Telefact celebrates 21 years of being ‘smart’ on the phone

Before the advent of iPhones in 2007, Telefact made every phone a “smart phone.” Instead of… Before the advent of iPhones in 2007, Telefact made every phone a “smart phone.” Instead of from Google Maps, directions came from a guy with a googol of maps. Instead of Wikipedia, page-turners flipped through the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Since 1990, the free question-answering service has helped both students and nonstudents in their quests for bus schedules, news confirmation and even a laugh at the painfully accurate information the student operators are compelled to provide. This year, the organization honors its 21st birthday with a 24-hour session from Nov. 10 to Nov. 11, celebrating its roots from a time when information was not immediately accessible.

The Beginning

“Students would have to call everywhere for information,” said Joyce Giangarlo, now the coordinator of Telefact. She was the Student Government Board adviser when brainstorming for the service began in 1990. Campus leaders and the Board met to discuss how to keep students in the information loop, since they lacked phonebooks like those provided for the faculty.

“The recurring theme in those meetings was that there wasn’t a central source of information,” Giangarlo said. “You’d have to call five places and get put on hold before you could learn what you needed to know.”

Fortunately, Tom Misuraca, assistant director of Student Life, had the solution thanks to his time at Bowling Green University. That school had a system called Fact Line, a rumor-quelling information system instituted during the counter-culture era of the ’70s. As time passed, students began using Fact Line to verify information rather than rumors.

While planning Telefact, Pitt students and staff toured the Fact Line facility, and even today much of Telefact’s structure still harkens back to the office on Bowling Green’s Ohio campus.

“They even put me on the lines,” Giangarlo said. From there, the Board hired then-student Pam Gennaula Day as Telefact’s first coordinator and began putting together a command center.

“It’s crazy that one little room can do so much,” Day said.

They stuffed a small space in the William Pitt Union with encyclopedias, maps and reference books — particularly those with indexes — to ensure that Telefact operators would know the right answer to callers’ questions.

“This was the days before the Internet,” Day said. “So what we gathered was all hard copy.”

The first batch of operators only had enough room in their space for three phones and the shelves of reference material they relied on. Still, the call center had more immediate information than anywhere else on campus.

“We didn’t know what we were going to be asked until we answered the phones,” Giangarlo said.

Telefact wasn’t without its detractors. On the first day of classes in 1990, The Pitt News ran a full-page “perspective” piece, showing that people said it was either a childish exploration or a waste of the Board’s money. The published graphic hardened the organization’s resolve and ultimately helped ensure that the students who ran Telefact would be on top of their game, Giangarlo said.

“The best way to get someone to dig their heels in is to come out and say, ‘We don’t need you,’” Giangarlo said. “Never say that to a group of students.”

The Questions

The questions at Telefact range from the practical to the absurd, and often the organization serves as an important resource for many Pitt students.

During Pennsylvania’s Aug. 23 tremors, operator Christine Garrard said that “people called and wondered, ‘Was that actually an earthquake?’” Students recently have asked about the Casey Anthony verdict and Steve Jobs’ death.

“We find out about [breaking news] through the calls sometimes,” operator Michelle Everson said. When verification was essential, Telefact served as a source of truth for those too shocked to believe breaking news.

“After 9/11 happened, there were enough sources providing coverage,” Giangarlo said. “But we received about 3,800 calls that day. We opened early and manned it with staff before the students would normally get in. It was a lot of disbelief even though it was everywhere. Students were still calling Telefact for confirmation.”

And more people than just students use Telefact — in fact, anyone with a phone can call.

That really does mean anyone. Though the vast majority of the calls concern students’ needs for accurate information, the nature of that necessity is flexible.

“We have nonstudents who call regularly with generally [campus-life] related questions,” Everson said. “There’s ‘Boca Raton guy’ who asks questions about Boca Raton. There’s a guy who keeps calling with clueless technology questions. There’s ‘high school sports’ guy who wants to know local sports scores — that’s not always an easy thing to find, either.”

But as far as outrageous questions go, these aren’t the worst offenders. Everson said that at this point, questions rarely shock her.

“I used to work a lot of Friday afternoons, and that’s when we’d get a lot of inappropriate questions from guys who would look something up on Urban Dictionary and ask us to define it,” she said.

These calls seem to occur most often in spring, she said. Giangrlo mentioned that during May, there are a lot of high school trips and these visitors also contribute to the spike in “inappropriate questions.”

“So we get a lot of questions relating to definitions on Urban Dictionary. They want to see if they can get a reaction, but our operators can make the most racy things sound like the most boring. They’ve got a lot of professionalism,” she said.

Though those calls might be the most memorable to Telefact operators, the service still maintains pride in its ability to serve basic student needs.

“We’re at about 10 percent fun questions and 90 percent serious questions,” Giangarlo said. “That might be about anything from oil changes to piercing salons, but it ultimately relates to living as a student on campus.”

But there are some questions Telefact can’t answer.

When now-senior Everson came to visit Pitt at the end of high school, her guide recommended Telefact as a source for homework questions.

“He told me, ‘You’re not supposed to, but if you phrase it as a hypothetical you can get away with it,’” she said.

Now an operator, Everson quickly points out that answering homework questions is something Telefact will not do because it violates its academic integrity policy.

Twenty-one Years and a Tech Revolution Later

Since Telefact opened, technology has changed the way people get information. Not only do computers allow fast searches, but smart phones give users the ability to access information anywhere. Yet despite these advances, students still use Telefact.

“Even I would have believed a lot of technology would have put us out of business,” Giangarlo said. “But they haven’t impacted our numbers that dramatically. We still get over 100,000 calls a year.”

Past a glass window and through a heavy wooden door sits Telefact’s command center. Four Macintosh computers and black headsets wait for operators to use them while the gentle hum of computer fans and a TV fill the room sonically.

The walls are covered in the answers to common questions. Handwritten bus schedules, phone numbers and premade answer sheets all hang in front of other charts and aggregations.

Four of the 18 staff members usually work at one time, socializing when calls don’t come in. But when a bright chime calls them to their stations, they put on their headsets and respond, “Hello, this is Telefact. How may I help you?”

Although it might lack the convenience of smart phones, Giangarlo said that talking to a person is an important aspect of Telefact that sets it apart from Google searches.

“Students know what they’re looking for,” Giangarlo said. “But sometimes they don’t know how to ask the question … Unless you follow up, you’re really not providing a service.”

But despite the largely unchanged nature of student needs, Telefact has tried to keep up with the changing times by experimenting with the use of Twitter and holding the 24-hour session in honor of its birthday.

The service’s normal operating hours of noon to 9 p.m. correspond to the prime hours a student might need help, Giangarlo said. Earlier hours and students might be in class, and any later might bring more trivial questions. However, a 24-hour cycle would allow the center to compete in the Information Age.

“I’ll let [Telefact] try it out and see what happens,” Giangarlo said. “If [the operators] really want to be open 24 hours, we’ll have another discussion.”

Whether it’s open nine hours or 24, Telefact has transmitted accurate, up-to-date information and remained a confident voice on the other end of the line for 21 years.

“Just picking up the phone and talking to a live person can make all the difference in a person’s day,” Day noted. “It’s nice to have a warm body on the other end.”

Through jokes and tears alike, information remains easily available over the phone. Any questions? Call Telefact at 412-624-FACT (3228).