Do you often go to Illinois.edu to do a people search? If so, you can save time and clicks by downloading NetID Lookup – a free Firefox add-on (created by your friends at The Quad).

This add-on simply creates a new item in your right-click menu so that when you highlight a netID or name, you right-click the highlighted netID, and it automatically opens the search result from the Illinois.edu People Search in a new tab. This works great in Gmail when you want to figure out a name based on an email address.

Download NetID Lookup securely from the Mozilla Add-ons page

As college students, we are awake at all times of the day and night – including 4:00 a.m. There are many of us who get a lot done at 4:00 am. Did you know that there is a smear campaign happenening against 4:00 am? Check it out on TED.

TED: Rives on 4 a.m.

Entrepreneurship at Illinois is becoming increasingly popular especially with the advent of the TEC, IEN, and AEL.

In honor of Entrepreneurship, check out Carl Schramm’s University of Illinois Commencement Address from this past May. He had some great, encouraging words of wisdom.

Carl Schramm delivered the Commencement Address at the University of Illinois’ 138th Campuswide Commencement Ceremony. Dr. Schramm also received an Honorary Degree. Carl Schramm is President and CEO of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Carl Schramm’s U of I Commencement Address from UI-7

Our school is set amidst the rural landscape of Illinois. The campus sits between the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. Students regularly choose between one or the other in choosing their place of residency, but what is the difference? Which one do you like better? The question has never been publicly asked. Here at The Quad, we are all about innovation and pioneering. We ask the tough questions. It is time to start and end this debate once and for all. Please join us, America. Answer the following poll and leave your comments below to tell us why.

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Some dorm rooms are better than others. Generally the dorms at Illinois are average – mostly built in the 1970s-1980s 1940s-1960s, they are simple but clean. For an interesting look into the history of dorm life, check out Time’s Evolution of College Dorms.

Before the information superhighway, schools were built around massive libraries, like the 400-year-old Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, above, in Britain. Early dorms were imposing, monastic structures meant to separate students from the outside world, providing more privacy for classes and introspection. This concept of the Ivory Tower lasted for decades. “If you look at the dorms of the Harvard Yard, the windows and doors are all on the yard side,” says Jonathan Zimmerman, director of the New York University’s History of Education Program. “Basically, what you see from the outside is a wall.”

Time Photo Gallery: Evolution of the College Dorm

The UIHistories Project is a really cool new website. It is a compilation of all the sources of the history of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. There are many interesting sections, including Class Tree Wars, University Yells, and a complete list of buildings over the years.

Check it out!

http://uihistories.ncsa.uiuc.edu

A story that has been circulating around campus for awhile goes something like this:

In the early 1990’s a firm was hired to build the new engineering library for the University of Illinois. Since it was a state project, the lowest bidder got the job. They designed the building, and it was built and opened in 1993. They loaded up the shelves, opened their doors for the new semester, and everything looked good.

Everything was not good, though. About two years later, the librarians noticed that the building was sinking – only slightly – but enough that it was noticeable. And “noticeable” is bad when it comes to sinking buildings.

As the the University of Illinois has the top-ranked civil engineering program in the nation, the library asked some civil engineers to check out the sinking problem. They went back and looked at the old specs of the building – what they found was disappointing.

When the architecture firm (that the University hired for cheap mind you) sent the plans to an engineer to verify the structural integrity, they sent it to a cheap, know-nothing civil engineering firm instead of asking the University to do it. What that cheap engineering firm did not plan for was the weight of the books in the library! Yes, the thousands of volumes that were moved into the library after it was built turned out to be slowly pushing the building into the ground at a pace unsafe to be ignored.

So the Grainger engineering library now has books only on the basement, first, and second floors, in order to keep the weight down, so that the library will sink no more. And you can bet that future building projects will be overseen by our own Civil Engineers.

After telling this story to a friend from another University, he said that he heard that their library was sinking too! Upon further research, we found many references to the “sinking library” story – including a reference in a recent episode of “How I Met Your Mother”. I’m sorry to report, however, that this story is false.

Do you use voice mail? I find that more and more college students avoid voice mail and simply send txt messages. Or many people just call someone back if they missed their calls. Is voice mail nearly dead?

… In an age of instant information gratification, the burden of having to hit the playback button — or worse, dial in to a mailbox and enter a pass code — and sit through “ums” and “ahs” can seem too much to bear.

Many dread the process or, like Mr. Hamrick, avoid it altogether, raising the question: is voice mail on its way to becoming obsolete?

New York Times: You’ve Got Voice Mail, but Do You Care?

Photo by JonJon2k8

Did you know that The University of Illinois Library System is one of the leaders in digitizing public-domain books?

As a member of the Open Content Alliance,
UIUC Library is digitizing and contributing to the Internet Archive books and serials from its collections that focus on Illinois history, literature, and natural resources; rural life and agriculture; railroad history and engineering; and works in translation. UIUC Library is a member of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), which has recently joined the Google Library Project. Visit the Illinois Harvest web portal to find more digital content from the UIUC Library.

Check out the Digitized Book of the Week – an Illinois blog featuring one of those such digitized books every week.

Digitized Book of the Week

“This I Believe is an international project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives. These short statements of belief, written by people from all walks of life, are archived here and featured on public radio in the United States, as well as in regular broadcasts on NPR. The project is based on the popular 1950s radio series of the same name hosted by Edward R. Murrow.”

We recently ran across a “This I Believe” essay by John W. Fountain, who was at the time a professor of journalism here at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. These essays that were covered by NPR are even more interesting because they get the original author to read them. Click “Listen Now” on the essay page to hear it.

This I Believe: The God Who Embraced Me by John W. Fountain

Some other interesting essays:
This I Believe: There Is No God by Penn Jillette
This I Believe: The Elusive Yet Holy Core by Kathy Dahlen
This I Believe: An Optimistic View of the World by astronaut Dan Tani
This I Believe: Presidents Hoover and Truman

NPR Archive (audio)
All Essays