I.T. Times
Volume 5, No 3 Information Technology News of the University of California, Davis December 1996


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Dear WWW:

Webmasters Respond to Multitude of Questions

by Catherine Curran
To whom would I communicate at UCD on the subject hulling of rice for the consumer? I am looking for a huller and for a cleaner or separator of the hulls from the rice. I am not interested in the polishing of rice, only in the hulling and taking of the hull.

You might want to contact our Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department . . . To say the World Wide Web is about computers is like saying books are about paper. Just ask Ken Weiss and Steve Faith, the aliases behind the www@ucdavis.edu e-mail address that appears on the UC Davis Home Page.

The programmer/analysts for Information TechnologyÕs Distributed Computing Analysis and Support were just doing their jobs when they gave the campus a home page on the Web in the Spring of 1993. After all, their unit is responsible for investigating new technologies and introducing them on campus.

"We put our feelers out to find out who on campus was doing something with this new kind of technology," says Faith. "Then we started going out and identifying resources we thought were good general campus information."

With a list that included the campus phone directory, campus map, and class schedule, the Webmasters built a front door to campus online. They created the www@ucdavis.edu alias so they could respond to technical questions, most of which they thought would be requests from other campus departments to link their Web site to the main campus page (http://www.ucdavis.edu/).

Since then, these self-proclaimed information highwaymen have been linking much more than Web sites. They read anywhere from 10 to 30 messages a day from visitors to the Davis home page, and rarely are the questions about the Web.

Alumni seeking alumni. Pet owners seeking advice. Students researching term papers. All have sent e-mail to www@ucdavis.edu and, in turn, sought guidance from these two Webmasters.

"For many people, Steve and I are the first point of contact with this institution," says Weiss, adding that many of the inquiries are the kind of questions typically received by a reference librarian.

At the University of California Academic Computing Symposium held in San Francisco in July, Weiss and Faith joined Mary Heath of the General Library in exploring informational issues surrounding the Web. In a presentation entitled Dear WWW: Is the Webmaster the New Campus Librarian? they shared messages sent to www@ucdavis.edu and discussed strategies for responding to the requests.

While some questions surrounding the role of the Webmaster remain unanswered, there is no doubt that the www@ucdavis.edu alias has helped propagate information at UC Davis. The number of Web pages linked to the main campus home page has grown from 387 in 1993 to nearly 52,000 today. The Cal Aggie Alumni Association, Admissions, Summer Sessions, and the Office of the Registrar are among the departments with Web sites that link to the main campus home page.

When questions come in related to these departments, Weiss says they now refer the sender to the appropriate Web site.

In an effort to reduce the number of messages sent to www@ucdavis, Weiss and Faith established a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) section on the campus Web site. While the information is useful, the questions keep coming.

And as long as the questions come, Ken Weiss and Steve Faith will do their best to answer them.