Engineering Library computer center to hold open house

Wireless network connections, the latest Pentium II PCs, laptop connections, high resolution printing and free scanning only begin to cover the technology now offered by a new universitywide computer center located in the engineering library in Carpenter Hall. The campus community is invited to check out the new facility at an open house Monday, April 19, from 10 a.m. to noon.

John Saylor, engineering librarian and director of the Engineering Library Educational Computing Center, said, "The new center opened this semester and already has greatly improved the access that students have to computing and information resources."

The Engineering Library Educational Computing Center (ELECC) consists of five classrooms, one of which is the library's refurbished electronic classroom on the first floor. Four of the classrooms are being equipped with computer projection systems, and all of the rooms have transparency projectors and marker boards. The three larger classrooms will have 20 Windows NT computers each. The two smaller rooms will have 13 and 7 machines. The Center's conference room, designed for small group sessions or private instruction, can be reserved after normal work hours.

"We aim to help professors teach in a trouble-free environment. We'll try to accommodate any software or technological support they need," explained ELECC's manager Mark Sanford. The facility supports a broad range of software, and course-specific software can be installed on request. When not scheduled for classes, all of the Center's rooms are available to students, faculty, and staff for individual use.

Laptop network and power connections reside in each desktop in the lab, and wireless service also will be provided. Currently, a student-led team of consultants is researching and coordinating the wireless project.

"There is so much to learn here, and initiative is really rewarded," said team leader Mike Owens, a sophomore electrical engineering major. "We should have wireless access available by next semester." To use the wireless connection, users will simply check out a radio network card, and connect to the Computing Center from virtually anywhere in the building.

Additionally, the ELECC's Unix resources are accessible through X-Windows from any of the Center's PCs or externally over the Internet. Construction of the new computing center was funded by the College of Engineering and the Faculty Advisory Board on Information Technology (FABIT). FABIT hopes to "provide a qualitatively better learning environment for our students, by developing integrated information resource center where students live, study and congregate with friends and classmates."

The ELECC is open Sunday and Monday from noon to 2 a.m., Tuesday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 2 a.m., Friday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. The web site is located at http://www.cadif.cornell.edu/. For more information, contact John Saylor at 255-4134, jms1@cornell.edu, or Mark Sanford at 255-2236, mjs10@cornell.edu.