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1999 faculty picture book issued

A new 1999 edition of the faculty picture book is now available to faculty and staff. Members of the Faculty 1999 contains photographs and information available on all active full, associate and assistant professors as of July 1999.

The 1999 picture book has professorial titles and departmental affiliations; Academic Council members will also have their administrative titles. It will not have faculty members' degree information as in previous editions.

The Communications Office published faculty picture books in 1992 and 1989. Although there have been many requests over the years for another publication (even requests for the outdated version), budget restrictions have stood in the way.

Last year, however, Professor Lotte Bailyn (then chair of the faculty) and Chancellor Larry Bacow advocated a new publication to support faculty governance, since the book helps match faces with names and serves as a useful tool for planning meetings and committee assignments. When the Office of the Provost offered to fund the project last year, the Communications Office began to plan the new publication's design and production.

The new book makes use of digital technology unavailable for the 1992 version. About 70 percent of the 1,032 faculty members' photos are from their MIT ID cards, with digital images supplied by the MIT Card Office with the card-holders' permission; 11 percent are other digital images and only 11 percent are from hard-copy photographs. Sixty-five faculty members don't have photos in the book.

The Publishing Services Bureau's design conforms with the design template created for other Institute reference publications such as the MIT Reports to the President and the MIT Reports of the Treasurer. The faculty picture book database designed by the Communications Office may become an important resource -- a single repository for information on faculty titles accessible to the MIT community -- for other publishers on campus.

The project involved staff members from academic departments who ensured the accuracy of information for their faculty, Campus-Wide Information Systems, the News Office (which supplied some additional photos) and the Personnel Office, as well as the Publishing Services Bureau, the MIT Card Office and the Communications Office.

GETTING A COPY

The Communications Office plans to distribute copies of Members of the Faculty 1999 to all academic departments in early September. After September 12, they will fulfill e-mail requests submitted to communications@mit.edu.

The office welcomes comments and suggestions from faculty and staff about the new publication, particularly with regard to other uses for this information. One possibility is integrating faculty picture book information with existing faculty home pages on MIT's web site. Many faculty members think a future web publication is a good idea. Based on permissions granted on the original faculty information forms, 661 faculty members have already approved web publication of their photos.

A version of this article appeared in the September 1, 1999 issue of MIT Tech Talk (Volume 44, Number 4).

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