It's Not The Same Lounge It Was Before

Humanities 254, that is. After an often times hectic summer during which many members of the department found themselves involved in switching around offices, packing and unpacking countless boxes, and moving, cleaning, and even assembling furniture, perhaps in no place are the major changes made over the past few months more evident than in Room #254.

Many of you have no doubt made use of this space during prior semesters, or at the very least passed through it on your way to visit the offices of Professors Blum, Hargett, or yours truly. But in contrast to the previous layout, when you enter the room now it should appear much more open. The bookshelf has been relocated slightly to make way for a sofa. And gone is the moveable dividing wall that previously made the room appear so much more narrow and confined.

The most noteworthy alteration, however, is the replacement of our three old computers with five brand new machines and the addition of a printer. Yes - and let me reiterate this in bold, eye-catching font - a printer! Just as the computers are intended for student use, so too is the printer available for students in the department provided that they bring their own supply of paper. It's not a hard thing to do and this, we hope, will encourage even more students to make use of this and the many other resources available to you in Humanities 254.

After all, it is supposed to be your space, and whether that means typing up and printing out homework on the computers or gathering around the main table for language practice, you are always welcome to stop by. So long as one of us with an office adjoining Room 254 are around we will do our best to keep the door open and the place accessible. This semester, keep your eyes out for an open door on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons.

Listserv subscriptions

The university recently started closing e-mail accounts of alumni, and as a consequence I've been seeing a number of bounced messages from the EAS listserv. If you used to get listserv messages but now don't, this is probably the problem. If you'd like to be back on the listserv, though, it is easy to do that. Just go to http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=eas&A=1 (if that link doesn't work, try http://www.albany.edu/eas/listserv_forum.html) and sign up with whatever e-mail account you're currently using.

Refurbishing the Web Site

The University at Albany has decided to entirely re-vamp its website, beginning this summer. You might not have noticed any changes at all if you've been surfing because they're making the changes gradually and in many cases the appearance of the page will be the same. In any event, I will also be changing the EAS website over to the new system (for those of you in the know about web servers, we're moving from an independent DreamWeaver based system to a "content management" system, RedDot) sometime next academic year. At least, that's what the administration has told me to expect.

What does this mean? Well, among other things, it means that I'll be revisiting the content of the department site and thinking about how it might be improved. Imput from students would be a big help--are there features you use all the time and don't want to see changed? Is there something you think could be done better? Is there anything superfluous on the page that we could get rid of?

Ultimately, I'd like the page to serve BOTH the "outside" community (prospective students, etc.) and the "inside" community (current students, faculty, staff) well. And--here's the rub--I don't want to spend every waking moment webmastering. Whatever we do should be relatively low-maintenance. The "content management" system prevents me from making any changes to the graphics (colors, fonts, layout, etc.) of a basic university web site, so there's no point in thinking about that. Really all we have control over is the actual text.

Please send me your comments, either by e-mail if you want them to remain private (fessler@albany.edu) or here on this blog.