Mathematical Information Access Software System
A great new software announcement!! This memo is to announce the development of a new software system for use in our Mathematics Department.
We are currently building a data center that will contain all files, documents, and date used by our and other Mathematics Departments worldwide. The program is referred to as the "Mathematical Information Access Software System" (MIASS).
Next Monday at 9:00 there will be a department-wide meeting in which I will show MIASS to everyone. We will continue to hold demonstrations throughout the month so that all faculty, staff, and graduate students will have an opportunity to get a good look at MIASS.
As for the status of the implementation of the program, I have not addressed the networking aspects so currently only one person at a time can use MIASS. This restriction will be removed after MIASS expands.
Several people are using the program already and have come to depend on it. Just this morning I walked into a professor's office and was not surprised to find that he had his nose buried in MIASS. I've noticed that some of the less technical personnel are somewhat afraid of MIASS.
Just last week, when asked to enter some information into the program, I had a secretary at the Front Desk say to me "I'm a little nervous, I've never put anything in MIASS before." I volunteered to help her through her first time and when we were through she admitted that it was relatively painless and she was actually looking forward to doing it again. She went so far to say that after using SAP and Oracle, she was ready to kiss MIASS.
I know there are concerns over the virus that was found in MIASS upon initial installation, but I'm pleased to say the virus has been eliminated and we were able to save MIASS. In the future, however, protection will be required prior to entering MIASS.
We planned this database to encompass all information associated with the Department. So as you begin to use the program, feel free to put anything you want into MIASS. As MIASS grows larger, we envision a time when it will be common place to walk by an office and see a professor hand a paper to a grad student and say "Here, stick this in MIASS."
The program has already demonstrated great benefit to the Department during recent audits by the University Regents. After requesting certain historical data the University representatives were amazed at how quickly we provided information. When asked how numbers could be retrieved so rapidly our Department Chair proudly stated "Simple, I just pulled them out of MIASS."