KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY LOOKING FOR MISSING COMPUTERSWKYT 27 NEWSFIRST & WYMT Mountain News - $2 million worth of computers unaccounted for at UKLEXINGTON, Ky. -- The University of Kentucky is looking for 958 computers worth more than $2 million that were purchased for employees.


Officials believe most are likely being used by faculty, although some may have been stolen.

UK Provost Mike Nietzel wrote faculty and administrators May 4, asking employees to report the computers they're using off-campus.

"The university continues to experience an epidemic loss of laptop and desktop computers, printers and digital printers, Nietzel's memo said.

Nietzel said the school hasn't actually lost $2 million worth of computer equipment.

"We have an accumulation of $2 million worth of computers where we don't know where they are. I suspect this memo will help us locate the vast majority of those computers."

Rep. Kathy Stein, D-Lexington, whose district includes UK, said she believes the losses are a glitch.

"One would think that there would be a tighter procedure, that there would be a check on that equipment from time to time," Stein said.

According to the UK memo, academic departments lost track of 696 computers in the 2002-03 academic year that were originally valued at $1.8 million. Of that number, 213 had been purchased after 2000. In 2003-04, academic departments couldn't account for an additional 262 computers originally valued at $334,347, including 75 purchased in 2000 or later.

"This represents a loss of approximately one computer every working day of the year," Nietzel wrote in the memo.

Nietzel said some computers probably have been stolen. He said the university has no central storage area for used computers. Older computers that are not used by faculty or staff at home are often placed in building hallways or unsecured rooms, he said, and some of them are stolen.

In his memo, Nietzel told deans that older models should be used at home or added to the school's surplus equipment pool.

Nietzel said he also thinks that most of the computers UK can't locate are being used by UK faculty and staff but that they haven't been logged in the campus equipment inventory. Some of the computers that don't get recorded, he said, are purchased with money generated by grants and contracts.

"Some faculty have the misimpression that equipment purchased with grants and contracts that they secured belongs to them," Nietzel wrote in the memo.

Others include older computers that are replaced with newer models, he said. Those older computers are often given to faculty for home use without being recorded in the inventory.