1. Kansas State University
  2. »Division of Communications and Marketing
  3. »K-State Today
  4. »Improved searching on university directory

K-State Today

October 17, 2012

Improved searching on university directory

Submitted by Division of Comm. and Mktg., Office of Mediated Education

Finding an email address, phone number or office location for K-Staters just got easier because of improvements to the people directory, the online searchable database of K-State faculty, staff and students. You can search the people directory by entering a person’s name or eID in the K-State search box, which is in the top right corner of all K-State webpages.

The improved people directory takes into account middle names, initials and hyphenated last names when searching for a person. Another significant improvement is searching for a person using a nickname. Now, for example, you are able to search for persons named Robert by entering “Rob” or “Bob” and Rebecca can easily be found by entering “Becky.”

These enhancements were developed with a new core search algorithm that uses a sophisticated combination of Damerau-Levenshtein distance, phonetic matching using Metaphone 3, specific ordering and heuristics.

K-Staters can manage the personal information they want displayed in the people directory. Go to eProfile and then click ‘Manage your People Directory and Campus Phonebook display settings’ to review and change what is displayed in a search.

The people directory changes could not have been successfully implemented without the collaborative work of the office of mediated education, the Division of Communications and Marketing, the Information Technology Assistance Center and the information systems office.