The Office of Information and Technology released "dCal"-an electronic scheduling system open to all members of the Duke community-two weeks ago.
Officials said the new program, which combines an electronic daily planner with contact lists and group scheduling, was created in part to respond to the lack of a standard calendar system for the University.
"It's a need that's been out there for a while," said David Menzies, OIT's news and information manager.
OIT's website advertises dCal as a way for University departments to manage their calendars for free. The site also explains that dCal can be used on wireless devices such as PDAs.
"dCal allows faculty, staff and students to schedule meetings, rooms and resources via a desktop application or a web client," the OIT website states.
Although students have acknowledged the demand for such a tool, many said they were unaware of the new system.
"I haven't even heard of dCal," sophomore Molly Bierman said. "Something can't be successful unless people have heard of it."
She added that the success of similar external sites demonstrates the desire for a University equivalent.
"It seems strange to me that I can find out more about what is going on at school from Facebook than I can from the University's website," Bierman said.
Since its release, dCal has garnered mixed responses from academic departments.
Steffen Bass, assistant professor of physics and chair of the committee that advises his department on computing and technology decisions, said he was disappointed with dCal.
"It is not as powerful as, say, other open source systems like [Apple's] iCal or Mozilla's Sunfire," Bass said. "I would argue that it does not look promising that the physics department will adopt dCal."
Other University affiliates, however, said they plan to incorporate dCal into their structure.
The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center-a collaborative research effort between Duke, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University-has decided to adopt dCal in a few weeks for research allocation.
Menzies noted that dCal was not created by OIT, but is instead a "re-branding" of a product made by Oracle.
"Duke purchased the rights to use that tool throughout the University," he explained.
dCal is operated and maintained by OIT, meaning there is no need to go outside of the University for technical support, and it is this aspect that appealed to NESCent, said Hilmar Lapp, assistant director for informatics at the organization.
"We highly appreciate that OIT has supplied this system," he said.
Presently, NESCent's research management is not handled electronically.
"Paper is becoming less and less sustainable," Lapp added. "There was a rumor of dCal so we held off [on adopting an electronic system], but now we are ready to commit to using dCal."
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