment meant that the project took much longer to accomplish than expected. We had decided to go from DOS to Windows and from CD-ROM to Web access where possible. We would also go from stand-alone access to network access where possible. Because of the budget cuts, the user licenses for the networked CD-ROMs would be limited to single user only. The project manager for Computer Services had to create an image for our non-standard environment. There was shared Windows on two servers; local Windows versions 3.1 and 3.11, and local Windows 95A and 95B. He was not happy. Mapping the drives was a tedious, time consuming task. What was easy in Windows 95 was complicated in Windows 3.1. Windows 3.1 loads different versions of the dynamic link library (DLL) files with ease. There are numerous versions and they are not necessarily compatible. For Windows 95 this became a major headache. Each program had to be loaded piece by piece. Once installed, the order in which the various programs were opened needed to be checked. Each and every one of these mysteries had to be solved and each and every one of these mysteries took a great deal of time. It was important to be there for support and information. It was important to explain to those who did not understand just what was taking so long. It was not an easy process.

Once the drives were mapped, the process was automated so that it would appear seamless to the user. S/he would click on and the program would simply open. WinBatch Compiler was used. Microsoft client for NetWare Networks worked well. Novell NetWare did not. WinFrame is on our wish list for the future but well out of our current budget range.

Next the display had to be standardized. We chose to have icons for each database and arranged them in alphabetical order for ease of access. We used System Policies to locked down the system so that it would be tamper resistant. "Network Neighborhood" was removed. Access to DOS was eliminated. The display can not be changed. Icons can no longer be moved or deleted. And finally a ghost image of the computer was created so that it could be easily and quickly reloaded in case of a problem. We are currently testing a program to do remote maintenance of the system. Automation of the project has yet to be completed.

• Plan for security. Security issues need to be dealt with in other ways. We have chosen to use IP authentication for allowing access to the database subscriptions over the web. It would be too cumbersome to deal with passwords and distribute them to 6000 students, etc. We do not currently have dial-in access.

One problem we have had to deal with is the change in URLs when vendors have had to make corrections. If at all possible, urge vendors to allow you to keep the same URL. If you have distributed handouts or manuals to your new system, a change in URL could be messy.

• Plan for access. We had hoped to have access to all of our databases from our web page. With our budget, we were advised that would not be possible. We, therefore, determined that we would have to instruct our customers about alt+tab to switch to Windows from the web page.

In reviewing the lessons learned three key factors emerge. They are communicating, planning, and training.

Communication

• Share the vision, informally and formally with all levels
• Ask questions; solicit advice; involve peers with previewing
• Give plenty of advance warning of impending change
• Communicate anticipated stages
• Consider how change might impact individuals
• Include them in project and planning meetings
• Document communications
• Share some of your frustrations

• Develop a thorough project proposal and implementation plan
• Provide anticipated change timetables
• Create a resources transition chart
• Create network bookmarks for Web resources
• Learn web editing

• Train the trainers
• Update all teaching materials
• Conduct separate training sessions for peers, faculty, staff, administrators