PENNPRINTOUT - University of Pennsylvania

PENNPRINTOUT
VOLUME 11:6 APRIL 1995
It is terrifying to speak on the subject of the virtual
university, not because the prospect of losing our old
forms and formats of education terrifies but because
the crow’s nest from which we survey the future is
obscured by clouds. I will make three guesses at the forms
I see ahead—fears for the institution, runaway information,
and optimism. But first let me give a little introduction.
Only three years ago, I wrote a report for the University
of California system about academic support services
for new campuses. In the report, I was able to formulate a
vision of a new environment—which I called an ecosystem—for
learning. The old ecosystem was composed of
lecture halls and classrooms, the library, faculty offices and
student dorm rooms, and the public spaces on campus
where faculty and students gathered and did their business
of teaching, learning, and research. The new ecosystem
would have all of these elements as well as the new
electronic environment, based on the network, where
faculty and students would also gather to do their academic
business.
My vision was of an expansion of the existing
academic ecosystem; at the time, it seemed like an exciting
BY STANLEY CHODOROW
expansion. In this system, students and faculty would have
more contact than they had had before, and the unfortunate
characteristics of mass education—the large, impersonal
classes, the physical limitations of interpersonal relationships—would
be corrected somewhat by interactions in the
electronic environment.
I predicted that the university would be enlarged and
enhanced by the new technology, that we would develop
better ways to present material in class, that we would
devise new types of assignments and new ways to respond
to our students’ work, that we would even be able to put
unprecedented faculty resources at the disposal of students
interested in calling on them. In the University of California
system, the notion of a campus department would break
down as students became able to consult with faculty at any
one of the University’s nine campuses.
It has taken only six months at Penn to make me
recognize how limited that vision of the future was. I was
thinking about how faculty might use new tools in their
classes. Here, I’ve seen the transformation of the class
itself. The revolution we are talking about is much more
profound than any I have envisaged in the past, and I am
uneasy trying to predict its (continued on page 21)

ON THE COVER: Is the importance of
a university’s physical campus fading? Will global
electronic access to scholars dilute institutional
affiliation? Will it be possible to get a Penn degree
without ever laying eyes on this statue of founder
Benjamin Franklin in front of College Hall?
Provost Stanley Chodorow contemplates
these and other possible effects of the
electronic revolution.
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PENNPRINTOUT
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FEATURES
APRIL
THE VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY
The electronic revolution in higher education.
By Stanley Chodorow
TECHNOLITERACY
A student’s view.
By Jordana Horn
INFORMATION AT YOUR FINGERTIPS
The Wharton Research Data System.
By Kendall Whitehouse and Paul J. Ratnaraj
RESNET
Student survey results.
By Daniel A. Updegrove and George P. McKenna
ALUMNI PENNNET SERVICE
ISC offers a way to stay in touch.
By Alfred C. D’Souza
DATA WAREHOUSE
Information under one roof.
By Tad Davis and Dan Shapiro
BEYOND PENNNET
Alternatives for off-campus net access.
By Daniel A. Updegrove
LATIN AMERICAN NEWS
Keeping up to date on the Internet.
By Joseph C. Holub
ISC SUPPORTED PRODUCTS
The current list of supported hardware and
software. By Don Montabana
DEPARTMENTS
Q&A, p. 20; Announcements, p. 24; Electronic
Calendar, p. 26; Q&A, p. 31; Random Bits, p. 30;
ISC contacts, back cover.
PENNPRINTOUT

Technoliteracy
A student’s view
BY JORDANA HORN
Why am I
writing this?
After all, I
know very little about
computers. I was introduced
to them in fourth
grade, where my classmates
and I learned
Apple programming
intricacies like “run.”
But I must confess that I
developed no great love
for these machines. For
us never-to-be-hackers,
the lessons were merely
welcome diversions
from grueling drills in
the Dewey Decimal system—to
say nothing of
opportunities to play the
popular computer game
“Oregon Trail” behind
Mrs. Hardy’s back.
My family bought a computer when I was in high
school; we knew it better as a typewriter with a screen. I
took a giant, information-age-esque step forward and
learned how to save things. Oh, yeah...and we could even
play “Oregon Trail” in the privacy of our own home. It
was the best of all possible worlds, no doubt. In short, I
have never exactly been a “techno-geek.”
I didn’t expect my technoliteracy to grow in the
context of a humanities-based college education. I
carefully tailored myself and my interests toward becoming
a poster-child for the liberal arts—English and
communications major, concentration in politics and
literature, Executive Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian.
Just when and where I least expected it—in an English
class during my senior year at Penn—the two worlds
collided. Well, they didn’t exactly collide; they bumped
into each other ever so casually, as if there was nothing
unusual about mixing technology and literature. In
addition to our intense class discussions in our “Literature
of the Holocaust” seminar, the class was encouraged to
post to a listserv. That was all.
I am writing this because it is clear to me that the
revolution is computerized, it is here at the University, and
it is time for us to get on board.
Revolutions, rising voices
Truth be told, I didn’t even realize Penn needed a
revolution of any kind. I thought nothing of the fact that
everyone was too intimidated to talk to the professor in a
big lecture class. Or the fact that no one ever bothered to
start a conversation with classmates about the material just
learned in class. Or the fact that some classes were just
too big for a student’s thoughts to be heard, to be challenged,
or even to matter.
Intellectual dialogue does not happen nearly enough at
Penn. And so, from the beginning of freshman classes,
there is the possibility of being lost in endless corridors of
complication—the huge lecture hall, the sporadic appointments
with advisors, the complete separation of intellectual
and social life at Penn. There is Smoke’s and there is
Shakespeare, and never the two shall meet.
This divide was dramatically crossed in English 293,
where students’ passions and ideas were not constrained to
the perimeters of Bennett Hall 127, Tuesday/Thursday,
1:30-3 PM. On the listserv, the discussions raged on into
the night and the early morning, demanding that we as students
think, contemplate, and make our intellectual lives a
relevant and ever-present part of our day-to-day schedules.
In each electronic discourse, we were subjected to a far
more arduous test than any exam—the test of self-expression,
the ability to interact and learn from one another.
We forged both personal relationships and intellectual
exchanges; no longer hampered by time or constrained
by coolness, we held a vigorous debate. Moreover, the
debate allowed us to speak (continued on next page)
APRIL 1995 3

all the words that currently are going unsaid in University
classes—all the dialogue that could not have taken place
within the current framework of academic structure. This
lack of dialogue is a loss that we should not only acknowledge
and mourn, but should fight against.
Technology in the classroom is creating a new Locust
Walk at Penn—a common intersection for intellectual
exchange, meeting, and friendship.
Confronting our future
The detractors of technology in the classroom would
argue that it creates the ultimate impersonalization of
intellectual and human contact. It is important to recognize,
though, that impersonalization is already affecting
Penn. This recognition must be coupled with the realization
that we can and do have the capacity for using
technology to augment, supplement, and reinforce interpersonal
contact, not to replace it.
4
Technology is
creating a new
Locust Walk—
a common
intersection for
intellectual
exchange, meeting,
and friendship
In my opinion, the most cited argument against
technoliteracy stems from a simple and unadulterated fear
of newness. As one alumnus put it to me, new forms of
technology continuously present generations with what he
termed the “paradigm gap.” Basically, when it comes to
technological literacy, either you’ve got it or you don’t.
There is timidity where there ought to be temerity, coming
from a deep-seated fear of being left behind. Faculty,
students, and administrators who have never used e-mail,
heard of the World-Wide Web, or used their computers as
anything more than word processors are fearful about
stepping into the realm of the unknown. They appear
content to remain where they are.
When it comes to the fear of newness and the general
stagnancy confronted when attempting to change, there is
a need to face the inevitable (which, for the record, ought
to go without saying at such an entrepreneurial University).
Change, newness, and modernity should challenge
us, not cripple us. A university is made for moving
forward, and we will serve neither our current nor future
communities through recalcitrant paralysis. For all of the
hype surrounding the infamous and now clichéd newness
of the information superhighway, it has the potential to
make society new. Since information and communication
are aggressively and independently sought-after commodities,
the university can have a pivotal role in developing
their future forms.
We have the equipment for doing so already in hand,
both in terms of technology and our inherent curiosity. By
integrating use of the Internet into every course at the
University—through listservs, departmental gophers,
World-Wide Web exploration, and interactive environments—we
will be better able to work with one another
and to work with people we may never meet in the larger
context of the world of Internet users. It will do no one
any good to complain that technology is moving too fast;
rather, making the most out of technology while recognizing
its potential flaws will only strengthen the scaffolding
of Penn’s intellectual culture—which has, all too long,
been on a sort of “deferred maintenance plan” of its own.
The new University
Through expansion of the University’s use of the
Internet, a family can become involved in its son’s or
daughter’s intellectual experience. Administrators can see
for themselves what is going on in the classroom. And
alumni won’t have to wait for Homecoming to be impressed
by the spruced-up Locust Walk—because they can
be wholeheartedly involved in the ongoing conversations
of a new and enlivened University.
Giving the present that kind of intellectual and
technological attention places that much more importance
on, and faith in, the future. Students will be allowed to
reconstruct classroom conversations, but more importantly,
to construct conversations of their own—and faculty,
parents, and alumni will be allowed to create a new virtual
campus with constant intellectual growth.
After all, as the gate by Houston Hall says with its
wrought iron inspiration, Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus—
we will find a way, or we will make one. Perhaps never
before has it been so easy to do both.
Note: This article was based on a presentation at the
Virtual University conference in January 1994. The
conference was sponsored by the SEI Center for
Advanced Studies in Management, the Annenberg School
for Communication, and the School of Engineering and
Applied Science.
JORDANA HORN is a Senior in the School of Arts and
Sciences.
PENNPRINTOUT

The Wharton Research Data System
Information
at your fingertips
BY KENDALL WHITEHOUSE AND PAUL J. RATNARAJ
One of the most compelling visions of modern
computing is the promise of easy access to vast
data resources. Microsoft’s Bill Gates speaks of
“information at your fingertips” and former Apple CEO
John Scully envisioned a “knowledge navigator” automatically
sifting through vast data repositories.
Such ideas, while deceptively easy to imagine, are
often difficult to achieve. At the Wharton School, a
program to bring large financial data sets to faculty and
students—The Wharton Research Data System—has taken
a significant step toward making easy access a reality.
The financial data sets widely used at Wharton include
market research data (such as CRSP, Fama, and Market
Indices), corporate data (such as Compustat), and banking
and insurance data (such as Best and FDIC). Together, the
principal data sets used at Wharton occupy over 12
gigabytes of storage space.
Once the exclusive province of Finance and Accounting,
these data sets are now used in Management, Marketing,
and other Wharton departments. Wharton data sets
range from examining world-wide investment patterns to
handicapping the box-office success of upcoming motion
pictures. Increasingly, faculty at Wharton also use the data
sets for instructional coursework assignments.
The way things were
Data sets have been used at Wharton for many years;
however, previous methods for delivering data were far
from ideal. In the past, data sets were stored on large
VAX/VMS systems, and users had to run Fortran programs
to analyze or extract data. An increasing number of users,
however, preferred working with familiar desktop tools
such as Minitab or a spreadsheet program. But working
with the data using desktop tools required that the user be
familiar with the formats of the data sets, the VMS
operating system, Fortran programming, mainframe to PC
file transfer techniques, and the data import format of
desktop software. As Michael Phelan, Associate Professor
of Statistics, points out, these data access techniques were
“functional, but not for the timid.”
Not only was the approach cumbersome for faculty
and students, it was difficult for Wharton’s computing staff
to support. To increase access speed, Wharton wrote inhouse
indexing programs. To help new users, Wharton
provided interactive modules and help screens. Changes in
data format required updating everything written in-house
and extensive in-house programming support.
For all the effort required, users—accustomed to
point-and-click graphical interfaces on personal computers—were
increasingly dissatisfied with this arcane,
multiple-step procedure.
Alternatives considered
Several alternatives were considered to provide easier
access and improved data set management. Developing
an in-house system would be costly, time-consuming,
and difficult to maintain as the technology changed.
Commercial database management systems provide excellent
data management capabilities and convenient access
tools, but most lack strong analytical tools and are not
suitable for time-series data. Commercial data access
packages such as Fame, DART, and Intelligent Query offer
good data manipulation tools, but also lack sophisticated
analytical abilities and require extensive programming
to convert the wide selection of data sets used at the
Wharton School.
The new architecture
The solution implemented in the Wharton Research
Data System involves the following components:
• Using SAS (and SAS/ASSIST) to extract and
analyze data
• Managing data sets centrally while providing network
access (through NFS mounting) to the complete series
of data on UNIX systems throughout Wharton
• Providing X-Window access to UNIX systems
from Wharton’s labs and classroom teaching
stations (continued on next page)
APRIL 1995 5

