Telefact

There are a lot of misconceptions about Greg Osisek and his co-workers

“It’s funny how… There are a lot of misconceptions about Greg Osisek and his co-workers

“It’s funny how much respect we get,” Osisek said. “People say, ‘Oh, man, there are these information science kids, and they have this lair with access to government supercomputers, and they will answer any question you ask.'”

Telefact, the Pitt-funded, student-run information hotline, will answer just about any question. Call (412) 624-FACT and try them.

But Telefact’s operators are not “information science kids.” In fact, there is not a single information science major among its 12-member staff — a staff that relies on three regular PCs to help answer questions.

Telefact hardly operates out of a lair. While Osisek, who is Telefact’s student director, insisted that the exact location of the group’s base of operations not be revealed, it is a brightly lit, medium-sized room in a University building.

Scattered about the room are coffee cups, phone books, newspapers and Port Authority bus schedules.

Nailed to the walls are bulletin boards with frequently requested telephone numbers pinned to them. There are boards with information for arts, sports, academic and health services and businesses.

On one wall, there are six shelves of reference books. Titles include “World Reference Atlas,” “The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows” and “Sexual Slang.” The books are mostly obsolete, left over from Telefact’s pre-Internet days.

Every day, from noon until 9 p.m., Telefact operators sit in this room, poised at their computers — headsets resting on their craniums — ready for any question a caller could create.

In 1990, the Student Government Board agreed to allocate funds to a one-stop hotline that would answer any questions about the University. But students began asking for information unrelated to Pitt, and Telefact stepped up to the challenge.

Today, Telefact typically receives 48 calls an hour. This adds up to 3,000 calls a week, or 50,000 a semester.

Of those 50,000 callers each semester, 38 percent ask for telephone numbers. About half of those ask for campus numbers, and half for other Pittsburgh numbers.

True to the original purpose of Telefact, 33 percent of callers ask questions about the University. Among these are administrative questions, questions about student activities, questions about dining halls and meal plans, and questions about University-operated transportation.

Questions about the City of Pittsburgh compose about 11 percent of the calls. One of these callers asked operator Theresa Gagliardi when the city’s next monster truck rally will be — and then requested her company at the event. She politely declined.

Trivia questions make up 5 percent of the calls. One person recently asked Osisek when the Abraham Lincoln penny was first minted — 1909, according to Lincoln’s library’s Web site.

Another 5 percent ask about sports, half of them about Pitt sports and half of them about other sports topics. Requests for game scores are most common.

Among the remaining callers, 3 percent ask about movies, television or music. A caller recently asked what programs competed against the Ed Sullivan Show on the night of The Beatles’ first appearance in 1964, giving Osisek the chance to make use of the television guide. Answer: ABC Nightly News and Disney World of Color.

Another 3 percent call and hang-up.

Osisek classifies 1 percent of the calls as “stupid questions.” These include logically impossible questions, such as, “Could God build a canyon so wide that even He couldn’t jump over it?” Other inquiries demand inaccessible information, such as, “What is Justin Timberlake’s cell phone number?” Many “stupid” questions require consulting www.world-sex-records.com.

Operators answer these questions politely, without laughing.

“You get jaded to it really quick,” Telefact operator Laura Mills said about crank calls. “After a month, you don’t even laugh.”

There are some questions Telefact won’t answer. They won’t give opinions. They won’t give medical or legal advice. They won’t do comparative shopping. They won’t help commit a crime. They won’t violate Pitt’s academic integrity policy by answering questions for a class assignment.

But aside from that, anything is fair game.

“One day, someone in [Los Angeles International Airport] called and asked when his plane was coming in and at what time,” Osisek said. “He told us we would probably be quicker than calling the airport.”