Handbooks 2.0

This past week, Dean Jay M. Harris announced that the print versions of the Q Guide, Courses of Instruction, and Handbook for Students would be eliminated. Meanwhile, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer became an online-only publication last month, and the Boston Globe struggles to survive. This year, more than any other, has demonstrated the uncertain future of the print media in all its forms. And, in its decision to exclusively publish online the information contained in academic guidebooks normally distributed in hard copy to all Harvard students each fall, the administration has wisely responded to a larger national trend in a way that could greatly benefit the Harvard community.

The online versions of the formerly printed guidebooks will make it considerably easier to keep information up to date at all times. Before, it was often the case that the print version of the Courses of Instruction did not include all courses offered in a particular department, whereas the online version did. Converting entirely to an e-version will both eliminate confusion and, because of the Internet’s widespread availability, streamline the information-gathering process for students and faculty. Besides, printing thousands of copies of the guidebooks—which were only valid for one year—was wasteful and inefficient, and an online version will save money and prove more environmentally beneficial.

But the mere absence of hard copies is not a solution to the larger problem of the current guidebooks, print or online. In their current condition, these guides—specifically the Q Guide—need a major reconfiguration, and we can only hope that the shift to an online version will be a catalyst for the necessary improvements. In order to ensure that the print version of the Q Guide will never be missed, the new online version should reinvent the previous guide. First, the rating rubric, which is currently limited to a “1 to 5” scale, should be redesigned to allow for a more honest evaluation of courses—perhaps even a change as simple as a “1 to 10” scale would do. Second, there should be links from the descriptions of courses to those of related courses, as the best feature of the print edition was the ease with which students could peruse all the courses in a particular department. And, in terms of ease, the new online-only version of the Q Guide should list courses by name and not only by number. Most importantly, however, the new online version should strive to be more effectively integrated with the my.harvard shopping tool. In its current state, the Q Guide does not even allow students to access course websites directly, a major and unnecessary inconvenience.

In short, we hope that the shift to online guidebooks will improve the guides rather than merely transferring the current versions. Though the administration’s decision to publish academic information exclusively online is a good one, its ultimate effect will rest on the way in which that information is presented.