6
From left to right: A 3-D rotating plot from SAS/INSIGHT, the Main Menu from SAS/ASSIST, and a multidimensional
volume visualization plot from SAS/SPECTRAVIEW.
SAS for data analysis
SAS best met Wharton’s objectives of offering a
single, unified tool for data management and analysis.
While SAS has long been popular for data analysis in the
academic environment, release 6.09 greatly simplified
reading external data. Extracting data requires only a few
lines of code in SAS (versus several hundred lines of
Fortran). Once extracted, a data set can be used by a wide
range of SAS procedures.
SAS/ASSIST offers a point-and-click graphical user
interface, an online tutorial, and help screens. These help
users and reduce requirements for training and documentation.
SAS also provides a menu-driven VT100 interface
that allows students to work with data by dialing in from
home or connecting across the Internet.
Universal availability
At the time this project was developed, Wharton was
completing a migration away from large, centralized VMS
systems toward distributed UNIX systems. By the
beginning of the Fall 1994 semester, all Wharton faculty
research and student communications and instructional
applications had moved onto UNIX workstations.
Wharton provides the complete series of data sets on
two UNIX systems—a DEC 5000/260 running Ultrix
serves data in the “little-endian” format required by Ultrix,
VMS, and MS-DOS and an HP 9000/755 running HP-UX
serves data in the “big-endian” format used by HP-UX,
Solaris, and most other UNIX systems. Identical directory
structures are maintained on both systems.
One of the two systems is NFS mounted (so that it
appears as a locally accessible device) on UNIX systems
throughout Wharton, including shared departmental
systems, personal UNIX systems on faculty desktops, and
UNIX systems used by Wharton students for e-mail and
instructional applications.
Because the data sets are physically stored on only two
systems, the data can be centrally maintained while appearing
to be available locally on all systems at the School.
Graphical access with X-Windows
Faculty with desktop UNIX systems use SAS/ASSIST
in the X-Windows environment to manipulate and analyze
data sets as local resources. For students in computing labs,
Wharton uses Exceed’s X-Windows server running under
Microsoft Windows to provide the same graphical access to
data. Networked classroom teaching stations are configured
identically to lab stations, allowing faculty to bring the data
sets into the classroom (see sidebar).
Advantages
The Wharton Research Data System offers a number of
advantages for Wharton faculty and students, and meets the
goals of universal availability, ease of use, and reduced
maintenance and support.
The entire collection of data sets is now available as a
local resource on UNIX systems throughout Wharton—
including shared departmental systems and faculty desktop
systems. Students can access these data sets with the same
graphical environment by using X-Windows in the student
labs. Users can now manage and analyze the data using a
single tool. Because the same data tool is used for all data
sets, users can easily analyze data across different data sets.
Professor Richard J. Herring, who is working on a
PENNPRINTOUT

large-scale study of the financial services industry sponsored
by the Sloan foundation, states that “the beauty of
the system is that wherever you go, whatever system you
use at the School, the data is accessible and appears in the
identical form.” According to Dr. Herring the key benefit
this provides is that it “reduces the time researchers spend
extracting data and allows them to concentrate on their
analysis.”
The SAS access tools are generally standardized
across different platforms—VMS, HP-UX, Ultrix, DOS,
etc.—giving users the ability to continue their analyses in a
number of computing environments. Many other statistical
packages such as SPSS, BMDP, and SPlus can easily
read SAS data sets.
In the future, Wharton Computing and Information
Technology plans to further enhance this data architecture.
In addition to adding more data sets, Wharton plans to
provide transparent data access to an even wider range of
systems at the School. Wharton is currently testing SAS
for Windows and PC-based NFS client software with the
intention of mounting data sets onto DOS/Windows
systems at the School, providing access to vast data
resources with the Microsoft Windows “look and feel”
familiar to PC users. This will be another step forward in
Wharton’s goal of providing information “at the fingertips”
of its faculty and students.
KENDALL WHITEHOUSE is an Associate Director for
Wharton Computing and Information Technology; PAUL J.
RATNARAJ is an Information Management Specialist
(responsible for the Wharton Research Data System) for
Wharton Computing and Information Technology.
Teaching with live data
Wharton’s primary objective in developing the
Wharton Research Data System was to assist in faculty
research and student instructional exercises. Because
Wharton’s networked classroom teaching stations
share the same configuration and connectivity as
Wharton’s computing lab stations, this project also
allows faculty to use data sets “live” in the classroom.
This past year students in Michael Phelan’s
Statistics 701 class were taught regression and timeseries
analysis using SAS/ASSIST to manipulate
economic data. “The seamless access to Wharton’s
financial data sets has been a key component of my
curriculum development,” reports Dr. Phelan. “It has
influenced my lecture style, which now combines a
formal lecture with a directed recitation.” According
to Dr. Phelan this teaching technique “allows the
students to see the data unfold in real time.”
Frequently students will present suggestions for
new ways to analyze data. Dr. Phelan points out that to
use this technique in the classroom “you need the
flexibility to travel down these new paths, but have the
focus to be sure you cover the essential material.”
The consistent architecture across faculty desktops,
student labs, and classroom teaching stations
provides further advantages for both faculty and
students. “By working with the same software
configuration and data sets that students use for their
assignments, I am able to discuss statistical concepts
while demonstrating specific techniques in class that
students can later use in their own work.”
This rich teaching environment hasn’t been
without its difficulties. Using SAS to bring large data
sets into the classroom requires careful coordination of
a number of computing systems at the School. In the
classroom, Dr. Phelan launches an X-session to
connect to a UNIX workstation. The X-server,
Exceed/4, runs under Microsoft Windows on one of
the Novell Netware servers that supports Wharton’s
DOS/Windows computer labs. The UNIX workstation
is an HP 9000/755 that has the Wharton Research
Data System NFS mounted from another HP 9000/
755. To display the X-session to the class requires a
high-resolution projection panel capable of projecting
at a resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels. In classrooms
without high-resolution RGB three-gun projectors,
Wharton uses an In-Focus PowerView 950 highresolution
LCD panel.
One failure anywhere in the system means Dr.
Phelan must resort to traditional teaching materials.
“I always make certain I can cover the material for
that day’s class using back-up materials if necessary.
Although the system usually works as expected, we’ve
had one or two unanticipated problems that forced me
to abandon ship and take to the blackboard.”
Although Dr. Phelan admits that technological
glitches can be frustrating, he concludes that “I can’t
imagine teaching any other way.” He claims that not
using this technology to teach statistics would be like
“trying to teach someone to ride a bicycle by simply
describing how to do it.”
APRIL 1995 7

BY DANIEL A. UPDEGROVE
IAND GEORGE P. McKENNA
n March the University’s Board of Trustees approved
plans for ResNet Phase 3, which will provide, by
September 1995, PennNet Ethernet, cable television,
and enhanced phone service to 1,260 students in five residences—DuBois
House, Hill House, Mayer House, Stouffer
College House, and Van Pelt College House. A total of
4,770 students will then have ResNet connections, leaving
only the two Grad Towers and most of the Quad unwired.
Engineering and cost studies will be undertaken during the
next few months to determine if the remaining buildings
can be completed in one additional summer or two.
Before approving the Phase 3 plan, Provost Stanley
Chodorow requested an assessment of the use and impact
of the first two phases of ResNet. To that end, a five-page
questionnaire was distributed in all student residences
(wired and unwired) in January. Of the 6,300 surveys
distributed, 1,160 were returned, a 19 percent response rate.
The survey results reveal much about ResNet as well as the
state of student computing and network use on the campus.
Background
In March 1993 the Trustees approved a four-year plan
to wire the residences, with funding from both residential
and general student fees. In September 1993, 1,620
students moved into the first five wired buildings: Class of
1925/Modern Languages College House, English House,
Kings Court, Ware College House (Quad), and High Rise
North. To promote effective use of the Ethernet data
connections, software was made available at no cost and
installed, upon request, in student rooms. In addition, an
automatic IP (Internet protocol) assignment system was
developed, which simplifies start-up and permits students
with laptops to roam from building to building. By year’s
end, about 310 (20 percent) of the students had used their
Ethernet connection.
In 1994 wiring was extended to 1,890 students in
Harrison and Harnwell Houses. The software distribution
and installation processes were streamlined such that many
8
Student survey results
students were able to obtain and install networking
software without assistance; as of mid-March, over 880
ResNet students (26 percent) had connected their computers
to PennNet. Television reception was improved by a
change from the rooftop laser and microwave transceivers
employed in Phase 1 to underground cable in Phase 2. In
addition, the ResNet Video Network was merged with the
Academic Video Network, which had delivered news,
public affairs, and foreign language programming to 35
academic and administrative buildings.
The ResNet program also includes three additional
components:
• Upgrading computer labs in the residence halls
• Expanding the modem pool
• Creating a central server, named “dolphin,” for use by
students in the eight “small” schools—Annenberg,
Dental Medicine, Education, Fine Arts, Law, Nursing,
Social Work, and Veterinary Medicine—to access
electronic mail, NetNews, and World-Wide Web
resources, including their own personal home pages
ResNet’s goals
ResNet was conceived as a multi-faceted program
with multi-dimensional goals:
• Contribute to University efforts to make residences
“more academic” in character, via access to high-speed
PennNet/Internet connections as well as public affairs
and foreign-language television programs in rooms and
lounges
• Promote integration of computing and information
resources into curricula, via reduced barriers to access
and increased student information technology literacy
• Enhance Penn’s ability to prepare graduates for a
networked, information-rich, international, multicultural
world
• Remain competitive with peer institutions who already
offer or are planning to offer similar services
• Increase residence hall occupancy
• Meet a growing demand for access to computing and
information resources without concomitant investment
in student computer labs by leveraging student computer
ownership and the convenience of in-room
network access
• Reduce growth of modem pool expenses
• Enhance residential telephone services and reduce
maintenance costs
• Promote use of electronic communications in the small
schools
Survey results
Of the 1,160 survey respondents, 628 live in ResNet
buildings, 432 live in unwired residences, and 100
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neglected to identify their residence. Response rates by
building ranged from 37 to 5 percent, with wired buildings
tending to elicit higher response rates. See the tables
Table I: Survey respondents
below for breakdowns by class, School, and number of
roommates. A systematic assessment of non-response bias
is in process. (continued on next page)
Breakdown of respondents by class
Freshman Sophomore Junior Senior Grad/Prof Total
ResNet 88 260 175 90 14 627
No ResNet info 11 24 17 16 32 100
Non-ResNet 151 59 34 31 157 432
Total 250 343 226 137 203 1159
Breakdown by School
College Wharton Nursing SEAS Other Total
ResNet 337 134 25 114 12 622
No ResNet info 36 23 8 15 18 100
Non-ResNet 179 84 10 55 103 431
Total 552 241 43 184 133 1153
Breakdown by number of roommates
Zero One Two Three Total
ResNet 94 226 134 174 628
No ResNet info 39 31 15 15 100
Non-ResNet 205 177 36 14 432
Total 338 434 185 203 1160
Note: Because some students did not respond to every question, the totals vary slightly from the
1,160 total survey respondents.
Table II: Students using specific resources (%)
E-mail News Lynx Mosaic Gopher PennInfo Library FTP
ResNet 97 76 37 50 72 55 71 41
No ResNet info 90 65 38 33 59 58 73 31
Non-ResNet 93 63 39 39 62 53 63 30
Total 95 70 38 45 67 54 67 36
APRIL 1995 9

