Word processing and graphics: New technology, old problems

During the past two years, the University of Scranton has experienced a tremendous growth of interest in both word processing and in computer graphics. In both cases we still had the age-old problem of user requests for use of equipment whose capabilities they failed to understand. Our handling of word processing was different from our handling of graphics for a variety of reasons. However, in both cases we have achieved satisfactory results in that we have set a reasonable direction for good user services. With word processing, the users were more directly involved in the equipment selection process while with graphics, because of the diversity of user requests, users were not directly involved in equipment purchases. In this paper we present our experiences with our attempts to control problems associated with these new technologies.