Drexel Directory Assistance (DDA, for short) is an electronic phone book of the students, faculty and staff of Drexel University. DDA can search by name or phone number. Most name searches are performed using a phonetic system that lets you enter a name as it sounds rather than as it's spelled.

The DDA web interface is simple to use. Enter the name or extension that you are searching for, select which type of information you entered, and pick the information that you'd like to see.

The best way to find a person is to enter his or her full, correctly spelled first and last name. However, that isn't always necessary.

You may use a nickname instead of the proper first name ("Joe" works fine for "Joseph"). You can enter just the first few letters or the first initial or you can omit the first name altogether.

If you can't correctly spell the last name, enter it as it sounds. If you know the first few letters, type them followed by an asterisk. However, if you're using the first few letters, they must be spelled correctly.

Names are sorted first by the quality of the match and then by each person's name. The first column of the results shows an icon that tells you how close the match was. If you have Internet Explorer, pointing at the icon shows you the actual matching acuracy percentage.

Here are some example for finding a hypotheical Richard Schnieder:

In addition to searching by name, you can enter an extension to have the system find all employees using that telephone number as their voice or fax number. When new employees are hired, the Human Resources department often sets their extension to be their departments's main number. You may find a lot of people (particularly student employees) on a number that you believed belongs solely to a department head. Students don't have phone number lists so you won't find them with a phone number search.