500 NEW FACULTY FACES: Faculty members at the University of California at Davis are proposing that 500 new and replacement faculty positions be added as part of strategic plan being drafted for the university. In June, more than 100 departments and programs submitted to the provost action plans for the recruitment and funding of these faculty. The majority of the open positions will come from retirements expected in the next six to eight years. Two primary goals of increasing UC Davis faculty size are to infuse new energy and ideas into existing programs and to implement planned cross-disciplinary initiatives.

GLIMPSE RARELY SEEN ART ONLINE: Within Harvard University’s vast collection of visual art are certain works that are so fragile, rare or historic that they have been kept from public view. Until now. With the debut of Harvard’s online catalog at http://via.harvard.edu:748/html/VIA.html, art aficionados and researchers can now search for and view these and other artworks from any of the school’s seven participating libraries, museums and archives. Known as Visual Information Access, the catalog also provides detailed descriptions of each work. To perform a search, users type in a keyword and select the collection they wish to search. Once users zero in on an item, they can save it as an electronic file, attach it to an e-mail or print it.

PHONING HOME TO KOSOVO: For some Kosovo refugees, a Yugoslavian telephone book might be the only proof of residency they have left. Though these books aren’t exactly common in the United States, librarians at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and at Harvard University have launched a joint effort to collect Yugoslavian phone books and put them on microfilm. According to UM Senior Associate Librarian Janet Crayne, the phone books could help with the repatriation of many refugees who had to forfeit all deeds and personal identification before fleeing the country. Librarians also hope the phone books can serve as a more accurate source of census information on the former Yugoslavia than what is currently available.

FACULTY PHONE-ATHON: Convincing the best and the brightest students to accept an offer of college admission is a challenge sometimes best overcome with a bit of ingenuity. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is claiming to have its best crop of freshmen ever this year, which admissions officials attribute in part to vigorous recruiting by faculty members. Representatives from various departments called hot prospects to congratulate them on their acceptance and answer any lingering questions about the university. Though results could not be tied directly to the soft-sell phone campaign, the university did see a marked increase in the academic preparedness of its incoming freshman class, including the highest ever average SAT scores.

For links to the original articles summarized here, visit Peer Portfolio online via the University Week homepage at http://depts.washington.edu/uweek/. ¶