University administrators will soon finish phasing in a new online file sharing system that they say will reduce the amount of software held on university computers, but could leave faculty with less storage space.

The new network, GUShare, is a Web-based application designed to allow administrators and professors to store their work and gives them the ability to make it accessible to their co-workers, said Beth Ann Bergsmark, director of University Information Services. Although the program was launched in January, its predecessor, Novell – which stores files for most Georgetown faculty – will remain active until Dec. 6, giving faculty members less than two remaining months to move their work.

Will Anderson, UIS associate director, said that Novell servers require additional software to be installed on all Georgetown computers. Since GUShare is based on the Internet, he said that it can be accessed from any computer with a faculty or staff member’s Net ID and password and does not use up hard-drive space.

Bergsmark added that GUShare makes it easier for Georgetown faculty to collaborate on projects with staff at other universities and organizations. Under the new system, a faculty member can send a password-protected “ticket” to someone outside GU to share a file, she said.

Anderson said that this was a primary motivation for creating the new system.

“We decided to go with a system that allowed for more sharing for not only people at Georgetown, but outside the university as well,” he said.

Bergsmark added that each member of the Georgetown faculty is given 450 megabytes of storage for individual use on GUShare. Each university department receives between two and 10 gigabytes on GUShare, depending on its size and need for file-sharing, she said.

But Diana Owen, director of the American studies program, said that while the new network has its benefits over the current system, GUShare does not provide enough storage space.

“From what I’ve heard, the space that we are going to be allocated for departments might not be big enough to do the kinds of things we want to do,” she said.

Owen also questioned the functional capabilities and security of the new network, citing the tendency of Georgetown’s Web-based e-mail server to experience frequent delays and occasionally crash.

“How well is it really going to work? How secure is it?” she asked.

UIS began holding training sessions for faculty members earlier in the semester on the new program. Bergsmark said that over 2,200 faculty members have already begun to use the new system.

“While GUShare is relatively straightforward, we encourage faculty and staff to attend training sessions, to learn some shortcuts and increase their comfort level,” she said.