Overall, 16 percent of students said they use computers
intensively, 41 percent reported frequent use, 38
percent occasional use, and 5 percent never use them.
These percentages did not differ substantially between
ResNet and other residences.
A total 54 percent of ResNet students indicated that
availability of ResNet services affected their room selection
this year, as compared to 13 percent of those not in
ResNet; 49 percent of the freshman, sophomores, and
juniors in both ResNet and non-ResNet buildings agreed
that ResNet will affect next year’s housing selection.
In ResNet, 68 percent reported owning a computer
(53 percent desktop and 15 percent laptop) compared to
62 percent non-ResNet (46 percent desktop, 16 percent
laptop); 44 percent in ResNet reported sharing computing
equipment with roommates versus 20 percent in other
buildings. Reflecting this greater in-room access, ResNet
students report less use of residence labs (12 vs. 22
percent) and School/Library labs (17 vs. 21 percent) for
their primary computing.
An important finding is that 22 percent of ResNet
students use a modem (vs. 45 percent outside ResNet).
Further study is required to determine if ResNet modem
use, which is discouraged, is due to the cost of Ethernet
hardware, perceived complexity of Ethernet software
installation, requirement for access to external bulletin
boards not accessible via the Internet, or other factors.
In general, ResNet students make more use of network
resources (although note that in Table II on page 9, “library
use” was defined to mean network access to library
resources from outside libraries).
Television
Although about 53 percent of all students reported
owning televisions, 34 percent of ResNet students had
access to roommates’ sets, compared to 17 percent in non-
ResNet buildings. Additionally, more ResNet students
reported owning VCRs (36 vs. 27 percent). Reflecting
both greater access to televisions and greater channel
selection, ResNet students spend more time watching TV
each week (15 percent watch over 14 hours; 47 percent
watch from 5 to 14 hours; vs. 9 percent and 36 percent,
respectively), and more frequently (“almost always” plus
“frequently,” as opposed to “sometimes” or “never”) watch
news (26 vs. 15 percent), sports (55 vs. 38 percent), the
ResNet movie channel (51 vs. 7 percent), and foreign
language programming (10 vs. 4 percent). The overall
percentage of students reporting use of television for
assignments was 12 percent.
Telephones
In ResNet buildings, 605 students reported that they
opted to have a private telephone line installed, compared
to 15 students in other residences.
10
Act
“Bottom
now
line”
and
questions
save!
Nine percent of ResNet students agreed that availability
of ResNet services influenced their decision to attend
Penn, compared to six percent of students in other buildings.
When asked if ResNet had contributed to their
academic experience, 76 percent in ResNet agreed vs. 26
percent in other buildings. Regarding ResNet’s positive
contribution to the quality of life at Penn, 87 percent in
ResNet agreed, compared to 37 percent of students living
elsewhere.
Looking forward, 57 percent in ResNet agreed that
the services would help with future work goals (vs. 40
percent), 47 percent agreed that availability of ResNet-type
services could influence their choice of graduate schools
(vs. 30 percent), and, as noted above, 49 percent of
freshman, sophomores, and juniors in both ResNet and
non-ResNet buildings agreed that ResNet would influence
their choice of residence next year.
Some observations
It is important to note that ResNet is an investment in
“deep infrastructure” to support emerging changes in the
way Penn carries out teaching and learning as well as
changes in the role of on-campus residences in the
academic and social life of the campus. It appears that the
University launched ResNet at the ideal time to leverage
the explosive growth of scholarly interest in the Internet.
Nevertheless, since ResNet is only half finished—and, in
particular, since very few freshman or graduate/professional
rooms are wired—the full value of ResNet will not
be apparent for several years.
Nettlesome issues remain, however. We need a better
understanding of some students’ preferences for modem
use over Ethernet, and (potentially related) better understanding
of how to accommodate the 15 percent of
students with laptop computers. For example, in academic
buildings there are few ports available to attach an
Ethernet-ready laptop. We also have evidence that our
network acceptable use policy will have to be adapted—
and enforced—as new uses and abuses are discovered.
Finally, our biggest challenge is likely to be providing
students who don’t live in the residence halls with costeffective
access to data networking services equivalent to
those available to ResNet students. This remote access is
equally important to faculty and staff from their homes as
networked computing becomes a key component in the
way people live, learn, teach, and work at Penn.
DANIEL A. UPDEGROVE, Associate Vice Provost for
Information Systems and Computing, co-chairs the ResNet
Steering Committee; GEORGE P. McKENNA, Director of
Network Operations and Engineering in Data Communications
and Computing Services, chaired the ResNet
evaluation sub-committee.
PENNPRINTOUT

Alumni PennNet Service
BY ALFRED C. D’SOUZA
What happens to
Penn graduate
students who enter
the real world without access
to PennNet and the Internet?
For those who remain in the
Philadelphia area, this need
not be a problem, thanks to
the Alumni PennNet Service
(APS), launched recently by
Data Communications and
Computing Services (DCCS)
in conjunction with the Office
of Alumni Relations. And, for
those graduating in May, APS
is available for half price.
What services are provided?
APS is a service very much like eniac, mail.sas, and
dolphin—offering access to e-mail, NetNews (including all
upenn newsgroups), World-Wide Web, Telnet, and FTP, and
eventually a site for personal home pages. Both commandoriented
software (Elm, Tin, Lynx) and graphical desktop
clients (NewsWatcher/Trumpet, Netscape/Mosaic) are
supported. APS, a successor to the Alumni E-mail Service
developed last year by the former University Data Center,
also includes access to the standard PennNet 14,400 bps
modem pool; an additional charge will apply for use of the
new 28,800 bps pool to be available by July 1. (See page
25 for information about this new service.)
Are there any restrictions?
The purpose of APS accounts is to foster an ongoing
relationship between Penn and its alumni. Graduates active
in alumni affairs, fund raising, student recruiting, arranging
internships—and job hunting—should find APS especially
attractive. Use of these accounts for commercial purposes,
however, is strictly prohibited. Alumni who need access to
the Internet as an integral part of their business activities
should obtain service through local or national commercial
providers, or through freenets. (See page 14 for information
on Internet access in the Philadelphia area.)
APS includes access to Franklin, the Library’s online
catalog, which is freely available to any Internet user.
However, because of commercial licensing provisions,
APS does not provide access to most of the other Library
services, such as MEDLINE, Dow Jones News/Retrieval,
and LEXIS/NEXIS.
How much does it cost?
The annual fee for APS is $275 per year, plus applicable
taxes, payable in advance. For 1995 degree recipients
(undergrad, grad, or professional) who purchase the
service by June 30, the fee is $137.50. DCCS will attempt
to maintain a graduate’s network ID, e-mail ID, e-mail
folders, and alias file, if desired. This can be guaranteed
for students now on Dolphin. For ASC, SAS, SEAS, and
Medicine, DCCS will provide recommendations and procedures
to enable students to transfer e-mail folders to their
new accounts. All account holders must also sign an
acceptable use policy.
Who should I contact?
Act now
and save!
If you want to purchase an account during the special
discount period, call the PennNet Help Desk at 215/898-
8171. For specific, detailed information about this new service,
send e-mail to help@dccs.upenn.edu, access the URL
http://www.upenn.edu/DCCS/APS, or call the PennNet
Help Desk.
ALFRED C. D’SOUZA is Director of Network Services and
Support for Data Communications and Computing Services.
APRIL 1995 11

Imagine for a moment that you’re an administrator in
one of the Schools at Penn, and you need to answer a
question: Is there a correlation between student GPA
and course load in your School?
Your school has a team of programmers. One of them
begins working on the answer to your question, writing
routines to pull data from the University’s Student Records
System (SRS). But there’s a problem. The official GPA
isn’t stored anywhere in SRS; it’s calculated on the fly
each time a transcript is printed. The calculation would be
hard to reproduce; it’s many pages of complex code.
Would an approximation be OK?
You groan. Not really. But then the programmer
gives you some interesting news. Penn is building
something called a “data warehouse” that may eventually
let you—the ultimate user of the data—sit down at a
desktop computer and point and click your own way to the
answer. And yes, the warehouse will include the official
GPA for your students. Eight gigabytes of data have
already been loaded, and a pilot project team is hard at
work evaluating the results.
The forest and the trees
The problem of getting data to decision-makers isn’t
unique to Penn; every large institution has it. Data
“warehousing” is an increasingly popular solution to this
kind of problem. Most existing computing systems handle
specific day-to-day functions, such as posting a student’s
grades or printing a paycheck. These “transactional”
systems were built to perform functions and store results.
In many cases, the ability to retrieve information for
12
Data
Warehouse
Information under one roof
BY TAD DAVIS AND DAN SHAPIRO
analytic purposes was not a design priority. It’s as if you
kept all of your bank statements in a grocery bag under
the desk. When you need to analyze a trend, the statements
are there, but you have to pull them out and find the
right ones.
Unlike transactional systems with a single level of
detail, data warehouses often have many layers of data, at
different levels of summarization. At the lowest level—the
“bedrock” layer—there are individual transactions; above
that, you might find layers summarizing details for a week,
a month or a year. How deep you go into the layers
depends on what you need to find out.
Harmonic convergence
Many organizations are implementing data warehouses.
At Penn two projects came together to produce the
needed momentum.
The first was Project Cornerstone, which outlines
Penn’s future information strategy. Cornerstone
formulated principles that recognize the need to support
administrative processes and provide access to the data
people need to do their jobs. Penn would have to move
aggressively into the world of relational database technology
and client/server computing. The data warehouse was
proposed as an integral part of that strategy.
Building on Cornerstone principles, Penn contracted
with Oracle Corporation for a multi-platform database
environment and a new financial system. The University
also purchased an IBM SP2, a parallel-processor version
of the popular RS6000 workstation.
Meanwhile, an informal group of information special-
PENNPRINTOUT

ists around campus—in what has been described as a
“skunkworks” project—began meeting to find ways of
simplifying access to transactional data. SRS was a prime
focus; its data is central to supporting the University’s
teaching mission, and its structure, while allowing efficient
day-to-day processing, does not lend itself to the task
of analysis.
The University’s Data Policy Committee charged
these information specialists to recommend solutions to
the problem. In February 1994, the group’s “Report on
Data Access Strategy” recommended using the warehouse
concept.
The Data Policy Committee accepted the recommendation.
In a textbook example of cooperation between the
Schools and central University administration, the committee
created a pilot project team with representatives from
Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Wharton, Institutional
Research, University Management Information Services
(UMIS), and Data Administration. Over the course of the
summer and fall, the team worked through the details of
the system. There are 2,400 data elements in SRS, and
each one needed to be examined individually: How is it
used in the real world? Does it belong in the Warehouse?
Where? Does it need to be converted or “cleaned up”?
In October, UMIS created a “beta” version of the SRS
Warehouse data with 40,000 student records. On December
19, the full version, with data on every student and on
every course section in SRS, was made available for the
project team’s evaluation. Since that time the data has
been updated six nights a week to keep it current.
A work in progress
Having the data available is only part of the task. The
other part is providing an easy way to access it. Since the
beginning of the project, the Warehouse project team has
been evaluating a number of graphical query tools. There
are two kinds. At one level there are “row-and-column”
tools that let you choose from a list of data elements,
indicate your selection criteria, and control how you want
the results sorted and totaled. At another level there are
tools that provide a multi-dimensional view of the data,
simplifying trend analysis.
Choosing a set of query tools has not been easy in
Penn’s multi-platform environment. The ideal “suite” of
tools would have identical versions for both Windows and
Mac, would integrate Penn’s own help text, and would
allow users to join a local collection of data to the central
collection for a specific query. For the initial pilot, the
team selected BusinessObjects as the first-level tool. Sitelicense
negotiations are continuing with several vendors of
both report and analysis tools.
Another phase of populating student data in the
Warehouse has just been completed. Trend analysis and
official statistics need a static, point-in-time snapshot of
the data that will produce exactly the same results now or
10 years from now. These snapshots were moved, term by
term, into the Warehouse.
In the future, the Warehouse will contain more than
student data. Discussions have already begun on adding
Sponsored Projects data to the Warehouse. There is no
reason to stop there; important information from all
transactional systems can be “warehoused.” One advantage
will be the ability to convert the “apples and oranges”
of diverse systems to a common denominator.
Of course there are risks in putting University data
into the Warehouse. Security is important, but it has a
technical solution. A greater risk is the possibility that the
data may be misinterpreted. Student data is complex. The
Warehouse will simplify access to data, but the data must
still be approached with knowledge and caution. This is
one of the reasons Penn has chosen to “roll out” the
The Data
Warehouse saves
programming
time for Schools
and centers
and increases
the range of
possible analyses
Warehouse slowly; the goal is to have a data structure and
data documentation that, together, minimize the risk of
misinterpretation.
The Data Warehouse will grow by leaps and bounds.
What’s there now is only a small piece of a larger puzzle,
only the first layer of a single system. Even so, the
Warehouse has already begun to produce significant
savings in programming time for Schools and centers, and
to increase the range of analyses that can be done.
The potential is immense. The foundation of a
building has been laid that will—if we’re lucky—never
be complete.
TAD DAVIS is a Lead Programmer Analyst for University
Management Information Services; DAN SHAPIRO is
Director of Institutional Research for the University in the
Department of Planning and Institutional Research.
APRIL 1995 13

