The solution could be literally at the tips of your fingers.

The UB Academic Community is a database of information by and about UB faculty. Its name reflects a desire to encourage faculty in all disciplines to participate. The UB Academic Community is "critically important to UB's present and future," said Provost Thomas E. Headrick.

It's crucial in terms of the long-term development of the university," he said. "It's important for faculty here to know about their colleagues, their work and their scholarly interests, and to have a basis for developing intellectual and academic connections, collaborations and friendships. It's also important to display to the world the quality and strength we have at the university, as well as the range of research and scholarship that exists here." More than 650 faculty from across the university are currently listed on the UB Academic Community database, and the goal is to ultimately have every faculty member participate.

The UB Academic Community contains biographical information on faculty, such as academic degrees, previous positions, scholarly interests and expertise, academic honors and awards, professional memberships, foreign language proficiency, publications, grants and patents.

Anew component of the UB Academic Community concerns faculty members' public service activities-those that help generate creative yet practical solutions to a wide range of societal needs. Looking at its uses in terms of promoting public service, Acting Vice President for Public Service and Urban Affairs John B. Sheffer II noted, "The potential for identifying new areas for collaborative ventures and interdisciplinary projects in public service is expanded tremendously. It is hoped that by reporting our own service activities and interests, others will not only become aware of UB's commitment to service, but also become interested in partnering with us."

The system is searchable by selecting keywords that describe areas of scholarly interest or by using other search stratagems such as individual names, past and present insitutional affiliations, or recent publications. Dean Fredrick W. Seidl of the School of Social Work recounts his first experience searching the UB Academic Community. "I was preparing a talk on the topic of 'self-help' and performed a search using that as the keyword. I found seven other people at UB. Of the seven, I knew three of these individuals but didn't realize that any of them shared my interest in the topic."

Once an individual matching the search criteria is identified, there is the potential (via hyperlinks) to immediately send a communication to a faculty member's e-mail address or to access a faculty member's homepage where entire publications, a complete cv-or whatever other electronic information that may have been posted-may be found.

Getting on the database is straightforward (see sidebar). Faculty can input their information directly on-line, or by using questionnaires available on a Mac or DOS-formatted diskette or in print.

The UB Academic Community is part of the Community of Science database which, at present, has information about 55,000 faculty from throughout the U.S. and Canada. Built in collaboration with more than 125 institutions of higher education, its purpose is to provide a comprehensive directory of scholarship via the Web.

The Community of Science also contains access to information of potential value to faculty: grants that have been awarded by federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, and funding opportunities from federal agencies and sources such as the Federal Register and the Commerce Business Daily-all searchable using the "keyword" approach. Currently in process is an effort to directly link faculty's scholarly interests with federal funding opportunities so that a new funding opportunity is sent via e-mail to a faculty member whose fields of interest correspond with those designated in the request for proposal.

"It's the most advanced and powerful database of its kind," said Dale M. Landi, UB vice president for research. "It's very inexpensive to UB and provides UB with high visibility to external funding sources. Internally, it provides us with a more comprehensive understanding of the diversity and wealth of expertise at UB."

The Community of Science database initially was created as a means to facilitate university-industry interactions, and an early effort to collect information from UB faculty was made in 1990 by the Office of the Vice President for Research, but the system proved to have limited effectiveness. Better information was available centrally, but it was not directly accessible to faculty or departmental administrators.

Technology changed all that.

Once it was posted on the World Wide Web, the Community of Science allowed personnel at UB and other institutions of higher education to be both providers and consumers of the information.

And the system has taken off, receiving more than a million "hits" each month from inquirers in the private and public sectors as well as from within academe.

That's important to UB for two reasons, Landi said. It gives outside sponsors, "mainly industrial sponsors," comprehensive and readable access to information regarding UB faculty, UB's research centers, and the university's inventions that are available for licensing.

"It also plays an important role internally in helping UB faculty understand who else at the university has the expertise to help them," Landi said.

For example, he said, a complex grant proposal may require the expertise of faculty from six or seven research areas. "We can use the database quickly and join faculty together in collaborative efforts," Landi said.

Three provostal areas contribute financial support to maintain the system: The Office of the Vice President for Research, the Graduate School and the Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Urban Affairs.