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October 1993 - Volume 10:2
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Where's Waldo? How to get in - and stay in - Penn's online directory
By Alfred C. D'Souza
Since its release in 1989, Penn's online directory of e-mail
addresses, Whois, has become a valuable resource both to e-mail users at
Penn and to their many correspondents worldwide. Usage statistics
indicate that there are between 3,000 and 4,000 directory requests every
month. The number of listings has grown from just under 700 in 1989 to
more than 6,500 including, for the first time, approximately 4,000
student entries. Clearly there has been a tremendous growth in e-mail
use at Penn, making an up-to-date online directory more important than
ever.
Help keep the data accurate!
Everyone with an e-mail address is encouraged to check the accuracy
of his or her listing in the online directory using one of the access
methods described in the sidebar below. Some important points to note
are:
- The computing services departments in the Schools are responsible
for providing the e-mail address listings for students. Students
please contact the appropriate office in your School if your
listing is incorrect. The PennInfo document "How to get e-mail
accounts at Penn" identifies these offices.
- Students' directory listings are governed by University policies
on the confidentiality of student records. Students who have
asked the University not to publish their "local address" are
included in the online directory with their e-mail address shown
as "unlisted," and students who have asked that all information
about them be suppressed are not in the directory at all.
- If you are a student and wish to change your address from listed
to unlisted (or vice versa), or if you no longer want all your
information suppressed, you may indicate this change on the
Personal Data Form (PDF) that the Registrar's Office sends to your
home over the summer. During the school year, you may send in a
written request or visit the Registrar's Office in the Franklin
Building.
- Faculty and staff can continue to send corrections or changes to
directory@dccs. Be sure to include your name with honorific
(e.g., Dr.), department or office, e-mail address, and PENNcard ID
number in the message.
- Faculty and staff whose PENNcard ID number is unknown to the Whois
database (you will get the message "Penn ID Unknown" when
requesting your listing) should send e-mail to directory@dccs
including the information listed above. In the near future, all
listings with unknown Penn IDs will be removed from the database.
Beyond Whois
The online directory is only the first step in the effort to
provide useful, accurate, and easily accessible data about Penn
people to members of the University and their colleagues. We hope
the directory will eventually include all the information in the
printed faculty /staff telephone directory, as well as the student
directory, and provide keyword searching to speed up information
retrieval. Before such an expanded directory can be developed, however,
a comprehensive University "people database" must be created. Many
issues must be resolved for this to happen. Stay tuned as we work on
these issues in cooperation with the Schools and administrative
departments.
ALFRED C. D'SOUZA is Director of Program Management for Data
Communications and Computing Services and Information Systems and
Computing.
Sidebar: How to access Whois
There are many ways to access Whois. These include:
- Access through All-In-1 (type last name at the To:
prompt); Elm (type ? at the Send the message to: prompt); and
Eudora (select E-mail Directory under Special and type last
name)
- Access through Gopher and the Macintosh PennInfo client software
- Telnet access (At the annex: prompt, type t whois; telnet to
whois.upenn.edu from an IP/Ethernet-connected computer)
- Whois access for users on VMS and UNIX systems
Please refer to PennInfo (under Computing and
Networking/Networking/DCCS Network Services/DCCS E-Mail Directory
service) for detailed information on these access methods.
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