Among other things, the page features a trivia quiz, complete with film stills, on the movie "A Room With a View," which was filmed in Greece.

Professors say students are not the only ones who benefit academically from increased Internet participation.

"I find I have reestablished contact with colleagues who I don't see on a day-to-day basis," Nagy says. "I can renew ties of friendship with fellow academics with whom I've lost contact. It usually leads to all sorts of new academic projects and new ideas."

Nagy also says that because of phone costs and time differences when contacting colleagues in other countries, e-mail can be a better way to correct manuscripts, follow up a fax, or include foreign scholars in discussions.

Nagy says he has "a child's sense of wonder" about the "cc" function of e-mail.

"While in paper mail, you think twice before you try to pull in all interested parties, [with e-mail] you can be a much more consulting person and enhance congeniality and the spirit of group participation," he says.

The Old Days

Since many of the senior faculty entered academia when typewriters were still standard, "the very fact that the delete button goes backward and erases things you have typed--that's already a quantum leap for someone from my generation," Nagy says. "What a gift."

"I certainly didn't have a computer when I grew up," said Verba, who was finishing his undergraduate thesis the year Eisenhower took office.

Still, he prides himself on his comparative computer literacy. "I started using computers a long time ago when they weren't networked and were mainframe."

He compares the fear some have of e-mail to the discomfort people had switching to word processors.

"That made everybody, including professors in the humanities...much more comfortable with electronics, and I think the same thing will happen in e-mail."

Word processing never made Nagy uncomfortable, he says.

"I started using computers in the '80s. I remember one colleague telling me that word processing was something I would really need and find suited exactly to my writing habits."

"It enhanced my research. It made writing projects possible that would have taken years and years longer," he says. "There's no possible way I could go back now."