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Online telephone directory spring cleaning  by George Spain CCIT It’s the most popular—and possibly most maligned—MUSC Web resource. But, starting in late spring, the “Find a Person” site will be more friendly and the data accurate, said Shana Caporossi, communications consultant with CCIT.  It’s not a secret that the information offered through the “Find a Person” page, including names, phone numbers and department affiliation, can be wrong.  The cause of that problem is each MUSC and MUHA employee listed in Find a Person is responsible for keeping her information current. However, many don’t know this, don’t know how to update an entry, or don’t have easy access to a computer workstation; consequently, information is often out of date.  To solve this problem in the future, departments will now have most of the responsibility for maintaining their lists. First things first, though: the information itself needs to be cleaned up. According to Caporossi, CCIT’s University Communications Team (UCT) has matched information in the current “Find a Person” database with the telephone numbers in UCT’s billing database.  The resulting lists will be distributed to departments. Department contacts will be required to check their lists’ accuracy. If an employee has left the department, she should be removed; conversely, missing employees must be added. Data being checked will include name (first, last, middle and suffix), department, contact numbers (office phone, fax, and cellular), building and room number, building address, and MUSC post office box. This will be a huge effort: There are about 600 distinct billing entities on campus, meaning there are about 600 lists to check. The corrected data will then be fed into a whole new database, which is scheduled to go live by May. “Departments not getting their information back to us when we make the change will not be in the data being searched,” noted Vince Dibble, director of CCIT’s Infrastructure Services. Whenever they do get it to us, it will be uploaded and searchable at that time.” Once the old database is retired, maintenance for “Find a Person” will be streamlined.  Each department will assign to its billing entities a “super user” who will keep that department’s information current. Additionally, requests to be unlisted will be handled by the departmental super user; currently, an employee can make a request that isn’t reviewed by the department, which has often resulted in multiple, uncoordinated listing and unlisting requests. CCIT itself was chosen as the guinea pig for a pilot test. After making adjustments based upon the first pilot, two other MUSC groups, Medical Center Administration group and the Institute of Psychiatry, participated in the second pilot during February. After making adjustments based upon feedback from these groups, the pilot was restarted and is nearing completion. UCT believes most of the kinks have been worked out of the process and will move onto the rest of the institution by the end of March. The corrected information will be due back to UCT by April 15.   Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to petersnd@musc.edu or catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Community Press at 849-1778.