Lithuanian University of Agriculture (LUA) is the only higher school in Lithuania training agricultural specialists. Total amount of students in five faculties is about 4670. The staff is: 32 professors, 234 associate professors, 132 senior assistants, 62 assistants, 50 researches and 765 supporting and administrative staff. LUA library has about 561000 books. LUA campus is in 10 km. distance from Kaunas center towards south-west near the highway to Marijampole and Warsaw cities. There are five academic buildings, student campus and, situated on the other side of highway, teachers' settlement.
Executive management in LUA is provided by rector and two vicerectors: vicerector for education and vicerector for research. Vicerectors have their departments: department of education and department of research. Informatics department, being the separate subdivision in department of research, is responsible for common computerization policy, networking and support of library and administrative systems. There are five employs: three programmers, network administrator and chief-consultant. According to the University development plan - informatics development was announced as priority.
Economics faculty has the Informatics chair which have informatics lectures for all LUA students. These user oriented courses are for beginners and include basic information about computers, document editing, spreadsheets and databases. Students of Economics faculty have courses in using some software for bookkeeping and accounting purposes. Students of Agricultural Engineering faculty have courses of lectures in CAD systems held by lecturers from chair of Electrical Engineering and Automatics.
All computers in LUA are situated in five Academic buildings, at university campus. About all computers are connected into LAN using 10 Mb/s ETHERNET network using mixed UTP and coaxial cabling. Development of coaxial cable based network now is canceled and step by step installation of UTP based network is going on. In 1999 first 100 Mb/s internal lines were installed for University library. Academic buildings are interconnected by 100 Mb/s fiber optic lines (look at the layout on picture 1). Only Forestry faculty building has weak (soviet produced) 10Mb/s coaxial line connected to entire network. We planned to change it to fiber optic line in 1999.
There are 7 computerized teaching classes in Economics faculty, one class in Hydrotechnics college, two classes in Agriculture Engineering faculty, and one in Forestry faculty. Some of them are donated by different EU countries, or obtained using EU support according TEMPUS programs. Part of them are equipped by out of date personal computers (IBM PC 286) and it is necessary to renovate them. LAN is served by five NOVELL, two NT, one LINUX, one CD and two UNIX servers. LAN has access to INTERNET provider (Kaunas Technological University) via 2 Mb/s radio link. Our traffic to INTERNET is the noticeable among higher schools situated in Kaunas.
First service we provided for our users when in 1994 year installed 2.4 kb/s connection to INTERNET provider was E-mail. We tried to use FTP, Gopher, and other applications, but failed due to bad quality of dedicated telephone line. Only E-mail was able to manage information "packed" into tricks, errors, and disconnections. In 1995, when using two ZyXel 1496 modems, bandwidth was increased to 14.4 ¸ 19.2 kb/s, we started to use all INTERNET services, but reliability problems have not been solved. In 1997 installed 2 Mb/s radio link enabled us to provide INTERNET services for our users with required quality. Now, having about 300 PC based workstations in LAN, we need more powerful link.
Students admission and students records system described in my presentation at EUNIS 97 congress (Computer based system for students admission and students records information system at the Lithuanian University of Agriculture). In 1999 students admission rules have been changed. New rules are published at http://www.LZUA.LT/studijos/pritai/pritai.html (only in Lithuanian). Preliminary admission was unwelcome by Lithuanian Ministry of Education and Science. According to these changes only one competition is available. Only school leaving certificate marks can be evaluated building competition order. Program was only corrected according new requirements.
In 1998 two independent modules where added to students records system: module for printing academic certificate and statistics module. Information accumulated in Individual study plan database during all study period is used to built the academic certificate. Records from DOS based FOXPRO dbf file using VISUAL FOXPRO and MS WORD internal commands can be transferred to MS WORD file and printed in academic certificate form. Using data accumulated in Student record database and Orders database files we can built monthly statistical reports. Statistics module was created using VISUAL FOXPRO, because it was necessary to print graphic information. The system is under continuous development according University requirements.
According the TEMPUS project JEP -12393-97 common with Kaunas University of Technology, Klaipeda University, Lithuanian Academy of Music using help from Swedish and UK partners we are going to create common Web based Information Services for Studies Planning, Management and Administration. It is described in presentation of Mr. K. Pocius and A. Targamadze from Kaunas University of technology at EUNIS99 congress.
First modules of library system was obtained in 1995 due to financial support from EU according the TEMPUS program and ideological support from Hohenheim University library, Germany. We obtained software "ALISE" created by Ryga University, Latvia. Working modules of this software are based on DOS FOXPRO.
OPAC module is based on ORACLE web server and is available at http://193.219.64.136:8200/alisew3/owa/aw.login . "ALISE" suits librarian requirements very well. It was achieved because authors took into consideration all librarian and readers needs starting from book ordering and finishing with writing off a book. But this software is not standard in Lithuania because "ALISE" works according UK mark rules when Lithuanian official standard for library software is UNIMARK. It means that direct information exchange between other Lithuanian libraries is not available. It is possible only using import and export of textual bibliographic records. This type of exchange have not full compatibility with UNIMARK standard records. Now all 15 higher schools in Lithuania are going to obtain more advanced, standard and unified software and hardware for libraries. According recent information it will be UNIX and ORACLE based system "ALEPH".
GIS - Geographical Information System is under continuous development by hydrotechnics and forestry scientists. Now digital map of northern part of Kaunas region in 1:10000 scale is created. It contains following layers: relief, roads, waters, settlements, forests, scientific institutions, industrial establishments, land-improvement projects and land-improvement systems. Each layer has additional information tables with required information (summary information about land-improvement project - ditches lengths and parameters, drained lines lengths and parameters and other). Using these tables is possibility to get more exact information about land-improvement system condition, repair time and so on. Now it is necessary to create new map layer with information tables about earth owners. System is based on "Arch-Info" and "Arch-Wiew" software.
First attempts to use computers in activities of book-keeping department were done using DOS based spreadsheets and later - MS (WORKS and EXCEL) spreadsheets. But spreadsheets could not cover all needs of book-keeping department and specialized software module created by commercial firm "Topas" was obtained. This software module includes all financial and material accounting but do not cover personal data and salaries. It is based on CLIPPER so it have 2000 year problem. Now authors of program are solving this problem and program will be updated.
Personal data and salary accounting are computerized using software created by programmers from Lithuanian Academy of Medicine. It is based on FOXPRO. Disadvantage of these systems is that different modules are created using different programming languages and different ideology, and very often the same data is stored in different duplicating each other databanks.
Stasys Martišius (E-mail - SMart@nora.lzua.lt)
Informatikos skyrius, LZUU, LT4324 Kaunas-Akademija, Lithuania.