Abstract
Based on the assumption that their purpose was to provide information to all University "customers," some of whom might need access only occasionally, Cornell Information Technologies (CIT) approached client/server access as a business problem. CIT focused on providing access to usable, sharable data from Cornell's legacy systems, keeping the interface as transparent as possible, and designed a development strategy and user modules that could be transferred to a variety of institutional settings. The Project Mandarin Consortium is a group of seventeen universities that continue to be involved in developing, improving, and employing the technology designed by this project.