Memorial Dorm's front desk phone rings a lot more these days. Students want to be connected to one another but don't know the extension that they should call. Why aren't they using the facebook? After all, the facebook is only a keyboard and a half hour away.

Scrolling through all the students' pictures on the facebook takes an average of a half hour. If you don't know the name of the person you're looking for, good luck. If you don't have a computer, even less luck. If you're looking for someone after 11 p.m. when the front desk closes, you're out of luck. If you live off campus and don't have access to Multnomah's Intranet, you never had any luck.

Technology is grand, but not at the expense of convenience. Multnomah needs a "hard copy" of the facebook to make finding students' phone numbers easier. A physical facebook would be much easier to flip through than more than 100 computer windows on the Intranet.

The student body has voiced concern to Dave Odell, student body president. Odell spoke to Dr. Wayne Strickland, academic dean, and as a result, a physical facebook will soon be available to students at the copy center. Printing out a copy of the facebook will cost students a small fee, one that was not present last year when they received hard copies of the facebook.

The Information Services Department spent many hours putting the facebook on the Intranet and some advantages exist to the computerized facebook, such as the clarity of the pictures and captions and the ability to change information easily. But students are still using facebooks from past years when they need to look up someone.

Many students don't have access to the Intranet and are having to travel to a computer with Intranet access just to find someone's phone number. Even if a copy is available at the copy center, many students won't have the time or the resources to buy a copy.

The facebook will continue to be placed on the Intranet each year, according to Greg Dillon, director of Information Technology. The question is: Will students have to wait two months before they are able to obtain a hard copy of the facebook, and will the facebook be more user-friendly by then?

Multnomah's goal to keep up with technological advances is commendable. But the ISD's jump from conceptualizing the idea of putting the facebook on the Intranet to the implementation of the idea has gone too quickly.

The tried and true method of a portable, paper facebook should have been continued until the ISD was 100 percent sure that students would be satisfied with a computerized facebook.

As the facebook now stands, very few students are satisfied.