Project Title: Modern Laptops with Specialty Software

Project Lead’s Name: Thomas Tully

Email: tullytv@MiamiOH.edu

Phone: (513) 529-7200

Please Choose the Primary Affiliation: LIB

Are There Other Project Team Members?: Yes

Other Project Team Member: Tiffany Dogan

Other Team Member Email Address: dogantl@MiamiOH.edu

Brief description of project: Upgrade of current highly used checkout laptop computers with current machines including Adobe Creative Cloud Suite.

Does this project focus on graduate student education or graduate student life?: No

Describe the problem you are attempting to solve and your approach for solving that problem.: The B.E.S.T. (Business, Engineering, Science, and Technology) Library provides a variety of electronic items for checkout to all students. While constant updates to laptops for checkout is not possible, it is necessary to replace them frequently enough to reasonably meet the needs of the student population. The current machines will be 5 years old at the end of the fiscal year. Newer, faster, more modern replacements will be better able to serve the needs of the Miami University student body. While outdated hardware is the primary concern, another issue is the need to provide Adobe Creative Cloud, the industry standard for graphic creation and manipulation. This has completely replaced the Adobe Creative Suite and is now based on a subscription model. Because of this, many computer labs across campus have stopped supporting the software. This proposal includes a request to fund 6 licenses of Adobe Creative Cloud for a period of 1 year to be installed on half of the new machines.

The criteria state that technology fee projects should benefit students in innovative and/or significant ways. How would you describe the innovation and/or significance of your project?: The project has immense significance to the student population. Current laptops (6 Macbook Pros and 8 Dell PC's) have a combined 13,117 individual checkouts since being brought online in 2012. This amounts to, on average, 936 checkouts per laptop (see attached log for raw checkout data). Based on these statistics, laptops are immediately relevant to students and this student tech fee money will benefit them directly. Given the nature of a library, these new machines will be completely accessible to every current and incoming student over the next 4+ years of service. The current machines have provided value to library students over the past 5 years but are now several generations out-of-date.

How will you assess the project?: The entire library system uses a checkout system that records data on each transaction of each item. From this it will be able to generate usage statistics to show overall impact.

Have you applied for and/or received Tech Fee awards in past years?: No

What happens to the project in year two and beyond? Will there be any ongoing costs such as software or hardware maintenance, supplies, staffing, etc.? How will these be funded?: The laptops are expected to have a life span of 4 years. The Libraries will examine the one year usage of Adobe products on the laptops and determine future steps for that product. Laptop usage patterns will be weighed over their life cycle and decisions made in light of them.

Budget: Hardware, Software

Hardware Title(s) & Vendor(s): (Vendor - Apple) - Macbook pro laptops; (Vendor - Dell) - Dell Latitude 3379

Hardware Costs: $15,339.84

Software Title(s) & Vendor(s): (Adobe - Creative Suite) - Adobe Creative Cloud

Software Costs: $720.00

What is the total budget amount requested?: $16,059.84