On the eve of the birth of his first child, Christopher Tompkins '89 was, naturally, excited about the prospect of impending fatherhood and wanted to share the moment with his friends and classmates. So he stopped what he was doing and sent a message. "Tomorrow at 6 a.m. Kate and I will check in to the hospital to bring our first baby into this crazy world. Kate is having contractions and is dilated three centimeters and I am a nervous wreck. I'll post the baby's stats tomorrow." Tompkins was writing for the folks who drop in daily at the Class of '89 page on Colby's World Wide Web site. True to his word, the next day Tompkins provided a baby update. "Hannah Elizabeth Ide Tompkins was born Wednesday at 8:06 p.m. She was 6 pounds, 10 ounces and 19 inches long. Does anyone out there have better access to Cuban cigars than I?" Welcome to Colby's electronic community.
	Originally a modest undertaking conceived as an alternative medium for publishing academic work, Colby's World Wide Web site has evolved into a communications force that is revolutionizing how people connected with the College get and supply information, keep in touch with each other, obtain news and entertain themselves. Students use Colby's Web site to download reference material from the library, get test results from classes and read "Moose Prints," the daily event calendar. They also can check the weather forecast, read the comics and look up their favorite team's scores, all from Colby's site.
	Faculty post syllabi, course materials, homework assignments and even class notes. The students in Ken Ganza's East Asian art course can now go to Ganza's home page and download images on their computer rather than checking out a slide carousel, setting up a projector and flipping through slides. Several academic departments provide links to other Internet resources, using the Colby site as a platform for exploring the Web in general. Prospective students can take a virtual tour of the campus, get financial aid information and apply to Colby using the online form. Members of the Class of 2001 have a page devoted to them that shares information about what to bring to Colby, what to expect once they are on campus, and COOT trips, among other things. The page also will have an e-mail forum that will allow them to "meet" their classmates in cyberspace before they arrive on Mayflower Hill.
	Parents have a site of their own , too, where they will soon be able to share information and correspond with other parents. Keith McGlauflin, one of a three-person ad hoc group that created Colby's original Web site, says none of the founders imagined the site would grow so large in such a short time. Less than three years have passed since McGlauflin, religion professor Thomas Longstaff and librarian Frances Parker established an Internet site for Colby that included "a basic home page with three links, one of which was an aerial photo of the campus," McGlauflin said. "We received one thousand hits in the first month. We get more than that in one afternoon now."
	In May 63,000 people visited the site. The admissions site received more than 10,000 visits during the application cycle for the Class of 2001 between June 1996 and January 1997. And while 25 percent of all activity is due to campus usage, only 3 percent of the people who visit the site are on Mayflower Hill. That's a huge outreach to a worldwide audience that might not otherwise have learned about Colby, says Anestes Fotiades '89, who is responsible for creating and maintaining much of what appears on Colby's Web site. Soon after Netscape introduced its Navigator browser in 1994 and Web sites began proliferating, the College recognized that the medium was going to change the way people lived, Fotiades says. "Very early on the College committed resources to having a Web presence," he said. "I remember the day that I showed [communications director] Sally Baker an example of how Colby magazine might look on the Web. She took one look at it and said, `You have a new job.'" [CONTINUE]
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