So, why put up with the hassle of a web page if you can just pick up the phone book and get the same information?
The web page offers some advantages over the printed phone directory: The UMDNJ phone book is published only once a year, but the on-line directory is updated more often. So, the data in the on-line directory may be more accurate than the phone book.
The UMDNJ phone book (like most phone books) lists entries sorted by last name. This is fine if you know the last name of the person whose information you want. But, the on-line directory lets you search based on up to eight different criteria: Name (can be first, last or both parts of name), Telephone number, Building/Location, Unit, Department, Section, Email address, and Fax phone number.
This is useful if, for instance, you only know a telephone number and want to find out what office or person answers that phone (some phones are shared by more than one person.) To perform this reverse telephone number search, enter the phone number on the web page form in the space labeled, "Telephone number" and submit the form.
Perhaps you want to create a directory of telephone numbers located near to where you work. You could find your location in the Building/Location menu of choices, perhaps select a particular floor or department, then submit the form to get a list of all the people with offices nearby.
You will not always get the results you expect, though. One constraint built into the on-line faculty and staff directory is that it will not show the results if more than 25 entries match the search criteria. This is done in order to reduce the likelihood that the on-line directory would be used to create lists for unsolicited phone calls or mass mailings. (The on-line directory may be used by anybody with access to the World Wide Web; people outside UMDNJ can and do access the directory.)
If your search results in more than 25 matches, you will need to narrow your search criteria. One way to do this is to enter "a*" in the name field and "??00" in the Telephone number field. This restricts the matches to include only those entries whose four digit telephone extension ends in "00" and whose first or last name begins with the letter "a" (doing this might overconstrain your search, though, and result in no matches.)
That last example used the asterisk and question mark characters. These characters have a special meaning to the on-line directory and are called "wildcard" characters because they can represent more than one character. A question mark will match any single character. So the pattern "A?a?" will match "Alan", "Adam", and "Ahab." An asterisk will match any number of characters (including none at all.) So the pattern "Will*" will match "Will", "William", and "Willy."
One last technical point might make it clearer how the on-line directory works: The directory database indexes all of its information by "words." The definition of a "word" for the directory database is any sequence of characters separated by a space, a hyphen (-), or an "at" symbol (@). Experiment with this by typing my first and last name (separated by a space character ) in the "Name" field of the on-line directory and submit the form. You should see my directory information. Now, return to the submission form and this time enter my last name followed by my first name (again, separated with a space) in the "Name" field of the on-line directory and submit the form. You should get the same results!
So, the ordering of "words" on the on-line directory submission form does not affect the results. Notice that you could have used a "-" or "@" character instead of spaces (or any arbitrary sequence of those three characters) between my first and last names and gotten the same results (but the query would have looked odd!)
It is possible, actually, to force the ordering of the words in your query to be significant. You may do this by enclosing your query words inside of quotation mark (") characters. Try this with my name again to see that this is true.
The reason that hyphens are considered "space" characters between words is to make it easy to do searches based on telephone numbers. All the phone numbers in the on-line directory have the format XXX-XXX-XXXX (with X being a number) so, if you enter a four digit number all by itself in the Telephone or Fax number field, it will match an extension. Be aware that the shorthand used for many UMDNJ numbers (Y-XXXX with Y being a 2, 5, 6 or 7) will not work. If you want to find the directory information for the person assigned to the phone number 5-5249, then you will need to enter "235 5249" ("*5 5249" and "??5 5249" also work) in the Telephone number field.
The "@" symbol is considered a space character to make it easy to do searches based on email addresses. You need only enter the portion of the email address before the domain name part (that is, the part after the "@" character in the email address) to look up directory information about an individual. You could also enter "yahoo.com" (for example) to see if anybody uses that domain for their email address.
In addition to the faculty and staff on-line directory, there are two other UMDNJ on-line directories. The first is the UMDNJ on-line email directory. You can find it by selecting the "Search email" link from the faculty/staff directory web page or by going directly to it at the following web page: <URL: http://www.umdnj.edu/email>
This directory contains all the publically accessible UMDNJ email addresses for individuals. You can enter all or part (using wildcard characters) of a person's name to look up their email address. Or, you may enter all or part of an email address to find the person's name. You may also look up email information in the on-line faculty/staff directory. Unlike that directory, though, the on-line email directory contains email addresses of UMDNJ students. As was the case for the faculty/staff directory, the on-line email directory will limit results to a maximum of 25 matches.
The UMDNJ on-line departmental directory contains the information found in the department directory section of the UMDNJ phone book. You can access the on-line directory by following the "Search departments" link from the on-line faculty/staff directory or by going directly to it at the following web page: <URL: http://www.umdnj.edu/department>
Unlike the other two on-line directories, the UMDNJ department directory does not restrict the number of matches that it will display. So, if you choose "University Hospital (Newark)" from the "Building/Location" menu and submit the search form, you will see all 495 entries associated with that location. As with the other directories, you may use wildcard characters and have your choice of criteria from which you may base your search.
The UMDNJ faculty/staff, email, and departmental directories have been checked for correctness, but they undoubtably contain mistakes. You can help improve the quality of their data by reporting and correcting any errors you see. If you are a UMDNJ faculty or staff member and need to correct you own entry in the directory, you may visit the form at the web page <URL: http://www.umdnj.edu/istweb/prodserv/tel_phn.htm> and correct your directory entry there. You may also send in one of the add/change/delete forms found in the UMDNJ phone book.
If you observe a mistake in the email or departmental directories, you may email the correction to www@umdnj.edu.
You may also search for directory information for individuals who are not associated with UMDNJ. Follow the link labeled, "Search other directories" and choose one of the organizations whose directories are available to be searched. However, you will probably get better results if you use one the widely available directory services offered by commercial web sites. A list of these web sites can be found by following the "Help" link on the UMDNJ directory web page to arrive at the web page: <URL: http://www2.umdnj.edu/~webph/others.html>
Douglas Yatcilla