The role of computer networks in aerospace engineering - Libraries and the Internet: Education, Practice & Policy

Research conducted from a user perspective can be utilized by network policy-makers, system designers, and service providers (at both the national and organizational levels) in a number of ways. It can help them:

* anticipate and avoid conflicts by discovering where attitudes and

expectations vary among different groups;

* understand and estimate networking impacts and benefits by

revealing both direct and second order effects;

* develop products and services well-suited to customer/client needs;

* choose appropriate network designs and features to meet users'

real needs;

* devise strategies to promote network use;

* develop appropriate management and use policies;

* implement effective mechanisms for user training and support by

finding out who is having what kind of problem;

* prepare appropriate evaluations of network systems and services

by identifying a variety of goals and objectives and assessing the

degree to which they have been met. Thus user-based research is important in planning for the NREN and the NII. It offers an important complement to networking investigations that concentrate on technical and financial analyses and can help assure that national networking goals will be optimally met.

ACKNOWLEDMENT

This article was originally presented at the AIAA 32nd Aerospace Sciences Meeting & Exhibit, January 1994, Reno, Nevada. The research reported here was supported by the Council on Library Resources, NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Indiana Center for Survey Research; it was funded under the NASA/DoD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Project. Portions were conducted with the assistance and advice of John M. Kennedy, director, Indiana Center for Survey Research, and Thomas E. Pinelli, assistant to the Chief of the Research Information and Applications Division, NASA Langley Research Center. The Society of Automotive Engineers provided the sample used in this study.

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