14
NET
ACCESS
BEYOND
PENNNET
BY DANIEL A. UPDEGROVE
The PennNet central modem pool has been
expanded recently from 300 to 400 lines to
accommodate the exponential growth in demand
for access to PennNet and Internet
resources by faculty, students, and staff. However,
for many network users—those who reside
beyond local dialing distance, business travelers,
students home on break or studying at remote
sites, and vacationers—dialing in to PennNet is
expensive or impractical. Moreover, use of
PennNet for commercial purposes is prohibited,
and graduating students will lose their PennNet
privileges, except for those participating in the
new Alumni PennNet Service (see page 11).
The University one day may be able to negotiate a
remote access agreement with one of the national (or,
ideally, international) Internet access providers that
satisfies the requirements of the groups mentioned above.
In the short run, unfortunately, there appear to be too many
conflicting requirements and too much volatility in the
Internet access business. Thus, the department of Data
Communications and Computing Services (DCCS)
recommends that users with remote access needs contact
one or more of the providers listed opposite to determine if
their needs can be met.
It should be noted that these providers vary widely in
their geographic coverage (from one dial-up access point
to multinational), Internet services offered (from simple email
gateways to “full service” including UNIX shell
accounts, graphical World-Wide Web browsers, and
provision for personal home pages), networking protocols
supported (from vt100 terminal access to SLIP and PPP),
desktop computers supported, quality and hours of
customer support (such services are not supported by the
PennNet Help Desk or the CRC), and price. Most services
welcome commercial accounts, but be sure to ask for a
copy of the provider’s acceptable use policy.
Some of these services have been recommended by
active users at Penn. Others have been plucked from
Internet databases and are “caveat nettor.” Since most
services allow cancellation after one month, the risk of
trying a service appears to be small. Given the rash of
Internet security breaches, however, you would be wise to
ask about a provider’s security and backup procedures
before entrusting any sensitive data to that service.
It should be noted that one provider currently offers a
discount to customers from the University. DCCS hopes
to be able to negotiate similar discounts with other
providers in the future. DCCS also welcomes feedback on
the quality of services delivered by these companies; send
mail to help@dccs.
The following information is available in both
PennInfo (keyword “internet.access” or “Philadelphia”)
and as a direct link from the Penn home page (URL: http://
www.upenn.edu/phil_inet_provide2.html). The latter is
recommended, since most entries have links to the
providers’ documentation of services and pricing, and
since it provides additional references for specific U.S.
area codes and foreign countries.
DANIEL A. UPDEGROVE is Associate Vice Provost for
Information Systems and Computing and Executive
Director of Data Communications & Computing Services.
PENNPRINTOUT

Internet Access in Philadelphia & Beyond
Philadelphia area dial-up Internet access providers (with area codes served)
and general information contacts:
• DCANet (302) 302-654-1019; info@dcanet.com [**]
• Digital Express (609, others) 301-220-2020, 800-969-9090; info@digex.net.
• FAST.NET (610, 800) 610-954-5910; sales@fast.net
• FishNet (215, 610) 610-337-9994; info@pond.com
MicroServe (215, 610, 717) 800-380-INET; info@microserve.com
• NetAccess (215) 215-576-8669; info@netaxs.com
• NJComputer Connection (609) 609-896-2799; info@pluto.njcc.com
• Oasis (215, 610, 717) 610-439-8560; info@ot.com
• SSNet (302, 610) 302-378-1386; info@ssnet.com
• VoiceNet (215, 609, 610) 215-674-9290, 800-835-5710; info@voicenet.com
• WaterWheel (609) 609-596-0032; info@waterw.com.
National dial-up Internet access providers with Philadelphia area access
points:
• AlterNet AlterDial 800-258-4032; info@uunet.uu.net
• America OnLine 800-827-6364
• CompuServe 800-848-8990; Sales@CIS.CompuServe.com
• Delphi Internet 800-695-4005, 617-491-3393; info@delphi.com
• GES/JVNCnet 800-35-TIGER; market@jvnc.net
• Global Connect, Inc. 804-229-4484; info@gc.net
• IAT/HoloNet 510-704-0160; info@holonet.net
• NetCom 800-353-6600, 408-983-5950; info@netcom.com
• Prodigy 800-776-3449;
• PSI/InterRamp 800-82PSI82, 703-709-0300; interramp-info@psi.com
Other lists of access providers:
• Internet Access Providers
• Providers of Commercial Internet Access
[**] This provider offers discounts to members of the Penn community.
APRIL 1995 15

Latin American news
BY JOSEPH C. HOLUB
It was once very difficult to get news from Latin
America that was both current and extensive.
English-language reporting was sporadic, and the
wait for vernacular newspapers was long. The CIA’s
Foreign Broadcast Information Service provided information
more quickly, but very selectively. Today’s students
and researchers serious about keeping up on developments
in, for example, Mexico—whether the popular revolt in
Chiapas, the unfortunate economic news, or the machinations
of the ruling party—can get to more information
from more sources more quickly and more conveniently
than was true even one year ago. At that time the principal
sources were the English language files on LEXIS/NEXIS
and the abstracted articles from Latin American newspapers
and magazines of INFO-South database available
through DIALOG.
LEXIS/NEXIS and INFO-South are still very much
available and both offer consistent formats, widely
disseminated (if not always well-understood) search
protocols, and a reliable flow of news—in the case of
LEXIS/NEXIS, within days of the story. What one can
now find on the Internet and World-Wide Web, however, is
a massive jumble of information that is fast becoming a
flood. The news does not necessarily appear in a regular
format and it is often incomplete. Yet, its currency and
immediacy provide a clear case of how national boundaries
and distance matter less than ever. One no longer
needs to wait for news and the source of information is not
always an official news provider.
Getting to the sites
While the Penn Library gopher still reliably accesses
Latin American Internet resources, the World-Wide Web
via the Library home page (http://www.library.upenn.edu)
offers some important sites that are only web-accessible,
as well as graphics for those with the requisite software.
The Library home page is an option from the Penn Library
gateway menu. The path from the home page is: Internet
Resources/Area Studies/Latin America. Though one need
only get to the gateway to access Latin American sites, the
inset on the next page lists a number of important Internet
addresses.
The latest Web information
The current web page for Latin America offers six
menu options. Two web-only sites that can be accessed
16
ON THE INTERNET
directly are La Jornada and Mexico Out of Balance. The
former is a new site that provides large parts of Mexico
City’s La Jornada newspaper on the day of publication.
Graphics include photos from the newspaper. One week of
issues is maintained. There is no provision for keyword
searching. Mexico Out of Balance is a joint project of the
North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), the
Latin American Data Base (LADB), and PeaceNet. It is a
collection of articles on current Mexican politics and
historical background.
Current and archival news
More substantial news files similar to those available
from LEXIS/NEXIS and DIALOG do exist. Two of the
more interesting Mexican examples (and thus far Mexican
news sources are far more developed than any other Latin
American news sources) are maintained by ITESM
(Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de
Monterey) in Chihuahua and UNAM (Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México) in Mexico City. These
can be accessed via another Latin American page option,
Border & Latin American Information, maintained by New
Mexico State University. ITESM’s site is called a summary,
or Resumen de noticias nacionales, and some
documents appear to be abbreviated. There are no articles
on cultural subjects, the arts, entertainment, or sports. A
keyword search is required to retrieve documents. Boolean
searches are possible: the searches “zedillo y colosio,”
“zedillo colosio,” and “zedillo and colosio” are equivalent
and result in articles that mention both President Zedillo
and the assassinated candidate. Searches can pull up
dozens of documents from dozen of sources, mostly
newspapers, but government and public documents can be
retrieved as well. The earliest articles date from January
1995 and the latest are as recent as the last 24 hours.
UNAM’s Noticias de México y el Mundo offers a number
of news options, the richest of which is the Mexico City
newspaper El Nacional (Periódico El Nacional). One can
browse El Nacional by date back to February 1993 or do a
keyword search. One great advantage compared to the
ITESM site—and to LEXIS/NEXIS and INFO-South as
well—is its coverage of wider issues. A typical menu for a
given date will provide the searcher with as many as eight
groups of articles from which to choose, including the
front page (Primera Plana), international news
(Internacionales), culture (Cultura), sports (Deportes), and
the city section (Ciudad).
PENNPRINTOUT

Other sites
Other sites offer news in more sporadic forms. There
are at least three that cover news, documents, and commentary
in both English and Spanish on the Zapatista Army
(EZLN) and Chiapas. They can be reached through UT-
LANIC, the University of Texas Latin American Network
Information Center home page, and the “Mexico” menu
choice. Sites in countries other than Mexico have blossomed
recently as well. On the Web, for example, one can
see parts of recent issues of the Peruvian newsmagazine
Caretas. The UT-LANIC web home page has a “what’s
new” feature that describes new sites to which it offers
access. Late February and early March arrivals include the
Ecuadorian newspaper Hoy and a Chilean electronic
newspaper and magazine. And news—not to mention
opinion—appears on newsgroup postings, of which there is
at least one for nearly every country of the hemisphere.
There are other sites offering statistical data and facts about
individual countries, and reports on the activities of various
professional and interest groups. There is also the Castro
Speech Database, compiled from the Foreign Broadcast
Information Service’s translations of Fidel Castro’s
speeches. It covers the years 1959
through 1994 and can be searched by
keyword or scanned by date.
JOSEPH C. HOLUB is a Reference
Librarian for Van Pelt Library.
Some useful addresses
• Penn Library home page: http://
www.library.upenn.edu
• UT-LANIC: http://lanic.utexas.edu
• New Mexico State University: gopher://
lib.nmsu.edu/11/subjects/.border
• ITESM-Chihuahua: gopher://
geronimo.chi.itesm.mx:82/7
• UNAM: gopher://condor.dgsca.unam.mx/11/
noticia_mex_mundo
• La Jornada: http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/
~justin/jornada/index.html
• Caretas: http://www.rcp.net.pe/CARETAS/
index.html
• Hoy: http://
www.ecnet.ec/hoy/
hoy.htm
Samples
• Castro speeches:
gopher://lanic.utex
as. edu:70/11/la/
Cuba/Castro
The Library’s web page for Latin America (above
left) currently offers six choices, including two
web-only sites. One of these is Mexico Out of
Balance (left), a joint project of the North
American Congress on Latin America (NACLA),
the Latin American Data Base (LADB), and
PeaceNet. It collects articles on current Mexican
politics and historical background.
APRIL 1995 17

Supported
Products
ISC
BY DON MONTABANA
18
The computer industry provides such a vast array
of hardware and software products that no person or
organization can be expert in all areas. In order to provide
high-quality support, Information Systems and Computing
(ISC) publishes a supported products list that defines the
scope of its support to the University of Pennsylvania
community. This list serves a number of purposes:
• It assures the University community that these products
are of good quality and are available at an attractive
price.
• It defines those products for which assistance from ISC
is offered.
• It helps define a recommended standard computing
environment for the University.
• It allows ISC to focus staff resources in areas that will
bring the broadest benefit to the University community.
Periodically, Information Systems and Computing
reviews this supported products list and determines both
products for which support from ISC should be added as
well as products for which support is no longer practical.
The three lists below describe currently supported products,
products which are still supported but no longer
recommended, and products which are no longer supported
by the ISC.
Getting help
For information about most supported products,
students, faculty, and staff of the University of Pennsylvania
may contact the Computing Resource Center at 898-
9085 (press 1 at the main menu), by e-mail at
crc@isc.upenn.edu, or by coming in to the walk-in facility
on Locust Walk. Suggestions or comments for new
product support are always welcome (ideas@crc).
Macintosh networking software is supported both by
the CRC and by Data Communications and Computing
Services (DCCS). For assistance with Windows networking
software, please contact DCCS at 898-8171 or
help@dccs.
PENNPRINTOUT

