Volume 3. No 1 Information Technology News of the University of California, Davis Fall 1994

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Lana Moffitt

Director, Information Resources

Perhaps Lana Moffitt sums up the feelings of many who deal with constant change when she says, "you can never do as much as you want to do as well as you want to do it." As director of Information Resources, Moffitt oversees a diverse repository of campus computing resources, ranging from UCD's central computing systems to the Center for Advanced Information Technology (CAIT). The campus computing labs, the Campus Access Point (I.T.-CAP), instruction and applications development also fall under the Information Resources umbrella.

"The growth in computing and network capabilities is placing an increased demand on all I.T. services," says Moffitt, "and our goal is to give the campus the methods it needs to access computing resources in the easiest way possible." To fulfill that goal, Information Resources seeks to develop applications that present information in ways that are most useful for the users of those systems. The emphasis is on the information, rather than the technology. An example of this is the simplified version of the Student Information System database, which is available for query purposes. Campus departmental staff use desktop software to extract and format data. Although the process to create this ability required sophisticated technical skills, it can be used effectively after only a brief training period.

Information Resources also constantly looks for ways to improve service delivery. This quarter the central computing systems were improved by the addition of new hardware and upgrades of the operating systems. "This effort resulted in the ability to handle a 100% increase in the number of simultaneous users," says Moffitt.

"The growth in the need for central computing services can only be called explosive. That this growth was matched by the capacity of the systems speaks well of the staff involved in the upgrades." she says, and reflectively adds, "we accept change as a constant and, in most instances, actually enjoy the opportunities it provides."