Hinman mail box users must change their official mailing address by Jan. 1, postal administrators announced last week.
The U.S. Postal Service is converting its post offices from a hand-sorting system to computerized sorting, which means that mail delivery will be faster.
But to get the faster service, Hinman box users will have to change the address format they use.
Currently most students and administrators format their addresses "Hinman Box 6175."
The new equipment requires that address be written "6175 Hinman."
Donald Lemay, the postmaster in Lebanon, N.H., said the upgraded technology will not be in place until the beginning of next year, so there will be no change in service until then.
"We're just trying to get everyone ready," said Lemay, who sent a letter to every Hinman box announcing the change.
Steve Place, a mail piece design analyst with the postal service in White River Junction, Vt., said the new system will speed up mail delivery.
Currently incoming College mail is sorted once at the White River Junction processing center and then trucked to the Lebanon Carrier Annex, where the mail is then hand-sorted for each box number.
The new machinery will use an optical character reader at the White River Junction facility to scan envelopes. It then prints a bar code on the envelope.
The bar-coded mail is then sent to the Lebanon Carrier Annex where another new machine will sort the mail for each Hinman box based on the encoded information.
Since the new mail sorting system uses "Box" to mean "Post Office Box," College mail addressed to a "Hinman Box" will be encoded for Hanover Post Office boxes, resulting in a delivery delay.
But Lemay said "there's no need for anyone to panic about the address change. Even if the old format is used after January 1, mail will still get to students -- just not as quickly."
The Lebanon Post Office knew since the beginning of the year that new technology was arriving, but delays and "poor planning" resulted in the late notification to students, Lemay said.
Lemay said he wanted to notify freshmen of the new system over the summer, but "we just forgot about it until September and October."
