Shane's Professional projects

This page covers work and projects I did while a full-time employee of GSLIS. There's a separate page for my work as a graduate student.

One of the projects I'm most proud of I unfortunately can't show. For years GSLIS has struggled with maintaining an inventory of computer systems. As a grad student I worked on an Access database that helped somewhat, but was impractical because it could only be used by one person at a time. In the spring of 2000, I decided that the best solution was a web-enabled database. As such, I learned enough PHP and MySQL to produce a decent tool for myself and my full-time tech colleagues to track our computer inventory. Unfortunately, since much of the information is not for public consumption, it's password protected.

Late in the summer of 2000, I realized that the same tools could be used to create a signup system for advising. Previously, every student in GSLIS had to sign up for an advisig time on a sheet of paper residing just outside our main office. This situation is increasingly inefficient due to the number of distance and web-based students we have. The result, still in the testing phase, is the Online Advising Scheduler. You can move through the system a little bit, but please don't create any appointments. During the fall advising period, one of our professors and his advisees used the system and seemed to like the convenience. This spring, we hope to have several more professors try it out before we move all our faculty to the system.

Shane Williams

Last modified: Mon Feb 5 10:51:41 CST 2001