Supported products
In addition to the desktop computers and software
listed below, ISC supports PennNet communications
services on campus (PennNet is the University’s data
communications network). In nearly all cases ISC
supports the current version of supported software plus one
major version release back, for example Excel 5.0 plus the
earlier 4.0 release.
It should be remembered that the list shown below is a
snapshot of the current supported list, and that the list is
constantly evolving. As new software and hardware
support is added, announcements will appear in various
media, including the Penn Printout, PennInfo, and Penn’s
Web Page.
DOS/Windows hardware
• Dell desktop/laptop computer line; 80486 and above
(limited support for other IBM-compatible manufacturers)
• Dell monitors
• CD-ROM drives (internal drives pre-installed by Dell)
• U.S. Robotics 14,400 Sportster Fax/Modem
• Hewlett-Packard printers (DeskJet and LaserJet lines)
DOS/Windows software
• DOS operating system (5.0 and above)
• Windows operating system (3.1 and above)
• WordPerfect for Windows word processor software (5.2
and above)
• Microsoft Excel for Windows spreadsheet software (4.0
and above)
• Acrobat Reader portable document viewing software
(2.0 and above)
• Vi-Spy anti-virus software (current version only)
• ProComm communications software (2.4.2 and 2.4.3)
DOS/Windows networking software
• Novell’s TCP/IP software (4.2)
• Novell’s SLIP_PPP ODI driver software (4.x)
• WS_FTP FTP client (2.x)
• MS-Kermit file transfer client (3.x)
• Winsock Gopher client (1.x)
• Trumpet for Windows NetNews client (1.x)
• Mosaic for Windows World-Wide Web client (2.0a) is
the currently supported product, however, support for
Netscape is under development.
• TCP3270 terminal emulation client (2.5x)
• Host Presenter vt100 terminal emulation client (4.x)
Macintosh hardware
• Apple monitors
• Apple CD-ROM drives (internal and external)
• Apple and Asanté brand Ethernet cards
• U.S. Robotics 14,400 Sportster Fax/Modem
• Apple printers (LaserWriter line)
• Hewlett-Packard printers (DeskWriter and LaserJet
lines)
Macintosh software
• Macintosh operating system (6.0.8 and above)
• Microsoft Word word processor software (5.0 and above)
• Microsoft Excel spreadsheet software (4.0 and above)
• Disinfectant anti-virus software (current version only)
• MicroPhone communications software (Pro version 2.0,
II version 5.0, LT)
• Claris FileMaker Pro database software (2.0 and above)
• Aldus Persuasion presentation graphics software (3.0
and above)
• AppleShare file server software (3.0 and above)
• Acrobat Reader portable document viewing software
(2.0 and above)
Macintosh networking software
• MacSLIP TCP/IP software (2.0.6)
• MacTCP TCP/IP software (2.0.6)
• PennInfo client (3.9 and 4.1)
• Fetch FTP client (2.1 and above)
• Mosaic World-Wide Web client (1.0.3 and above) is the
currently supported product, however, support for
Netscape is under development.
• NCSA Telnet communications client (2.6)
• NewsWatcher NetNews client (2.0)
• TurboGopher Gopher client (1.0)
• Comet tn3270 terminal emulation client (3.0x)
Supported but not recommended
In addition to the products supported by the ISC, some
products—while still supported—are no longer recommended.
The hardware products in this category include
Macintosh and IBM-compatible machines that do not
conform to new ISC desktop standards (see Penn Printout,
February 1995, pages 3-4). The software in this category
includes DOS-based products for which alternative
Windows-based software is supported. Support for these
products is on a best-effort basis.
• Alpha Four (4.0) database software for DOS-based
machines
• Dell DOS/Windows hardware below a 80486 processor
• Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS spreadsheet software (version 2.4
only)
• Macintosh desktop/laptop computers 68040 and above (continued on next page)
APRIL 1995 19

• Apple ImageWriter and StyleWriter printer lines
• Macintosh hardware below a 68040 processor
• WordPerfect for DOS word processor software (5.1 and
above)
No longer supported (as of July 1)
The list of products for which support will be discontinued
on July 1, 1995 is shown below, along with contact
information for those continuing to use these products.
DOS/Windows hardware
• Currently marketed IBM computers and the installed
base of discontinued IBM systems: 800/426-3333; 914/
765-1900
• ProCom external disk drive: 800/800-8600
• Dot matrix printers
• Ungerman-Bass Ethernet card: 800/777-4LAN; 408/
496-0111
• Western Digital Ethernet card: 800/832-4778; 714/932-
6294
DOS/Windows software
• Microsoft Word for DOS: 800/426-9400; 206/882-8080
• Sigma Plot graphing software: 415/453-7196
• Word for Word file translation software: 800/624-6107;
602/948-4888
Macintosh hardware
• DaynaFile external disk drive: 800/531-0600; 801/269-
7200
• Practical Peripherals modem: 805/497-4744; 800/442-
4774; 800/537-2291
Macintosh software
• Cricket Graph graphing software: 516/342-4179
• Claris MacWrite word processing software: 800/3-
CLARIS; 408/727-9054
• Claris MacDraw drawing software: 800/3-CLARIS;
408/727-9054
• Claris MacPaint painting software: 800/3-CLARIS;
408/727-9054
Note: ISC also supports Elm, a terminal-based e-mail
application and Eudora, a POP-based, graphical e-mail
client used on both Macs and Windows-based PCs.
Support is, however, restricted to retail customers using
the host pobox.upenn.edu and students in the “small
schools” using the host dolphin.upenn.edu.
DON MONTABANA is Director of the Computing Resource
Center.
20
Q A &
I’ve tried to access the Curtis Organ
music files with both the Mosaic and
Netscape WWW browsers but have not
been able to do so. Evidently I need
something called a “helper app” to do
this. What is it and where do I get it?
To access sound, video, and image files via the World-
Wide Web, you need additional software known as “helper
applications” on your Mac or Windows computer. Properly
configured versions of Mosaic and Netscape will
automatically launch the appropriate helper application
when you try to read a file that requires it.
For example, to hear the Curtis music files you need
an “audio player,” such as SoundMachine for the Mac or
MS Win v3.1 Sound Player for Windows. Additional
helper applications supported at Penn are listed in the
November 1994 Penn Printout on page 14 (electronic
access in four formats from http://www.upenn.edu/
pennprintout). Most can be downloaded from a server at
http://www2.internet.net/folktales/bobsbazaar.html.
Both Mosaic and Netscape are preconfigured to
launch many popular helper applications. All you need to
do is install the applications on your computer. To use
Adobe Acrobat Reader, the helper application required to
view PDF files (documents that retain their original fonts
and graphics, such as the PDF version of Penn Printout),
you need to configure Netscape and Mosaic yourself.
Instructions, as well as the software, can be downloaded
from the Adobe WWW site (http://www.adobe.com).
—Edda Katz, ISC Communications
I just did some clean-up on my hard
drive and then started WordPerfect 6.1
for Windows. All my preferences have
changed. What can I do?
You probably deleted the WPCSET.BIF file when you
did your clean-up. The WPCSET.BIF file contains
settings and preferences information for WordPerfect.
When this file is deleted, WordPerfect automatically
creates a new one with generic settings and preferences.
You need to recreate your settings and preferences. After
doing so, make a copy of the file so that you are insured
against accidental deletion or possible damage to the file in
the future. —Caroline Ferguson, CRC
PENNPRINTOUT

Virtual University (from page 1)
character or consequences.
We are setting off into a terra incognita. What is an
academic course? Who are our students? Who is teaching?
When has a student satisfied the requirements for a
degree? How do we create and manage information?
So, here is my first guess at the future.
Fears for the institution
The electronic environment threatens to blow away
our traditional definitions of the course. The new media of
teaching and learning are so much more flexible than the
traditional lectures or discussion classes, reading lists,
papers, and exams that it is hard to imagine that the notion
of the course will not soon be challenged. Today, a course
is measured against a reasonably well-understood standard—so
many credit units for so many class hours, so
many exams and papers, so much reading. But when the
majority of communication between faculty and students
and among students occurs outside class hours, when
students write hundreds of lines of prose or calculations in
e-mail discussions of topics, when research is conducted in
electronic databases, when a paper might be built up by a
group of students writing and editing and adding text and
footnotes until it is abandoned to the faculty member, how
will we calculate the course then?
We are on the verge of a revolution in the way we
define the building blocks of a university education and we
do not yet have any idea of how or whether we will be able
to integrate the new with the old.
Who will be in our “classrooms”? Already the few
courses that have used the Internet to expand the interaction
of students and faculty and to make the syllabus and
texts of the course available electronically have seen the
boundary between student and participant break down.
Only registered students are getting academic credit for a
course with Internet participants, but many others can join
in the class discussions and might even send in unsolicited
work. I’ve seen cases of students who were rejected from a
program sneaking into the program by taking courses
through the Internet. Faculty rarely turn away someone
who wants to learn from them. The electronic environment
provides a new avenue for unauthorized participation in a
program, and by the time a department has caught on the
student can claim to have satisfied many of the requirements
for its program.
But even without imagining the most extreme case, we
can see that the distinction between students and nonstudents
will fade in our new ecosystem and that the
question of who benefits and has a right to benefit from our
teaching will become increasingly complicated. This is not
all bad, of course. Think of the way alumni will be able to
continue their learning and participation in the intellectual
life of the university. I see a future in which alumni will
stay in touch with faculty as well as with the athletic
teams. But will the faculty be able to cope? Will we have
to evolve a tough hide to repel the importunate learner,
even the brilliant one? What will that do to our sense of
our selves as teachers or to our self-interest as learners, as
we are, to a large extent, in our advanced classes?
Once the campus space gains an electronic dimension,
the question of who teaches our students will become an
issue. Penn has an agreement with Princeton that permits
graduate students of each institution to take a certain
number of courses at the other campus. Once the Internet
becomes an effective medium of teaching, what will stop
Academia
seems to be
the only place
where all politics
are not local
us from making myriad agreements of this sort? What will
stop students from surfing the Internet to find that perfect
course in Fulgentius or Martianus Capellanus? What then
will it mean to say that students who come to Penn will
study with a topflight faculty recruited and promoted by
the University?
And what will happen to the academic republic? The
faculty define the academic program for their students.
When the faculty are not defined by the university’s body
corporate, the locus of academic authority will inevitably
change. All those who teach “our” students will be able to
claim a role in deciding what constitutes a good curriculum.
Students will call on their whole faculty, defined by
the Internet rather than by the campus office buildings and
laboratories, to define what they should study.
We faculty tend toward authoritarianism in curricular
matters, but we will not be able to stand long against the
tide of student demand for something more than we
alone—the faculty of a particular university—can give.
The students who will define excellence will be those who
have mastered a few languages and can join classes across
linguistic and cultural borders as well as across city and
state boundaries.
I predict that the challenges of the new academic
ecosystem will engender a period of authoritarianism and
xenophobia. Today, faculty in (continued on next page)
APRIL 1995 21

