Harvard Advances Computerization Plans

Harvard should finalize its plan for an University-wide network linking all the computers on campus by December, Vice President for Administration Robert Scott said this week.

The plans, which also include upgrading the Centrex phone system, will likely link student rooms with Harvard's main computers, said Lewis Law, the head of the Science Center and a member of the committee looking into the project.

The network might be so extensive as to allow students with computers in their rooms to call up catalogue information or even actual text from a library system data base, Law said.

But Law and other people involved in the computer plans said that no firm decision has been made as to the extent of the project. Implementation will begin by the end of this fall and most new services will become available by the summer of 1988.

The first work will be done in upgrading the phone system, said Roy R. Ray, network and planning manager of Harvard's telecommunications system. Ray said that integrating student phones into the overall University network will make an increased number of special services available to students, such as a mail service.

Before finalizing the overall computer/telephone network plan, the committee investigating the project will analyze data gathered in a user survey of Harvard administrators, faculty and students completed in the spring.

"We will alter the network architecture based on those requirements indicated in the survey," Ray said of the planning process.

One question which needs to be answered is the extent to which the overall computer "backbone" planned for the University will replace computer networks currently used by the various faculties, Law said.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences has installed personal computers in administrative offices over the past two academic years, said Marilyn Shesko, special assistant to the Dean of the FAS on computers. Shesko said that those computers, of which 24 new ones were bought last year, are linked by the faculty's own system.

"The new network will probably replace any current FAS computer system," Scott said.

The teaching implications are not that extensive, Law said, adding that most major computers are already linked up into the FAS system. But he said that it is possible the school will buy high powered computers for Science and Computer Science students to use in their rooms when doing coursework.

Most students only need word processing capability, Law said. He added that his department learned this week that a grant application they had made to a foundation requesting 54 new MacIntosh computers had been turned down.

One possible teaching application also currently under investigation is a video transmission network, Ray said.