SEPTEMBER 17, 1998-vol30n4: Questions & Answers

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 4 THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1998

Questions & Answers

Rebecca Bernstein is associate director of publications and director of electronic media at UB. A 1981 UB graduate, she became a member of the professional staff that same year.

What do you do as director of electronic media?

I'm charged with developing UB's online Internet presence. Because of the high volume of traffic we get on UB's Web site (http://www.buffalo.edu)-about 5.6 million hits a month, with more than two-thirds coming from outside of UB-the university funded a Web team to show leadership in developing "best" sites that promote UB to the outside world and to create wonderful tools that could be used by the entire UB on-line community to improve academic and administrative sites. I'm the leader of that team.

Where does electronic media fit into UB's needs and goals?

How people "shop" for higher education has changed over the past 10 years. Their needs and expectations, the demographic composition have shifted radically. Part of what has changed is influenced by economics, competition, shrinking financial-aid and scholarship pools and higher customer-service expectations. The part that relates to my job is the expectations of prospective students, alumni, friends and our own UB community that the university will have a rich, intuitive online presence.

What are some of the projects you're working on now?

There are so many I could fill this entire paper. Some of the more interesting projects the Web team has worked on are the online interactive calendar <http://www. buffalo. edu/calendar>; the new site giving directions to UB <http://www. buffalo.edu/directions>; QuickSearch, a fast "finding" service <http://www.buffalo.edu/search.html>; the News Services site <http://www.buffalo.edu/news> that hosts the latest information promoting UB's accomplishments (my favorite thing about this site is the new subscription service), and the site that won a top national award, UBexplorer <http://www.buffalo.edu/explorer>. Coming up in the near future is an admissions site that will give a personalized portfolio of information to prospective undergraduate students, and a fully searchable campus map that organizes information both by buildings and the departments that are located in them.

How large is your staff?

We have five core full-time members and a group of the most wonderful students on the planet without whom we could not even begin to take on what we do, as well as partners all over campus who help us shape and maintain the sites we create and support our infrastructure. First and foremost among these partners is Computing and Information Technology (CIT).

What's the most exciting part of your job?

I thrive on every project being a different set of challenges. I'm a person who always needs a new challenge. I love coming up with ideas and solving problems, the more unsolvable the better. I also love technology. I've been computing now since 1976 and am proud to be part of yet another digital revolution.

What's the most challenging part of your job?

Creating approaches to electronic communications that did not exist before. The Web team loves to create and the act of creation is a challenging one.

What major obstacles have you run into?

That there are not enough resources available to us to do all the things that we need to do to make eUB truly a customer service-oriented site, chock full of the resources that everyone needs. It forces us to turn down opportunities that we would really love to take on. The good news is that every other university that we compete with is in a similar situation.

What's your favorite Web site and why?

Cybertimes, the online only section of The New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/tech/indexcyber.html> For breaking news, I'm riding CNN, but to find out how the world of technology is being used and what interesting issues are being raised, I log into Cybertimes. The other thing is that it provides links to places that take me on wonderful non-linear adventures. If I can shamelessly plug, my other favorite sites are nuvs 007 shrine, <http://www.nuvs.com/jbond/>, because I am <http://www.becauseIam.com/>, and UB art gallery <http://www.art gallery.buffalo.edu>, all done by Web-team students.

What's something people don't know about you and should?

I have an amazing 6-year-old daughter, Dakota, who knows more about computers than I do.

What question do you wish I had asked, and how would you have answered it?

What is your vision for UB's Web? UB's Web is like an ecosystem; it's as strong as its weakest link. All of the parts inter-relate and strengthen each other. Content maintenance should be distributed to the people best able to maintain accurate and timely information. For example, financial aid should have the best, most-timely, and accurate information on financial aid, admissions should have the best information on how to apply. Sites should link to that information rather than taking precious resources creating it and maintaining it themselves. We should be moving to a more dynamic, database-driven presentation where customized content is available for our e-visitors. UB's Web site should provide a customer-friendly, intuitive environment where people do not have to search for the content they desire. For example, what if you went to a mall and walked into a store to buy a shirt, only to find that you had to go to one store to find the buttons and another to buy the sleeves, and there were things about the shirt that you knew you needed but you could not even begin to be able to imagine what it was. Your expectation would be to walk into a store and select a shirt including everything you need off of the rack. Similarly, we need to have a site that builds information relationships between our e-visitors and all of the information that they are seeking, and delivers the information to them.