esearch universities tend to define their academic worlds
in terms of their disciplines, worldwide communities of
interest united by the jet plane and the Internet. Academia
seems to be the only place where all politics are not local,
and we often complain that faculty have lost some of their
old commitment to the local scene.
But today the concreteness of the campus weighs in
the balance against this centrifugal force of disciplinary
involvement. Tomorrow, the campus will lose much of its
natural weight, which consists in the limits of traditional
teaching methods and traditional academic units, as the
Internet transforms teaching and the faculty expands
beyond campus or even local boundaries. In that fluid
situation, the first reaction of faculty and their universities
will probably be to put their hands over their eyes and
assert their authority over their students. The drive for a
sense of identity that has always been the foundation of
human character will lead us to carve an identity out of the
ethernet. We will assert control over the members of our
tribe, and we will at least for a time turn our backs on the
promise and possibilities of the new academic ecosystem.
Here, then, is my second guess at the future.
Runaway information
Librarians are losing control of information. For
more than a century, we have relied on libraries and their
keepers to gather, organize, and make accessible the
knowledge that is the foundation of our teaching and
research. Looking back from the end of the twentieth
century, we can see that this period of high organization
with its high priesthood of librarians was really only the
last period of the printed book.
In the middle ages, a large library might contain a
couple of hundred books. The users of the books knew
where they were on the shelves—in the bay of the fourth
window of the library, under the statue of the emperor
Trajan, and so on. The invention of printing opened a
floodgate of writing and publication. The leaders of the
Protestant Reformation figured out the power of the new
medium immediately, pouring out hundreds of tracts,
handbills, and tomes to a wide, middle-class, urban,
reading public. The success of the movement was greatly
enhanced by the use of the printed word.
But it was only in the nineteenth century that librarians
created a system of cataloguing powerful enough to
manage the vast output of printed work that started in the
early sixteenth century. To give you a notion of how
recent this development is: Melvil Dewey died in 1931.
The great library systems have had but a brief success.
When I wrote that report for the University of California in
1991, I saw the electronic revolution as giving us greatly
improved access to our collections of information. I saw
that we would soon define the resources of a library not by
the size of its collection but by the extent of the materials
accessible through its services. I saw the expansion of the
22
collective collection—the virtual collection available to
users—by the addition of electronic databases.
What I did not see very clearly then was that the
electronic revolution would have no less of an effect on the
democracy of knowledge than the printing revolution.
Today most successful academics make and disseminate
some information independent of the established ways and
byways. Even though our process of promotion and
financial rewards remains tradition-bound—tied to
publication in refereed journals or through recognized
presses—our exuberant quest for knowledge and our
powerful urge to tell people about what we know are
increasingly ignoring tradition. We are using e-mail and
electronic bulletin boards. We are creating databases and
sending them out to our friends and colleagues.
Much more
important, how
will we preserve
what we are
producing?
For 22 years, I have been working on a study of the
extant judicial opinions of the twelfth century. The
Vatican Press will publish the Regesta decretalium seculi
duodecimi. Or will it? By the time I finish the work,
given the distractions I’ve let myself in for this past
decade, I wonder whether I will bother to publish it in the
traditional way. Maybe, I’ll just make a disk—the work
will be about 10 megabytes—and distribute it to anyone
willing to pay the cost of reproduction and shipping.
How will the librarians deal with that? How, now, are
they dealing with the burgeoning amount of unofficial
knowledge that faculty and students treat as if it were just
as good as the official stuff? How, in other words, will we
control information, catalog it, make it accessible, judge its
quality? Traditional publication is, like a pedigree, an
indicator of quality. Are we entering a miasmic swamp of
knowledge, produced and disseminated without the benefit
of the market forces that control what presses and journals
put out?
Much more important, how will we preserve what we
are producing? We think of libraries as organized repositories
of knowledge, but, as the acid paper crisis shows, their
greatest contribution to teaching and research may be as
preservers of knowledge. Yet, ironically, the electronic
PENNPRINTOUT

evolution is putting libraries and librarians, as they come
on line, out of the loop.
The age of the paper book and journal is far from over
and we will yet fill many libraries before it is, but much of
the information we produce and use is never getting into
the libraries and when it does librarians have no idea what
part of the whole they have got their hands on. This is
bound to affect scholarship.
Modern standards of scholarship rely on the assumption
that scholars should be able, through their libraries or
through bibliographic services, to read all of the relevant
literature. The electronic revolution threatens those
standards by making it virtually impossible to judge
scholarly performance in this respect. We will know
whether the argument is sound, the data adequate, and the
writing good, but we will not be able to tell whether all of
the relevant information is accounted for.
We are entering new oceans of knowledge, and we
will either have to develop new charts or to change our
expectations of navigation.
My third guess at the future is full of optimism.
Optimism
While I’m in a seafaring metaphor, I should say that I
empathize with Columbus—I’m a historian after all—and
I am no less optimistic than he was. I think the university
will go through some tough times, but I think it will come
through them just fine in the end. The university has been
one of our stablest and most enduring institutions. It has
adapted to change for over eight centuries. It has had its
ups and downs; it has been pushed aside at times; but since
its invention in the second half of the twelfth century it has
never been far from the center of the knowledge industry.
It arose in Europe, but it is now dispersed throughout the
world.
My optimism about the future stems from a conviction
that the university has proven itself to be the world’s most
consistent producer of new ideas, and given the stresses we
humans are putting on our planet, we will not soon cease
to need new ideas. In this respect, the institution’s secret
may lie in the union of teaching and research. We make
knowledge in many kinds of institutions—government
laboratories, industrial laboratories, and, now, on the
Internet—but none of these sites of research provides the
elemental protection of pure curiosity, of basic research,
that the university provides.
The protective shield is, I think, partly a product of the
teaching function. Education, as opposed to training,
requires the freedom of the wide open range. It is a
product of intellectual roaming, of the exploration of new
subjects. It is both the result and the producer of the
philosophic habit that Cardinal Newman labeled the basic
characteristic of the educated person, and philosophy is the
theoretical pursuit par excellence. So, if the educational
process is philosophical, then the place in which it occurs
must be the maker of new ideas.
The youth of the students may also play a part in
building the shield that preserves the university. Youth has
the luxury of ignoring the practical goal and purpose of
knowledge. Youth can be philosophical and can learn the
philosophic habit by practice. We all bemoan the narrowing
careerism of many of our students—the first university
faculty in the twelfth century bemoaned it also—and our
disappointment arises from the recognition that our
students have a choice. They are young enough to hold off
for a few crucial years the awful baying of practical
concerns.
Our regret in finding our older students focused on
making it in the world is correspondingly mild. We know
that, youth gone, they must take the baying seriously and
get on with it. Our hopes for their education are not
invested so much in the intellectual treks on which we lead
them as in what they have and will experience as adults.
We hope that they will catch the philosophic habit by some
lucky chance as they run through our courses.
But the university will also be preserved and protected
by another of its characteristics. It is an institution that
satisfies a fundamental condition of knowledge making—
face-to-face interaction among the craftsmen of the guild.
Intellectual work is social work, notwithstanding the myth
of the solitary genius, and the university is a social
institution. The Internet can enhance the society of the
university and quicken its pace of discovery and invention,
but the electronic environment cannot replace physical
human society. We humans cannot thrive in a bodiless,
frownless, smileless ecology, and our intellectual society
cannot be complete without physical interaction. The real
university may be enriched and enlarged by the virtual
university, but there will always be the real one.
So, the electronic revolution—the birth of the virtual
university—will force us to work out some new rules of
assessment and to learn some new ways to manage the
university community, but so long as society is healthy
enough to need educated citizens and new knowledge, it
will push us to accomplish these tasks rather than dismantling
our institution. If we do manage the multiple and
complicated changes coming at us at electronic speed, we
will create a university that is even more intensely local
than it is now, while its physical boundaries and limitations
will have faded into the ether of the net.
Note: This article contains the text of a dinner address
presented at the Virtual University conference in January
1995. The conference was sponsored by the SEI Center
for Advanced Studies in Management, the Annenberg
School for Communication, and the School of Engineering
and Applied Science. The Penn Printout version contains a
few minor modifications.
STANLEY CHODOROW is Provost of the University of
Pennsylvania.
APRIL 1995 23

24
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Penn to host EDUCOM’96
The annual conference of EDUCOM, a consortium of
universities and colleges concerned with applications of
information technology, will be held at the new Pennsylvania
Convention Center in center city Philadelphia, October
8-11, 1996. The largest higher-education-computing
conference, EDUCOM attracts over 2,500 university
computing specialists, faculty members, computing
vendors, and government representatives from around the
world.
As host institution, Penn will be invited to showcase
innovative uses of computing and networking—in instruction,
research, administration, patient care, and public
service—in an exhibit area at the Convention Center, via
the Internet, or by hosting campus tours. A committee will
soon be formed to organize Penn’s participation in the
EDUCOM conference.
To volunteer for the committee, or for further information
about EDUCOM and the 1996 conference, contact
local arrangements chair Daniel Updegrove, Associate
Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing,
danu@dccs.upenn.edu, 898-2883, or 898-9348 (fax).
ISN to be discontinued
The ISN network service (“DIAL” prompt) will be
discontinued December 26, 1995. Users now attached to
PennNet via DIAL prompts must migrate to either
terminal server asynchronous access (“Annex” prompt) or
a direct Ethernet connection. Departments are urged to
begin planning this migration as soon as possible, since
user training, desktop software, and desktop hardware
must all be considered—and built into budgets. Consulting
on migration strategies is available from Data Communications
and Computing Services (DCCS).
ISN users are strongly advised to migrate to higherspeed
Ethernet connections to take advantage of desktop
software clients with graphical user interfaces. Such
software is already widely used on campus in popular
clients such as Netscape and Mosaic (World-Wide Web
browsers) and Eudora (e-mail). Moreover, new administrative
systems being developed as part of Project Cornerstone
will require Ethernet access.
Asynchronous services are of declining value in a
client-server environment, have increasingly prohibitive
maintenance and support costs, and divert resources
required to test and deploy emerging technology.
Departments with older desktop computers unable to
support an Ethernet interface, or with applications that use
proprietary asynchronous interfaces may elect to migrate
from ISN to terminal server connections during 1995.
Although this may be easier and cheaper in the short run, it
is important to note that general-purpose terminal server
access will be discontinued at the end of 1996 (as approved
by the Network Policy Committee at the recommendation
of DCCS).
For assistance with migration planning, or for any
other question about asynchronous and Ethernet connection
to PennNet, please contact the PennNet Help Desk
(help@dccs.upenn.edu or 898-8171).
DCE conference, June 1-2
“OSF DCE: Implementing a Distributed, Networked
Computing Environment” is the theme of a conference to
be held at the Penn Tower Hotel on the campus and hosted
by the Office of Information Systems and Computing
(ISC). The regional conference on June 1-2 and an
accompanying in-depth workshop on May 31 are sponsored
by CAUSE, the association for managing and using
information resources in higher education. Penn, a longstanding
member of CAUSE, also hosted last year’s
regional conference on “Networked Information.”
The CAUSE Board of Directors recently endorsed the
Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing
Environment (OSF DCE) standards and is encouraging all
CAUSE member colleges and universities to consider
adoption of the standards as part of their information
resources architecture. The conference focuses on
benefits, trends, and issues surrounding DCE, from the
varied perspectives of speakers from Boston College,
Michigan, Ohio State, Penn, Penn State, NASA, OSF, and
Transarc Corporation.
The conference is co-chaired by Daniel A. Updegrove,
Associate Vice Provost, ISC, and Samuel Plice, Chief
Operating Officer, Information Technology Division,
University of Michigan. Chris Shull of ISC, leader of
Penn’s distributed computing task force, is also on the
program committee.
PENNPRINTOUT

ANNOUNCEMENTS
Further information on the conference and workshop
programs, including an online registration form, is available
at http://www.upenn.edu/CAUSECNI/conferences.html,
by sending mail to conf@cause.colorado.edu, or by calling
the CAUSE office, (303) 939-0315. The University of
Pennsylvania, as host institution, receives a reduced rate
for the two-day conference.
New Media Center
The University of Pennsylvania, along with 29 other
colleges and universities from around the world, has been
added to the New Media Centers program, an innovative
non-profit organization that teams industry and academia
to improve higher education. Penn joins 22 of our peer
institutions, who were charter members of the program,
along with a growing number of corporate members,
including Adobe Systems, Apple Computer, Eastman
Kodak, FWB/Hammer, Korg USA, Macromedia, Oracle
Corporation, Prentice Hall, Radius, and the Times-Mirror
Company. Corporate members provide campus-based
centers opportunities to develop special relationships and
industry contacts, as well as institutional access to advance
testing and new technologies, including acquisition of
hardware and software at significantly reduced prices.
Information Systems and Computing (ISC) will keep
you informed as it learns more about the New Media
Centers program and the benefits to Penn. If you have any
questions in the interim, please contact Donna Milici,
Director of Academic Computing Services
(donna@acs.upenn.edu or 898-0426) or John MacDermott,
New Media Specialist for Academic Computing Services
(macderm@pobox.upenn.edu or 898-3046)
Modem pool plans
During the summer, DCCS will establish a second
modem pool, dedicated to higher speed (28,800 bps, or
“v.34”) and lower contention (i.e., a higher ratio of
modems to users). Access to this pool will require a fee,
currently anticipated to be $200 per year. Users considering
a modem purchase or use of a commercial provider
should take into consideration the availability and price of
this new modem pool. The Computer Connection will
soon be stocking the recommended U.S. Robotics 28,800
bps modems.
Also, departments sponsoring PennNet “guests” will
be assessed a fee, effective immediately for new accounts
and upon annual renewal for current accounts. The fee
will be $100 per year for access to the 14,400 bps pool,
and $300 per year for access to the 28,800 bps pool. As is
currently the case, guest accounts are limited to those
engaged in cooperative research, teaching, or public
service projects of a non-commercial nature.
For further information, please contact the PennNet
Help Desk, 898-8171 or help@dccs.
Maintenance vendors
The Purchasing Department and the task forces for
microcomputer and UNIX maintenance recommend the
following companies for computer maintenance services
for fiscal 1994 and 1995.
For microcomputer maintenance:
Computer Fixer Janice Cuthbert 215/629-5700
INTEC Mike Miller 800/225-1187
609/427-0900
System & Service Pros Gregory Fecca 215/878-3778
For UNIX maintenance:
Workstation Recommended vendor
DEC DEC, SUN
SUN SUN, DEC
SGI SGI, DEC
IBM DEC, SUN
HP DEC, HP
NEXT DEC
UNIX maintenance vendor contacts:
DEC James Ingraham 609/273-2067
Hewlett Packard Leslie O’Brien 215/666-9000
Silicon Graphics Jerry Allen 215/638-3707
SUN/Bell Atlantic Atul Wadhwa 609/231-5731
Steve Waldman 609/235-7619
For futher information or assistance, please call Abe
Ahmed, 898-2482, or Gail Lindsey, 898-2313.
APRIL 1995 25

