IBM has several other tricks up its sleeve to win the hearts and minds of America’s brightest and best over to the IBM view of the world: Isaac, Information Sharing for Advanced Academic Computing, is a free, easily usable interactive electronic bulletin board and database for exchanging information about computer-based aids to higher education that was developed at the University of Washington; Wisc-Ware is a distribution network set up by the University of Wisconsin at Madison with IBM funding, that collects, tests and distributes research and instructional software developed for IBM micros at colleges across the US; SoftInfo is a new database developed by the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut, again with IBM cash, to provide the higher education community with a comprehensive listing of sources that describe, review, evaluate and in some cases recommend software with applications in higher education; and agreements have been reached with several societies to set up pilot projects, using IBM cash and equipment, to encourage the development, evaluation and sharing of superior academic software – the societies will establish a process for evaluating software in their discipline area in a procedure similar to peer review of articles for professional journals.
