simply the best! - Saint Mary's University of Minnesota

SMU on the WWW
Looking for something?
Search engine in high gear
Finding things on SMU web site is easier than ever
Visitors to the SMU web site
(http://www.smumn.edu) over
the past few months have been
greeted by a small addition at the top
of their screen – Search SMU. This
simple change
to our web site
is quite possibly
the largest single
improvement
made to
date. To illustrate
how the
A. Eric Heukeshoven
Web Site Manager
SMU Search
Engine works,
let’s find out
who won the
Bishop Heffron
award at the
2000 Founder’s Day convocation.
If you’ve ever used a web-based
search engine, then you probably
already know how this works. First,
let’s type “Heffron award” into the
search box (fig. 1). (You can click on
the “Seek” button or just press
return on your keyboard to send
your request.) The search engine will
look at every file in our web site
(over 3100 pages at last count!) and
return the results ranked by relevancy.
The top suggestion turns out
to be a press release about Founder’s
Day (fig. 2). Looks promising … let’s
click on that link. (Hmm, I also see a
story about the Heffron Ghost—
maybe I’ll come back to that later.)
The press release page comes up
and there in the fourth paragraph we
see that Ken Pellegrini ’72, from the
admissions office, was this year’s
recipient of the Bishop Heffron
Award (fig. 3). Gee, I haven’t seen
Ken in years, I wonder if there’s a picture
of him on the web site? Let’s
type in “Ken Pellegrini” and see what
pops up (fig. 4). The top suggestion is
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
a link to Ken’s photo. We click on the
link and there he is (fig. 5)! (Incidentally,
thanks to digital photography,
Ken’s picture, as well as all of the
other award recipients were posted
on the SMU web site the day of the
event.) The SMU search engine is
constantly updated and if you’re a
power user, the advanced search settings
allow you to customize your
search criteria (fig. 6).
There are two other special
databases which can be searched via
the SMU web site. Click on the Faculty/Staff
button on our main page to
find directory information on all
SMU faculty and staff (fig. 7). (This
directory is updated once a day.)
And the Alumni email directory continues
to grow. Click on the Alumni
button and start tracking down your
former classmates (fig. 8).
If your search for information
on smumn.edu doesn’t find what you
are looking for, you can always e-
mail me (webmaster@smumn.edu.)
If the information is on our web site,
we want you to be able to find it
quickly and easily. ≠
12 SAINT MARY’S UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE