I have a complaint about the online catalog. The option to search by date is flawed. On good card catalogs, one can enter the dates between which books can be filtered in a search; on Duke’s catalog, one has to choose between preselected options. For instance, I cannot limit a search to “after 1983″. I [...]

Can you be brought to the honor council for fouling in basketball? What if it is a basketball class?

ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: Fouling in basketball is not necessary a criminal act; it is at times done as a non-threatening or harmless defensive maneuver–hence the “touch foul.” Furthermore, when appropriately witnessed the judgment is swift and [...]

If you were a student, what professor would you be sure to take a class with before you left Duke?

ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: Sorry, the answer to that question is too dependent on subject interest, teaching style preferences, how far one has to travel between classes, and whether or not food is served as part [...]

Why did the Christian Church only feel the need to define the Holy Trinity after almost 300 years instead of relying on the one God concept as was fitting with Judaism?

ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: The Roman Catholic Church developed this doctrine, as it did many others, over a long period of time. As evidenced by [...]

Do you practice by finding the answers in the cross word puzzle?

ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: Although Answer Person likes to do crossword puzzles, they are a poor training ground for the demands of the Suggestion Book. They are too confining (the answers are often proscribed and have to fit in those specific boxes), never involve [...]

Why hasn’t a group like the Green Party been able to successfully impliment Proportional Representation for the California Congress?

ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: The California Green Party seems to be pushing Instant Runoff Voting as its primary(!) electoral reform issue, not proportional representation (see http://cagreens.org/giwg/#democracy). The problem with PR (a.k.a. full representation), is that the concept [...]

At the Lilly Library on Sat., Oct. 18, 2003 at @ 5PM I stood directly in front of two of the people working at the front desk, one of whom told me they were busy and I would have to wait (she was putting stickers on books). So, I sat there and waited until she [...]

Please make it faster. It jams up far more than any other online catalog I’ve used in recent years.

ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: You are right. Over the last year or so we have struggled to deal with software architecture that is not up to the demands of Duke. So, although we try to keep it [...]