UpDate - Vol. 13, No. 5, Page 1
September 30, 1993
Electronic innovations

     Students living in residence halls now have access to 47 channels of
network and satellite television programming. These University cable
outlets are available in every room, dining hall and lounge.
     The University's cable offerings include super stations in Atlanta,
New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, CNN, C-Span, ESPN, the Discovery
Channel, the Learning Channel, the Weather Channel, SCOLA and Court TV, as
well as MTV, VH-1, the Comedy Network and the Sci-Fi Channel, among others.
     Three channels are originated by the University: a program listing
channel, an events bulletin board channel and a channel that will carry
University-produced programming. Additional University channels will be
available in the future for use in instructional entertainment and student
programming.
     In addition to the video outlet, each room has a data network outlet
that gives students the opportunity to connect the computers in their rooms
directly to the University's high-speed data network.
     Using this connection, students in their rooms may browse through
DELCAT, the electronic "card catalog" of the University of Delaware
Library, as well as the catalogs of more than 200 universities across the
country and around the world, and they may exchange electronic mail with
professors, friends and colleagues around the world. The connection also
gives them access to an electronic network of national and international
scholarly information resources.
     Telephone services for students on the campus have been dramatically
upgraded with the addition of voice mail, or v-mail for short.
     Every U.D. student has been given a private v-mail mailbox that they
will keep as long as they are at the University. This service provides many
features in addition to just answering calls when a student is unavailable
or taking a message when a phone is in use. Through v-mail, a student can
reply to a message or send a copy of a v-mail message to another student or
faculty member and can send a single message to several mailboxes, which
has many applications such as creating a mailing list for a course that
would allow a professor to communicate electronically with all the students
at one time. In addition to the private mailbox, each residence hall room
also has a telephone answering mailbox, designed for use by the occupants
of the room.