Information Resources Committee (IRC)
2002-03 Year-End Report

Fall 2002: Lester McCann (chair), Dennis Kaufman, Mary Lenard, Wei Song, Gwen Miller, Tom Peischl (non-voting); no student member was appointed.

Spring 2003: Lester McCann (chair), Dennis Kaufman, Mary Lenard, John Longeway, Gwen Miller, Tom Peischl (non-voting); no student member was appointed.

The IRC met three times in the fall of 2002 (09/24, 10/07, and 11/04). The committee did not meet during the spring of 2003 (there was no business to consider).

Issues before the committee this year:

• On Tom Peischl's request, the committee reviewed the Library Self-Study document and offered suggestions for improvement.

• Members of the committee met multiple times with Don Kolbe, Director of Facilities Management, to offer advice on the remodeling of MOLN 211, 213, 215, and D139. While our input was deemed valuable, the budget situation plus internal problems with the architectural firm caused the remodeling to be delayed until the summer of 2004.

• Members of the committee attended the webcast demonstrations of the finalists for the standard UW system course management software environment and offered their opinions on the relative merits of the four products.

• The committee investigated how the campus allocates funding for the maintenance and updating of computers in dedicated labs. Resulting emails from Tom Peischl revealed that what funds are available are used to maintain and update public labs as a matter of campus and system policy. Even if the policies are adjusted, the large number of public labs and the limited amount of funding would mean that little money would be available for dedicated labs. The problem of maintaining dedicate labs is large, and is one which the committee will no doubt be asked to reexamine in the future.

This report submitted May 19th, 2003, by Lester McCann.