The phone rings. A female’s voice answers.

“KU Info, how can I help you?”

The voice belongs to Caitlin Tew, a junior from Allen, Texas.

It’s nearly 1:30 in the afternoon, and she is sitting behind the KU Info desk on the fourth floor of the Kansas Union.

A half-mile down Jayhawk boulevard, students sit outside on the stairs of Wescoe Beach, and a row of tables promote various student activities.

One of those tables belong to Connect, a Student Senate coalition taking part in Student Senate elections this spring. As part of its campaign, Connect launched WiKUpedia, a Web site dedicated to disseminating KU information to a wide audience. Following the model of the Web site Wikipedia, the new site features user created content about the University.

Back at the Union, the phone rings again.

“KU Info, how can I help you?” Tew said.

Tew has worked at KU Info since 2006. She works with a laptop computer next to the phone. Like most KU students, she grew up with computers. She saw the effect the Internet had on people’s lives. Endless information, right at people’s finger tips.

To some, getting information by phone maybe seem archaic, but nearly four decades after its founding, KU Info still has callers.

“It puts people at ease when they talk to a person,” Tew said.

Counting the Trees

Pat Kehde, director of KU Infor from 1980 to 1990, said people always asked the same questions.

How many trees are on campus?

Kehde said KU Info had the answer on a Rolodex card. That’s where KU Info kept all its answers.

“Nothing was online yet,” Kehde said.

The Rolodexes were compiled from years of answering questions and curbing campus rumors. Still available at the Spencer Research Library, the old Rolodexes date back to the beginning of KU Info. The service, which began in the early ‘70s to aid in rumor control, soon evolved into something different – a 24-hour service that was dedicated to answering any question for students.

Kehde said a couple of questions were pretty standard.

“The name of the seven dwarfs, and the meaning of life,” Kehde said.

But Kehde said KU Info answered questions of a more serious nature too.

She said KU Info obtained a list of KU graduates after the last day of finals, and students on the bubble called in to see if they actually were graduating.

“Saturday night, before commencement, our phone was ringing off the hook,” Kehde said.

According to a University press release from 1982, KU Info answered about 500 to 700 questions a day in the 1980s.

“People would graduate and come back, and say, I don’t remember much, but I remember 864-3506,” Kehde said.

Brett Wadsworth is one of those alumna. Wadsworth, a 2003 KU graduate, said he called in one night and asked, “How many helium balloons would it take to lift up a 200 pound guy?”

“We had a pool going,” Wadsworth said. “After about a minute, the guy on the phone came back with the answer.”

Wadsworth said the Internet existed, but it still wasn’t readily available to KU students when he was in school.

“We were still working off of 56K dial-up.” he said. “Now you can type in a couple of keywords on Google, but KU Info was like the Internet on the phone.”

Former Lawrence mayor and current city commissioner Dennis ‘Boog’ Highberger worked at KU info from 1983 to 1986. Highberger remembers one day at KU Info more than others. He was sitting in front of the phone when he received the news that the Challenger space shuttle had exploded.

“People wanted to know what was going on,” Highberger said. “The phone was ringing faster than you could answer it.”

Highberger also worked night shifts. When KU Info was open 24 hours a day, the student workers could sleep, but they had to be next to the phone so they could wake up if it rang.

“Usually in the middle of the night, there would be an hour or maybe two when there wouldn’t be calls,” Highberger said. “Otherwise it was all night.”

A New Niche

KU Info has already been affected by the Internet. The service lost its funding in 2002, and rumors surfaced that the service had died. KU Info reopened in the Union in 2006.

The hours are scaled back to 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and the calls are down from what they used to be — about 200 a day, according to Tew.

Tew said some of those calls are from alumna.

“They usually just want to say hi,” Tew said. “They usually have some sort of story related to KU Info from when they were in school.”

Today, students can enroll, pay tuition, and buy books online. Even with the onslaught of Google, Wikipedia and YouTube, Highberger still thinks that there is a need for KU Info.

“Even with the Internet, some information is hard to find,” he said.

Kehde agreed.

“I think some questions actually can’t be answered on the Internet,” Kehde said.

— Edited by Sam Lamb