University Times

The School of Information Sciences has launched a new web site that combines a citywide events calendar with a social networking site á la Facebook.

Eventur (http://eventur.us/) provides a central listing where users post and browse hundreds of events drawn from the city’s museums, galleries, theatres and dance companies. Events can be viewed by type, venue or the local organization presenting them.

People who register on Eventur — which has enrolled 132 members since its debut in November and averages more than 1,000 weekly hits — also can craft profiles that allow them to specify the kinds of events they favor as well as create and join groups of like-minded users. Patrons can recommend events, write reviews and rate the personal tastes and reliability of fellow Eventur-ers.

But Eventur is more than just a calendar; it also is an experiment in building digital communities, explained Peter Brusilovsky, faculty member in the information science and technology program, whose graduate student Danielle Lee created the site for her doctoral dissertation. Eventur relies entirely on the willingness of its members to participate because of their common interests, said Brusilovsky, who researches digital “societies,” social web sites and human-computer interactions.

“Our site, like Facebook or Google, spreads information through ‘swarm intelligence,’ when a large group works to keep one another informed,” Brusilovsky said. “There are so many things happening in this city, but there is no central repository. With Eventur, the community makes sure an event is posted and that the right people get the right information. It’s essentially word-of-mouth, which is typically the most effective communication, except that social networks connect more people than real places do.”

Eventur most likely will provide a more complete idea of how digital communities interact because it taps into the more popular world of arts and culture, Brusilovsky said.