Electronic Calendar
ISC hands-on courses
These courses meet at the Computing Resource Center
(CRC), 3732 Locust Walk.
Prerequisites: A knowledge of elementary DOS commands
is required for all training courses on application
software for IBM PC/compatible systems. To fulfill the
requirement you may complete an ISC DOS seminar or
tutorial, or have equivalent experience.
Cancellation: If you cannot attend a course, you must
cancel 48 hours in advance. Failure to do so will exclude
you from registering for other ISC courses that semester.
Late Arrival: If you are more than five minutes late, your
seat will be given to someone on the waiting list. No one
will be admitted later than 10 minutes after the start of
class.
Registration & Information: Registration is required.
Registrants must complete prerequisites before registering
for a course. Individuals must register themselves; we will
not accept registrations by a third party. Call 573-3102.
26
Registration for all ISC hands-on
classes begins Wednesday, April 26.
Registration is required. Please
note that this summer schedule is
subject to change. Call 573-3102,
stop by the CRC to register, or check
the schedule.
Courses for DOS and Windows users
Introduction to Windows
May 17, 1:00 PM–4:00 PM; July 12, 1:00 PM–4:00 PM
Covers basic Windows concepts, including using the
program manager, working with menus and dialog
boxes, manipulating windows, and using the task list.
Prerequisite: DOS seminar or tutorial.
Introduction to WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows
May 18, 1:00 PM–5:00 PM; July 26, 1:00 PM–5:00 PM
Covers the basic elements of word processing using
the new version of WordPerfect (6.0). Experience in
creating, saving, retrieving, editing, and printing files.
Prerequisite: Windows course or tutorial.
Windows Tutorial Labs
May 19, 1:00 PM–4:00 PM; July 7, 1:00 PM–4:00 PM;
July 21, 1:00 PM–4:00 PM
Self-directed learning using tutorials, including DOS,
Windows, WordPerfect 5.1, Excel for Windows, and
Lotus 1-2-3. The DOS tutorial fulfills DOS prerequisite.
Registrants must indicate the tutorial they wish
to use when they register.
Introduction to Excel 5.0 for Windows
May 24, 1:00 PM–5:00 PM
Covers the basic elements of spreadsheets using the
new version of Excel (5.0). Experience in entering
data, formatting ranges, using functions, writing
formulas, and printing. Prerequisite: Windows
course or tutorial.
Introduction to Lotus 1-2-3 for Windows
July 20, 1:00 PM–5:00 PM
Covers the creation and basic use of Lotus spreadsheets,
entering data, formatting ranges, using Lotus
functions, writing formulas, and printing. Prerequisite:
Windows course or tutorial.
Courses for Macintosh users
Intermediate Microsoft Word
May 4, 1:00 PM–5:00 PM; July 27, 1:00–5:00 PM
Covers features needed in complex documents, such
as glossary, spelling checker, hyphenation, footnotes,
merge, moving text between documents, and setting
up tables. Prerequisite: Introduction to Microsoft
Word or equivalent.
Introduction to Excel Spreadsheets
May 31, 1:00 PM–4:00 PM
Covers the basic functions of an electronic spreadsheet.
Includes entering, editing, and formatting data;
using functions; writing formulas; and printing.
Introduction to Microsoft Word 5.0 (FLS)*
July 6, 1:00 PM–4:00 PM
*This is a facilitated learning session (FLS). A
facilitator is present, but attendees work at their own
pace. Covers the basic elements of word processing
on a microcomputer. Experience in creating, saving,
retrieving, editing, and printing files.
Mainframe course
Electronic Data Retrieval and Download
Class given on demand
Developed and taught by UMIS staff; covers data
retrieval from the administrative mainframe using
TableTalk. Call 573-3102 for details.
The address of Penn Printout will
change on May 9. The new address
is Harnwell House, Suite 211,
3820 Locust Walk, Philadelphia,
PA, 19104-6134.
PENNPRINTOUT

ISC B&P seminars
Bits & Pieces seminars meet for one hour at the CRC, 3732
Locust Walk, unless otherwise noted. Registration, required
for asterisked seminars only, begins Wednesday, April 26. Call
573-3102.
Accessing the Internet using PennNet
May 3, noon; July 5, noon
An overview of PennNet services and demonstration
of how to access popular Internet resources via PennNet.
Introduction to NewsWatcher (Mac)
May 10, noon
Introduction to newsgroups, covering subscribing,
setting preferences, and posting and reading messages.
What You Really Need to Know about DOS*
May 11, noon–1:30 PM
Covers basic system parts, terms, and commands
needed to get started using DOS. Includes a 1/2-hour
practice session. Fulfills DOS prerequisite.
Introduction to Fetch (Mac)
May 11, noon; July 19, noon
Introduction to file transfers over the Internet using
Fetch. Covers starting Fetch, connecting to a host,
short cuts, and viewing and downloading files.
Introduction to WS_FTP
May 17, noon; July 20, noon
Introduction to file transfers over the Internet using
WS_FTP. Covers starting FTP, connecting to a host,
and viewing and downloading files.
Introduction to Mosaic
May 24, noon; July 13, noon
Introduction to Internet browsers using Mosaic.
Covers configuring Mosaic to launch Penn’s home
ISC custom training services
Technology Learning Services
(TLS), ISC’s training group, offers
additional services to departments,
including custom training classes,
learning needs assessments, and
lab rentals.
TLS also offers other learning
resources such as instructional tip
sheets and tutorials. Call us at
573-3102 for more information.
page, setting preferences, creating hotlists, and
navigating to popular Internet sites.
Biomedical Library
Courses
All courses meet in the Biomedical Library. Registration:
Call 898-5817.
Intro to the New OVID MEDLINE and CINAHL/Nursing
May 3, 2–4 PM; May 15, 1–3 PM; May 23, 10–noon; June
7, 3–5 PM; June 15, noon-2 PM; June 23, 9–11 AM; July
10, 4–6 PM; July 18, 9–11 AM, July 26, 1–3 PM; August
10, 3–5 PM; August 18, 10-noon
The OVID search system offers access to the full
MEDLINE database, 1966 to the present, as well as
CINAHL/Nursing, the Cumulative Index to Nursing
and Allied Health Literature database, 1983 to the
present. Covers OVID subject, author, journal, and
text word search techniques that can be used in either
MEDLINE or CINAHL.
Biomedical Information on the Internet
May 5, 9–11 AM; June 21, 1–3 PM; August 8, 10–noon
An overview of basic Internet applications, touching
on activities such as e-mail, discussion groups, telnet,
file transfer protocol, and gopher servers, as they
relate to the biomedical community. Although the
class demonstrations focus on Macintosh software,
DOS users will also find this workshop helpful.
Registrants must obtain a network ID and password
before attending the course.
Advanced Subject Searching
July 24, 10 AM–noon
Focuses on how to execute effective searches when
using various systems for MEDLINE (e.g., OVID,
Grateful Med, CDP, and SilverPlatter). Concentrates
on how to use the thesaurus of subject headings.
Topics include choosing broader or narrower terms to
refine searches, using subheadings to focus results,
combining subject headings to develop a search
strategy, and revising search strategies if a search fails
to retrieve adequate articles.
Current Contents on the PennLIN System
By appointment. Call 898-9905
Topics include limiting by subfile, limiting by latest
entry month, and basic keyword searching in Current
Contents, which indexes over 6,500 scientific journals.
RefMan/EndNote Plus Macintosh Demonstration
By appointment. Call 898-9905
Topics include creating a database, entering references
from the keyboard, importing references from data-
APRIL 1995 27

Electronic Calendar Eureka, LEXIS/NEXIS, and more. The Penn Library
Home Page and access to Internet resources on the
base services, and editing and retrieving information.
Enduser Searching using Grateful Med
By appointment. Call 898-9905
Grateful Med, a fee-based end-user search system
allows access to numerous National Library of
Medicine databases. Topics include searching
MEDLINE with offline screens, basic Medical
Subject Heading Searching, using Loansome Doc for
interlibrary loan requests and accessing other NLM
databases.
28
Penn’s Landing BBS
The Penn’s Landing electronic
bulletin board service, offering
MS-DOS shareware and a variety
of other services, can be reached
at 898-8511 (300-28,000 bps,
8 databits, no parity, 1 stopbit).
Van Pelt Library
Courses
All courses except the online training course meet in Room
502, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center. Registration is
required. Sign up at Van Pelt Reference, call 898-8118, or
send e-mail to librefer@pobox.
LEXIS/NEXIS Training
May 1, noon; May 8, noon; May 22, noon; June 5, noon;
June 12, noon; June 19, noon, June 26, noon; July 3, noon,
July 10, noon; July 17, noon; July 24, noon; July 31, noon;
August 7, noon
A one hour class that introduces Penn students and
faculty to LEXIS/NEXIS and its many full-text files,
including dozens of national and international
newspapers, transcripts from news programs such as
McNeil-Lehrer and NPR, state and federal legislation,
opinion poll data, and much more.
Electronic Library I: Online Catalogs
May 24, 5–6:30 PM; June 1, 3–4:30 PM; June 6, 7–8:30
PM; June 14, 10–11:30 AM; July 11, 5-6:30 PM; July 19,
3-4:30 PM; July 27, 10-11:30 AM
Using the PennLIN Gateway, we’ll look at Franklin,
Penn’s online catalog; the Linked Indexes, RLIN/
Web will also be covered.
Navigating the Internet
June 9, noon; June 22, noon; July 12, noon; July 21, noon
A one-hour session devoted to Internet information
resources such as library online catalogs, electronic
journals, and specialized research resources available
through the Penn Library Home Page.
Van Pelt Online Training
Monday to Friday, 9–9:30 AM, Moelis Online Search
Room. Registration required.
For Penn students, faculty, or staff who want individualized
half-hour training on systems such as DIALOG,
BRS, NEXIS/LEXIS, or CD-ROMS.
Human Resources
Courses
Registration is required. Call 898-6176.
Overview of the Personnel/Payroll System
May 1, 3–5 PM. Fifth Floor Conference Room, 3401
Walnut Street
This workshop designed for new employees provides
an understanding of personnel/payroll terminology,
processes, time frames, and contact offices.
Online Personnel Processing
May 2, 9 AM–noon. UMIS, Suite 265C, 3401 Walnut
Street
This hands-on workshop covers how to use the UMIS
administrative computer to maintain employee records.
Prerequisite: A basic understanding of employee types,
job class codes, accounts, and subcodes.
Lippincott Library
Courses
Lippincott Online Training
Tuesdays and Fridays, 9 AM, Computer Services Room,
second Floor, Lippincott; registration required. Sign up
at Lippincott Reference or call 898-5924.
Focuses on learning how to use Lippincott’s
online databases for business research.
PENNPRINTOUT

