Cover Story
IT's Innovation

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All Bids are In

SUNYConnect: Librarians
Wherever You Are

Peter D. Salins, Ph.D.
Provost & Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs

Short History of SUNY-Wide
Automation Programs

In Their Own Words
Bill Drew
President, SUNY Librarians Association

Tom Neiss
Assistant Provost for Network
Technology Services

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(Editors' note: Tom writes about the video conferencing technology that his office has made available to the SUNY community. This provides another example of librarians working together, adopting new technology, and saving on travel expenses! For more information on this topic and a UVCS schematic, see http://www.sunynet.suny.edu/sunynet-svcs/uvcs.html.)

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On May 3rd, 1996, the Office of Educational Technology (OET) held a grand opening of the university video conference facilities located at System Administration, the Syracuse Training Center and the Fashion Institute of Technology. Since that day many things have changed, OET is now Advanced Learning and Information Services (ALIS), the video conference facilities are now part of the SUNYNet Video Conference Services (see http://www.sunynet.suny.edu).

SUNYNet has designed and built a first-class University Video Conference System (UVCS). On September 11th of 1998, the SUNY Library Automation Migration committee was the first group to go live over the UVCS. Since May of 1996 there have been over 275 video conferences held!

The vision was to create an environment where the latest video conference technology could be introduced to administrators, librarians, faculty and staff. Since many personnel travel across the state to meetings, OET decided to first install equipment at our Training Center in Syracuse and at FIT in NYC. Due to its success and our desire to provide the best possible service, SUNYNet UVCS expanded to Buffalo as well as to a CUNY site and installed a video bridge allowing for multi-point conferences (more than 2 locations). It is clear to ALIS that pioneering this technology has fostered many other like systems within the university, such as the United Colleges of Technology, Westnet, Eastnet and the Digital Medical School.

The first OET locations used ISDN (integrated switched digital network: dial up digital switched connections, like making a long distance telephone call). These connections, especially to the NYC area were not very reliable and produced much disruption to conferences. Recognizing this, SUNYNet proceeded to install a dedicated network of T-1's (a 1.544 Mbps digital circuit) connected to a video bridge in Albany. Now with the flick of a switch and a little knowledge of the touch panel, conferences can be created within minutes without technical assistance. But most importantly, all the conferences are high quality and very reliable. Retaining the ISDN connectivity provides flexibility so the UVCS can connect to other systems world-wide.

The success of the system comes from the acceptance of, and use by, its customers. Of all the groups using the UVCS the most frequent and return users have been from the library community. Naturally librarians accept and are willing to use these new technologies. SUNYNet Video Conference Services would like to thank the library community for making the UVCS successful!