During the past decade, Princeton's web site has grown from a relatively simple tool supporting producers and consumers of information about the institution, its programs, and its people to what is today a complex, mission-critical appliance for teaching, research, administration, and collaboration.
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The Google Books Library Project is a collaborative effort between Google and more than 20 academic libraries and publishers to scan and make searchable major research collections. When books are out of copyright and in the public domain, the public can now use Google Book Search to view bibliographic information, to read and search the texts, and even download them.
Users of the Blackboard course management system can find information about the upgrade to the more powerful new Blackboard Learn Release 9.
As part of the University's sustainability initiative, OIT and the Princeton University Library are participating in a pilot project to study if using an electronic reader can reduce the use of paper at Princeton while preserving the benefits of the traditional classroom experience.
The OIT-operated Broadcast Center in the Peter B. Lewis Library contains extensive facilities for professional video and audio editing, as well as a TV studio.
More traffic comes to Princeton.edu from Facebook, Wikipedia, College Confidential, FARK, and StumbleUpon than any mainstream media news site. Controlling Princeton's image on these social media sites is not always possible, but joining the conversation often is. Using examples from our institutional presence as well as faculty presence on the social Web, Shani Hilton and John Jameson, explored the role social media can take in a strategic communications plan.
The first Lunch 'n Learn seminar of the academic year took place on Wednesday, September 30 at noon in Frist Multipurpose Room B. Computer Science Professor Szymon Rusinkiewicz will speaking about "Reassembling the Wall Paintings of Thera"
Two years ago, OIT created an online audio archive at www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/podcasts that includes recordings of hundreds of lectures and other events. These audio recordings, known as "podcasts," have proven to be extremely popular. Last year alone, they were downloaded approximately 128 million times from the Apple iTunes store, where they are available free of charge to the general public.
OIT's integrated outreach effort has received a gold medal for Best Practices in Communications in the 2009 CASE II Accolades Awards.
Academic Services continues to expand Princeton's high-performance computing infrastructure to meet the needs of the University's research community.
