Traditionally, administrative computing has been the main, or often only, unit in a campus
developing and maintaining the basic operating systems of an institution (McKinney et al.,
1987). Information resources have been confined to an infrastructure, such as a mainframe
computer or minicomputers, which processes registration, financial aid, and other services (Van
Dusen, 1997). The advent of increasingly sophisticated software and hardware tools has
challenged the centralization of the control and manipulation of information resources. Crow and
Rariden (1993) describe an ideal information resource management model as follows:
Powerful software tools are available that can essentially eliminate the technical
expertise necessary to process either university-wide data or off-campus research
databases. … Students, faculty, and administrators will be able to ask and
answer their own data-related questions from their desks without the assistance
or intervention of a computer center’s staff (p. 467).