Date: June 11, 1990

Title: Focus/DESKTOP PUBLISHING/Edison College Prepares To Make the Jump Into Desktop Publishing

Edison College in Trenton has 7,202 students, but no classrooms or campus. The college helps students turn knowledge acquired on the job into college credits and degrees. During the past few years, Edison has been following the road that so many companies and institutions have taken as it entered the world of computers. Now it is about to venture into desktop publishing.

Two and a half years ago, Edison made its first major move into computers when it installed a minicomputer network. Drew W. Hopkins, the director of management information systems, installed a Wang office system that consisted of four large mini computers and 150 work stations. This provided word processing, electronic mail and a variety of other office services.

The arrival of a Wang terminal on virtually everyone”s desk changed the way work at Edison was done. Says Hopkins “The system was an immediate success. Within two weeks, the staff was reliant on it and couldn”t figure out how they ever existed without it.” Memos became a thing of the past when people began using electronic mail. Most dictation ended because staffers were writing their own letters on terminals. The Wang system also helped speed communications with Edison”s outlying offices in East Orange and Cherry Hill.

One of the iron laws of computers is that once the machines arrive in an office people will start finding new uses for them. One of the unexpected uses that Edison staffers found was presentation graphics. Using the software program Harvard Graphics, people began preparing charts, tables and other visual presentations for the college”s internal documents. A dozen Wang personal computers, which work like IBM personal computers, were bought to supplement the minicomputer network and people unknowingly ventured into the world of desktop publishing. Harvard Graphics showed how pictures and text could be combined at the computer terminal.

By early 1989, Hopkins decided that the college should be moving deeper into desktop publishing. The arguments seemed compelling. Says Idalie M. Munoz, the director of communications: “Publications are so important to us because of the way we operate, and we knew that we would be needing more and more.” Cost is one of the attractions of doing more work in-house. Savings on typesetting alone are expected to be substantial. Flexibility is another attraction. Says Munoz: “We have all learned how much time and work you can save by doing everything electronically. In addition, desktop publishing would give you lots of flexibility to reposition text and move pictures around. You just control things better. You can take a look at a layout and change it on the fly.” Finally, the turnaround time between preparing the text and receiving the final document is expected to be much less. At present, it takes the college six weeks to prepare a quarterly newsletter. Munoz expects that she will be able to cut that to two weeks.

Hopkins began his venture into desktop publishing by looking at the Xerox system. But he did not stop long there. One of his priorities for any new desktop publishing system was that it work in Edison”s existing computer world that was dominated by the Wang equipment. Another feature that he was looking for was ease of use. After examining available software, Hopkins bought PageMaker, which he turned over to his associate director, James Brossoie. One of the first products was the cover for the president”s annual report to the Board of Trustees.

Now Hopkins and Munoz are getting ready to move desktop publishing into Edison in full force. One of the first steps Munoz took was to require that a new design on a quarterly newsletter be done with desktop publishing in mind. Her plan is that an outside art director will lay out the framework for the publication, which will then be produced by her staff using desktop tools. Hopkins says that training other staffers to use the PageMaker software is the next step. How long will it take now to get the desktop publishing system up and running? Says Hopkins “I hope that people will feel comfortable with it in six months and will be making good use of it within a year.”