Stanford Bulletin to feature improved searching online and quarterly updates
In the 2008-09 academic year, the online Stanford Bulletin will be fully indexed and searchable on the university's website, making it much easier to navigate the 750-page catalog.
The bulletin, which is published in August every year, outlines all of the courses and degree requirements for the schools of Earth Sciences, Education, Engineering, and Humanities and Sciences, as well as non-MD courses and degree programs in the Medical School, and courses in the Law School that are available to non-law undergraduates and graduate students.
The new online bulletin will offer all the features available in an advanced Google search, including the ability to use multiple terms and to exclude terms, allowing users to make searches more precise and to get more useful results, said Stephen Arod Shirreffs, bulletin editor and assistant university registrar.
Currently, the online Stanford Bulletin is only available as downloadable PDF files that are cumbersome to search.
Stanford will continue to publish hard copies of the bulletin, but expects demand to fall.
"Once there is a useful online version of the bulletin on the web, students will use the book much less," Shirreffs said. "This is an Internet-enabled generation. They want it. We don't think we're going to need to print nearly as many books."
He said the university usually publishes 20,000 copies of the Stanford Bulletin.
Shirreffs said the new printed and online versions of the bulletin will list all of the degree requirements alphabetically by school, then by department in one section. Courses will be listed alphabetically by subject in another section.
"That's probably the biggest change in the way the book will look," he said. "Chemistry majors, for instance, will look in one section to see what they have to do to get a degree in chemistry, and look in another section for course descriptions."
Currently, degree requirements and courses are listed in the same section.
The online and print versions of the bulletin will be produced using a content management system—specialized software that will make it easier for departments, programs and schools to submit additions or changes, and easier for the Registrar's Office to edit and update the bulletin.
Shirreffs said the Registrar's Office will update the online bulletin every quarter with new or changed courses—another advantage of the web format.
"We don't update PDFs now," he said. "It's too time-consuming."
For more information, contact Shirreffs at 725-1879 or arod@stanford.edu.
