"HERS was state of the art--in the late seventies," Ledeen says.

And new FAS Registrar Arlene Becella notes that a simple alteration to records--such as a concentration's name change--took an entire summer to implement.

"We had these great workhorses, so we could enroll 35,000 students in three days," Becella says, "but we couldn't get information out of it that would help the Dean's office make decisions because the information was embedded in processes, in hard coding."

And its structure made it "impossible to provide access to more than few users--the cognoscenti," Ledeen says.

Those expert users--well-versed in the complicated HERS coding--are currently essential for the Registrar's Office to function.

"If the wrong four people all got sick on the same day, we'd be in serious jeopardy," says Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68. "[The new system, HERS-2,] will put the power into the hands of many."

Indeed, Ledeen says Nevo is creating a system which is "much more open, but still very secure."

Using "the most advanced software technology out there," HERS-2 will use a "three-tiered architecture," designed to be "flexible, powerful and easily expandable," Ledeen says.

Rather than the traditional client-server model of system architecture, the

Participating in formal training in April, thebeta testers will work on refining course catalogentries in HERS-2 for the 1998-99 CourseCatalog.

Eventually, the Registrar's Office will allowdepartmental administrators to enter all courseinformation directly on the Web.

The hope is that 75 to 80 percent of theentries for this time around will be handled bythe Registrar's Office, and a quarter will behandled by the departments," Cook says. "Withintwo or three years, those percentages willhopefully be reversed."

Cook also notes that departments who wish notto participate in the HERS-2 Web-based system cancontinue with the old paper-shuffling method,however "inherently inefficient" that may be.

Most of the departmental representatives whohave attended the demonstrations have respondedpositively, citing the greater efficiency, lesspaperwork and fewer errors that come with directaccess.

"I welcome new challenges," says Frances Y.Feldman, administrator of the Germanic Languagesand Literatures department, who sees there-technology as a way to "increase [her own]skill set."

"As long as there's adequate training...as longas there's help at the other end of the phoneline, I'm happy," she says.