The server that controls 21 machines on the first, third and sixth floors in the Gelman library received a major virus last Friday. The backup server was unable to be brought online, and information technology specialists had to reconstruct the old server from scratch.

“I am confident we will have them back and running before Thursday morning,” said William A. Mayer, assistant University librarian for information technology.

Mayer said about a week ago the server that controls a set of public terminals in the library crashed.

He said technicians deployed a back-up server to get those terminals back online, but due to a bug in the server configuration, the back-up server could not go online.

Mayer said his team worked through the weekend, but as of Sunday night there was still no secure back-up server to deploy.

He said he instructed his staff to rebuild the dead server on Monday so the computers could function.

Finally, after dealing with a host of other issues, and a campus-wide network outage this morning, Mayer and his team have a clear picture of what’s going wrong, why and what they need to do to get the computers back online.

“I apologize to the student community for this recent round of computer outages,” said Mayer, “I know full well the tensions this time of year bring, and am working very hard with my staff to ensure we maintain strong computing support for you all. I encourage all students who are interested to contact me with questions, complaints, or ideas on how they think we could better support their research needs here at GW.”

Mayer said students with technical problems in the library can contact him at (202) 994-3582 or via e-mail at [email protected].