New Search Features Enhance Duke's Online Calendar
Users can now customize their searches by category, date range, group or location
Events@Duke, the university's online calendar, has introduced a new search feature that enables students, staff and others, including members of the local community, to quickly find campus events of special interest to them.
Users can now customize their searches by category, date range, group or location, sifting more easily through approximately 10,000 events posted annually by more than 600 groups across the Duke community.
Located in the calendar's left-hand column, the new feature resembles searches offered on commercial sites such as Carmax and Zappos. It includes a "ShareThis" widget for users to share selected events with friends by e-mail and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
In addition, new hyperlinks in calendar entries allow users to further narrow their searches. For example, a search for "art" may deliver an event at the Nasher Museum. The user can then click on the "Nasher Museum" link to see other events happening there. A "map" link shows where the museum is located on the Duke campus.
"In the three years since the university launched Events@Duke, the site has emerged as the central place for people to find out what's happening at Duke, whether it's lectures, concerts, sports or social events," said Deb Johnson, the assistant vice provost who oversees the calendar team. "Since technology changes so rapidly, however, we've updated the site regularly. This latest upgrade responds to user requests for a more powerful search function."
Johnson said the calendar now also incorporates student events that were previously featured on a student calendar, buzz, that the university shut down in July because of low use by students. Her team worked with Duke Web Services and others within the Office of Information Technology to make the changes in time for the new academic year.
Johnson said the calendar team welcomes feedback about the "new" calendar and, to make it easy to send comments, the calendar team has added a Feedback button in the bottom right corner of the calendar.