Today marks the official unveiling of the online Dartmouth Interactive Directory, the project that required students waiting in line for registration to stop in front of a video camera before entering Alumni Hall.
According to Jason Hsiao '98, one of the five students who spearheaded the project, the DID is designed as a way for students to express themselves and "discover the depth of people on campus."
Hsiao said he envisions students using the DID for everything from borrowing an organic chemistry book to finding someone to go mountain biking with on the weekend.
"Basically how it works is that every person has their own home page," he said.
Students will be able to identify themselves and search for other students in a variety of areas including name, residence, academic interests, athletics and affiliations. There are also places on the individual pages for people to add quotes and links to personal home pages.
Hsiao said he believes the DID will give people the opportunity to represent themselves as individuals. "We've told people, 'This is your billboard for the school.'"
With the DID, "you aren't just a name and a year anymore," he said.
One concern that has arisen is whether people outside Dartmouth will have access to the information they have entered.
According to Hsiao, students wishing to conduct a search must first type in their name and BlitzMail password. Like the already existing Dartmouth Name Directory, only members of the Dartmouth community will be able to conduct a search on the DID.
Though some students may be concerned about their photo appearing on the web, Hsiao said, students have the option not to include a picture.
A video camera outside registration on Monday captured pictures of students for future use on the website.
Privacy is also a concern, but students can include as little or as much information about themselves as they want to. All information in the directory is voluntarily entered by the student.
"You don't have to put anything in. If you don't want people to know about your obsession with goldfish, then don't put it in," Hsiao said. "You have the liberty of presenting yourself exactly as you want to."
In addition to Hsiao, Brad Jefferson '98, Duncan Simmons '99, Peter Graf '99 and Steve Clifton '01 -- all five of whom hail from Bellevue High School in Seattle -- have spent the last two years trying to create the interactive student directory.
Hsiao said the idea for the project came to him two years ago, when he and Jefferson had trouble finding another student in the Green Book. After flipping back and forth searching for someone by first name he said he felt there ought to be a better way to search for other students.
When they first began developing the idea of the directory, they had difficulty getting support from the administration or the Student Assembly for their project.
"We just started making it ... it was really just done out of the basement," Hsiao said.
They developed a working model run off a friend's computer and database.
"Eventually they realized we were serious," Hsiao said.
Rich Brown, Computing Services special projects manager, and Eric Bivona, Information Systems senior programmer, were particularly influential in working out many of the technical details involved in the DID.
"What happened was, we heard this program was coming, and that they were planning on using a separate server," Brown said. "We proposed they might want to run it on the existing network."
According to Bivona, the advantage to hosting the DID on the Dartmouth network is that it would have access to regularly updated software and "other infrastructure stuff."
Although it has taken over 400 hours of time and two years to develop the program, the development itself cost nothing.
Student Assembly President Frode Eilertsen '99 said he heard Hsiao's idea last August, when the developers were having trouble getting the DID past the administration. He said the Assembly pushed the proposal towards the administration in the fall.
Eilertsen said until Kiewit gave the DID support, "not just with maintenance, but with the Dartmouth server," the Assembly was prepared to put up money for a server.
According to Case Dorkey '99, the Assembly's chair of the administrative and faculty relations committee, the Assembly approved up to $1,700 on Tuesday to cover promotional costs and the use of the video camera for the photos.
Dorkey said he believes the DID might one day replace Mugshots, the upperclass face book.
"The advantage of Mugshots is that you have a hard copy to carry around with you and have even after you've left campus, but [the DID] has tons of potential for faculty and alumni," he said. "The sky's the limit in terms of what it will be able to do."
Students can check out the directory and edit their personal pages at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~did.
