Customer Alert: Many IS Groups Prepare to Move to N42

Naomi Schmidt

In an effort to consolidate IS groups scattered across campus, IS staff from Buildings 11, E19, and E40 will move to N42 starting the third week in January. N42 - the former Graphic Arts building - is located at 211 Massachusetts Avenue, two blocks northwest of the Institute main entrance. The building will include offices and other work areas for 92 staff and 42 students, as well as conference rooms and a Demo Center.

Groups moving to N42 include the Computing Help Desk, the Athena/Residential Computing Consultants, and the Training and Publications group. Also moving are the Academic Computing and Campus Wide Information Systems (CWIS) groups. These teams will be joined by others from the Discovery, Integration, and Delivery Processes, making the building an important hub for IS, its sole tenant.

Barring a blizzard or other such emergency, the various groups will move in phases, starting January 22 and continuing for about two weeks. During the 36 hours surrounding the move of a group, phones for that group will go to voice mail. (The Computing Help Desk, which will start its move on January 23, will provide limited service on January 23 and 26.)

IS hopes to make the moves as transparent to its clients as possible. If you plan to visit anyone in IS during the transition, call ahead to make sure that you know where to go.

Changes in Service
IS customers should note the following changes resulting from the move:

  Starting in January, all IS hands-on training classes will be taught at W89, the MIT Learning Center at 301 Vassar Street. Classes that were taught in two half-day sessions in the past will be taught in one full day to save participants from having to make two trips to W89.

  Noontime Quick Start classes and user group meetings will start to be offered in both E40-302 and N42 sometime later in the winter.

  Open Lab sessions, previously held in the IS Training Lab in Building 11, have been discontinued. IS is working with the MIT Libraries to make these materials available for loan.

  N42 will be the new port of call for walk-in customers of the Computing Help Desk (especially worth keeping in mind if you have equipment in tow).

  The Faculty Liaison Office, Athena Test Cluster, and Faculty Project Lab will move to N42. Faculty and TAs are welcome to come to the new location to use Athena workstations and high-end multimedia equipment (scanners, video digitizers, and multimedia software).

  The CWIS group will continue to work with their customers in the new facility, just as they did in E40.