Hot Dates
Please note that the summer schedule for interest group
meetings is subject to change. If you are not on the
mailing list of an interest group, please use the contact
information below to verify meeting dates and times.
April
26 Interactive Technologies Group meeting
Noon–1:30 PM. Place to be announced
Info: Donna Milici, 898-0426 or donna@acs;
James Gist, 898-9090 or gist@crc.
May
8 Super User Group meeting
Noon–1:30 PM. 285-6 McNeil Building
Info: Donna Milici, 898-0426 or donna@acs.
16 DTP Special Interest Group meeting
Noon. CRC, 3732 Locust Walk
Info: Randall Couch, 898-6243 or check PennInfo.
30 Interactive Technologies Group meeting
Noon–1:30 PM. Place to be announced
Info: Donna Milici, 898-0426 or donna@acs; James
Gist, 898-9090 or gist@crc.
31 CAUSE DCE conference workshop
Penn Tower Hotel
Info: Please see the announcement on page 24 for
detailed contact information,
June
1–2 CAUSE DCE conference
Penn Tower Hotel
Info: Please see the announcement on page 24 for a
description of the conference and detailed contact
information.
12 Super User Group meeting
Noon–1:30 PM. 285-6 McNeil Building
Info: Donna Milici, 898-0426 or donna@acs.
20 DTP Special Interest Group meeting
Noon. CRC, 3732 Locust Walk
Info: Randall Couch, 898-6243 or check PennInfo.
28 Interactive Technologies Group meeting
Noon–1:30 PM. Place to be announced
Info: Donna Milici, 898-0426 or donna@acs;
James Gist, 898-9090 or gist@crc.
July
10 Super User Group meeting
Noon–1:30 PM. 285-6 McNeil Building
Info: Donna Milici, 898-0426 or donna@acs.
18 DTP Special Interest Group meeting
Noon. CRC, 3732 Locust Walk
Info: Randall Couch, 898-6243 or check PennInfo.
26 Interactive Technologies Group meeting
Noon–1:30 PM. Place to be announced
Info: Donna Milici, 898-0426 or donna@acs; James
Gist, 898-9090 or gist@crc.
August
14 Super User Group meeting
Noon–1:30 PM. 285-6 McNeil Building
Info: Donna Milici, 898-0426 or donna@acs.
15 DTP Special Interest Group meeting
Noon. CRC, 3732 Locust Walk
Info: Randall Couch, 898-6243 or check PennInfo.
30 Interactive Technologies Group meeting
Noon–1:30 PM. Place to be announced
Info: Donna Milici, 898-0426 or donna@acs; James
Gist, 898-9090 or gist@crc.
University policy on
unauthorized copying of
copyrighted software
The University of Pennsylvania does not
condone or tolerate the unauthorized copying of
licensed computer software by staff, faculty, or
students. The University shall adhere to its
contractual responsibilities and shall comply with
all copyright laws, and expects all members of
the University community to do so as well.
Members of the University community who
violate this policy may be subject to discipline
through standard University procedures. An
individual or University department engaged in
the unauthorized copying or use of software may
also face civil suit, criminal charges, and/or
penalties and fines. Subject to the facts and
circumstances of each case, such individuals or
departments shall be solely responsible for their
defense and any resulting liability.
The above policy, adopted in August 1992, is
republished as a reminder to the University
community. If you have questions about this
policy, please contact Dave Millar, University
Information Security Officer, at 898-2172.
APRIL 1995 29

Ra m it
30
nDo
b s
Where’s MEDA and MEDB? The University Library is
now offering a new, improved MEDLINE software called
OVID. OVID is the second choice on the PennLIN
Gateway menu. Call the Biomedical Library Reference
desk at 898-5817 for assistance or stop by and pick up a
brochure.
A 90-day trial version of Personal Oracle can be
retrieved from Oracle’s web site (http://www.oracle.com)
and an unofficial Oracle FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
archive can be found at http://www.bf.rmit.edu.au/
Oracle.
Web browsers and utilities for the Macintosh, Windows,
and UNIX are available at http://www2.internet.net/
folktales/bobsbazaar.html.
The Computer Connection, the campus computing
store, will answer questions and respond to
information requests sent to its e-mail account
(ccx@a1.benhur.upenn.edu).
To access newsgroups via Netscape, first set your
News (NNTP) Server to netnews.upenn.edu in the
Directories, Applications, and News pop-up window
in the Preferences option under the Options
menu. Next, choose “Go to Newsgroups” from the
Directory menu.
Access online help for System 7.5 using Macintosh
Guide by clicking on the question mark icon on the
menu bar.
Summer cleanup. Faculty and students leaving
campus for the summer are reminded to sign off
from listserv discussion groups; otherwise your
inbox could overflow, causing e-mail to be lost.
The ultimate decadence has arrived online— Godiva
Chocolates (http://www.godiva.com).
Track your FedEx package online (http://
www.fedex.com).
1-800-Directory, AT&T’s online 800 directory (http://
att.net/dir800) can be browsed by category or name, and
searched by name or phone number.
IBM’s OS/2 operating system was the best selling piece of
software last December.
Mac clones. Radius, Power Computing, Cutting Edge,
and Pioneer Corporation among others, have signed
licensing agreements giving them the right to manufacture
and market Macintosh clones.
For college news, application forms, and information
about student summer programs, check the Peterson’s
Education Center Web site (http://www.petersons.com).
Syllabus ’95, a conference covering the use of technology
in the curriculum, will be held July 22-26, at Sonoma State
University in California. Information: 800/773-0670 or
syllabus@netcom.com.
Job hunting? The CareerMosaic WWW site has links to
employment information at 6,000 companies (http://
www.careermosaic.com/cm/home.html).
Tired of typing HTTP://? In Netscape you don’t need to
bother. For example, to reach the Penn Home Page, just
type www.upenn.edu.
Virtual Mailboxes, which allow
their owners to take advantage
of almost all the benefits and
conveniences of VoiceMail, are
available for people without
campus phone extensions. For
information, call 898-2486 or
send e-mail to ali@a1.benhur.
Selections from Ziff Davis Publishing Company’s popular
computing journals are available at http://www.ziff.com.
Journals available include Computer Shopper, MacUser,
MacWeek, PC Computing, PC Magazine, PC Week, and
Windows Sources.
Internet guide online and free! Peachpit Press, a major
computing publisher, is distributing the 297-page book
Aether Madness: An Offbeat Guide to the Online World
via the WWW (http://www.aether.com/Aether/). The
publisher does not expect the free version to substantially
affect sales of the $21.95 printed version.
PENNPRINTOUT

I want to include sound files with a
presentation I’m making. How can I
determine the size of the sound files
before actually recording them?
To calculate the approximate size for an 8-bit,
monoaural, (i.e., not stereo) file, use this formula:
(number of seconds of audio) x (sample rate in kHz)
= file size in Kbytes
For example, 7-seconds of audio recorded at 11 kHz
would require approximately 77 Kbytes of disk space. If
you’re recording in stereo, you need to double the file size.
Likewise, using 16-bit sampling doubles the file size
again. So the same 7-seconds of audio recorded at 16-bit
stereo at 44 kHz would take approximately 1.2 megabytes!
((((7 seconds) x 44) x 2) x 2) = 1,232 Kbytes
—Mary A. Griffin, CRC
I’m confused about the various IDs and
passwords I need on PennNet and the
Internet.
You and many other people! Penn’s network-based
services are housed on various computers, more or less
analogous to offices in a protected complex; the complex
and each electronic service have their own levels and types
of security. Your PennNet ID and password are analogous
to the key that lets you enter the complex. The PennNet
computer then checks its database to verify that you are a
bona fide member of the Penn community. Once you’re
“in,” you can access specific services on other computers
at Penn.
Additional IDs and passwords may be required for
these computers, just as keys may be required for individual
offices. The Library’s catalog, Franklin, requires no
further verification of your identity, while mail services,
such as those on mail.sas.upenn.edu and dolphin.upenn.edu,
require their account-holders to enter a login (user) ID and
password. When you set up an account for a service such
as e-mail, you can make your ID and password identical to
your PennNet ID and password if the system permits, or
you may have to choose a different ID and password. The
Library databases, such as PsychInfo and the OED, don’t
require you to set up an account but you must enter your
Q A &
SSN to verify eligibility when you access them. Still other
services require you to enter “guest” as your user ID and
your e-mail address as the password.
Your PennNet ID and password are also your keys to
the worldwide Internet, which is a set of interconnected
networks including PennNet. As with Penn services, the
services (databases, libraries, etc.) on other Internetconnected
computers may require additional IDs or
passwords. —Edda Katz, ISC Communications
Recently, I accidentally deleted some
important files in my root DOS directory.
How can I prevent that from happening
in the future?
The easiest way to protect important files is to make
copies of them and save them in a special subdirectory set
up to protect against accidental erasure. Many of the files
in your root DOS directory should be protected this way.
To copy the most important files in five easy steps, follow
these instructions:
1 First go to the C: prompt and make sure that you are in
the root directory by typing CD\
2 Now type MD DIRECTORYNAME (Note: replace
DIRECTORYNAME with a name appropriate for your
special subdirectory in the line above and in the commands
below. Good choices might be SPECIAL or
PROTECT)
3 Type COPY *.BAT C:\DIRECTORYNAME
4 Next, type COPY C:\WINDOWS\*.INI
C:\DIRECTORYNAME
5 Finally, type COPY C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\*.INI
C:\DIRECTORYNAME
You will now have copies of your most important
DOS and Windows system files in the directory that you
created. If you accidentally delete an important file, you
will be able to restore it from the copy in your new
subdirectory. You should periodically go through the steps
above to update your copies so that they remain current.
—Joseph R. Harris, CRC
APRIL 1995 31

I
Information Systems and Computing: Keeping in touch
n Penn’s decentralized computing environment, the Office of Information Systems and Computing provides technology leadership
for administrative computing, active brokering and advocacy for academic computing, and critical computing infrastructure and
services in both areas.
ISC has seven divisions:
• Academic Computing Services—ACS (573-3587) serves users
of information technology in the academic community. It advises
on “open systems” technologies including UNIX, negotiates
volume purchase agreements and site licenses, and provides
referrals to electronic resources for instruction.
• Computing Resource Center—CRC (898-9085) provides
computing support to complement the services offered by
Schools and departments, including consulting, file translation,
antiviral software distribution, hardware and software evaluation,
and contract services for systems integration and on-site support.
• Data Administration—(898-2171) promotes standards for data
access, data security, and the University data dictionary; develops
the University Data Model, a high-level blueprint of data relationships;
provides business continuity planning; and assists in
investigations of information security violations.
• Data Communications and Computing Services—DCCS
(898-2883) plans and manages PennNet and its Internet gateways,
as well as a set of network-based services, including
electronic mail, NetNews, Whois, PennInfo, World-Wide Web,
and Gopher. DCCS also consults on AppleTalk and Novell local
area networks.
• ISC Communications Group—(898-1786) produces print and
electronic documents, including Penn Printout, and works with
other ISC units to make new services easier to learn and use.
• Technology Learning Services—TLS (898-9090) provides
computer learning resources for the University, develops and
coordinates ISC training programs, develops and delivers
learning programs for Schools and other University units, and
monitors technology skills needs across campus.
• University Management Information Services—UMIS (898-
4961) consults with administrative clients to identify information
needs and acquires, implements, operates, and maintains
administrative systems.
PENNPRINTOUT Non-Profit Org.
University of Pennsylvania
Harnwell House, Suite 211
3820 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6134
If you’re interested in: Contact:
Administrative data dictionary, data model .......... (215) 898-2171
Administrative systems development ............................. 898-7581
Administrative systems access ....................................... 898-5045
Architecture and standards ............................................. 898-3029
CRC Help Desk (crc@isc) ............................................. 898-9085
Personal productivity software
Purchase advice: Macs and PCs
Hardware troubleshooting
Antiviral software distribution
Desktop Publishing Interest Group ................................ 898-6243
Interactive Technologies Group...................................... 898-0426
Information security (security@isc) .............................. 898-2172
PennBack backup service ............................................... 898-6449
PennNet Help Desk (help@dccs) .................................. 898-8171
PennNet info, IDs, installation
E-mail on dolphin, pobox, and relay
Local area network consulting
PennInfo, Gopher, World-Wide Web
PennNet modem access (8 databits, no parity) ............... 898-0834
Penn Printout (printout@isc) ........................................ 898-0007
Penn Video Network ...................................................... 898-4336
Research and instructional site licenses (ssl@isc) ......... 573-3587
ResNet Help Desk (resnet@isc) .................................... 573-9473
Super User Group (sug@isc) ......................................... 898-0426
Training and learning services........................................ 573-3102
UMIS billing ................................................................... 898-4961
UMIS training facility .................................................... 898-4961
UMIS operations hotline ................................................ 898-1099
UNIX Users Group ......................................................... 898-5930
Not sure? CRC at 898-9085 or crc@isc
U. S. POSTAGE
PAID
Philadelphia, Pa.
Permit No. 2563