People behind the Systems: John Stephen

"Do I really have to?" was the reply to my request for an interview. John's reluctance stems from his overall philosophy: "I don't care if people know who I am, I just want the labs to run well." As co-manager of the Wolfe and Atrium Labs for the past two years, John Stephen serves the student population at Brooklyn College. After graduating from SUNY Old Westbury with a degree in Communications, John began working in their Audio/Visual department. When the A/V department was incorporated into the Academic Computing Department, John was given a choice: "Either do computing or find another job." It was sink or swim: "I got into computing by default, but I enjoy it." Before coming to Brooklyn College, John was a Multi-Media Technician at Cornell Medical School and a Lab Manager at The New School

John (second from left) and staff members

In Fall and Spring semesters the Wolfe and Atrium labs are open seven days a week, up to fifteen hours a day. Along with his staff of BC students and co-manager Selena Threet, John tries to make everyone's experience a positive one. "I don't want people to go away from here unsatisfied." To catch problems before they begin, John often walks the floor of the labs keeping an eye out for students with questions: "If I see someone having trouble and can help them right away,they won't get frustrated." John believes that being visible and accessible helps students.

"It's really cool!"

Besides ensuring that the labs are efficient places for students to work, John also runs the new multimedia classroom in the Wolfe Lab. "It's really cool! I can call anywhere in the world and have a video conference." The Media Distribution System is a tremendous interactive distance learning tool that serves about four classes and seminars each semester. It's John's favorite part of the labs because it combines his love of multimedia (CDs, Video, PowerPoint, Internet) with computers. He believes that more faculty members should take advantage of it, "It's one of the best tools on campus, and one of the most underutilized."

Whether you are a student who's a regular visitor to the Labs, or a member of the faculty interested in exploring the uses of video conferencing, John Stephen and staff are working hard to make sure your needs are met.

Brooklyn College's almost one million pages of transcripts dating back to the 1930's are difficult to access and eroding from constant handling. To solve this growing problem and provide easy and efficient access to student records, Johana Rivera and Monica Rivera of the Transcript Office, Joan Antonicelli, Registrar, and Steve Austreich of ITS engaged in an intensive year long evaluation of imaging systems. The Minolta System (AIMS) was chosen to house the transcripts in their new form as optical images.

After transcripts are scanned, the disks are stored in the Optical Jukebox for easy access by the Registrar and Transcript Offices. This compact system can hold a million documents on ten disks. Once they are scanned, the documents can be retrieved instantly and can even be rotated, magnified, or annotated. Roughly 60,000 images have been scanned thus far. Even with only a fraction of the documents scanned, transcripts are already being retrieved weekly with the new system. This speedy process is a great improvement over the hours previously spent searching through basement vaults. For future use, AIMS can be expanded with the addition of further Optical Jukeboxes. This will allow the system to continue making paper storage a thing of the past.