Students who expected to access their course reserve materials electronically last week discovered that, even in the age of the Internet, paper is still the most reliable print medium.
The Electronic Course Reserve System — which gives students online access to course reserve materials — was shut down on Sept. 18 after it was infected by the Nimda computer virus. Students were left to complete their assignments in Firestone by reading backup copies — on paper.
University faculty and students did not seem to mind the inconvenience, however. "Nearly everyone was very understanding," University Librarian Marvin Bielawski said in an e-mail.
Administrators restored the system to full access on Saturday only after they were satisfied that they had completely contained the virus. No data was lost during the infection, Bielawski said.
Because the virus only targeted Microsoft computers, other Library systems such as the Main Online Catalog and Circulation — which run on the UNIX operating system — escaped unscathed.
The E-reserve system, however, runs on the Microsoft IIS server, which was specifically targeted by the virus, according to Bielawski.
The Nimda virus also infected several dozen other computers on the University network, according to OIT spokeswoman Rita Saltz.
"My perception is that Nimda hit the campus harder than any of the recent Internet scourges of recent years," Saltz said in an e-mail. "[It] might have done significantly more damage had OIT network systems folks not blocked connectivity for the infected hosts until the damage could be corrected and each host cleansed and secured."
The virus first began appearing on University computers on the morning of Sept.18, but the virus definition files that allow antivirus software to protect against the virus were not published until that evening, Saltz said.
Among a host of other infection methods, the virus can spread through an e-mail attachment that does not need to be opened to infect a user's computer.
To prevent the spread of such viruses in the future, Saltz encouraged students to download copies of the Norton Anti-Virus software, which is available free of charge to all University students. She also encouraged all University network users to keep their virus definition files up to date.
"Security and virus protection is not exclusively the province of OIT and University Libraries or Library Systems," Saltz said. "It must be everyone's business."
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