Harvard Offices Display Work

Visitors to the sixth Harvard Fair yesterday came away with an array of goodies and door prizes from T-shirts to Indian pottery.

The fair was a chance for offices that usually remain in the background to explain their work to the University employees and students who browsed along tables in Memorial Hall. The occasional event, which was first held in 1978, is sponsored by the Harvard Managers Exchange (HME), an organization of mid-level Harvard administrators.

"It's not for everyone to find out about all the opportunities at Harvard," said HME steering committee member G. Michael Gardner, who is Harvard's manager of accounts receiveable. "That's what other kinds of things are for. It does put a face to a name on the telephone, though."

Exhibitions at the fair ranged from the Mail Communications Center's, which gave away souvenir bottle openers and pamphlets with information about their services, to an enormous multicolored box whose flashing lights called attention to the Harvard University Metropolitan Area Network, a newly developed fiber optics communications system that New England Telephone is testing at several Harvard offices.

Visitors enjoyed complementary brownies from Harvard Dining Services to waltz music from the Harvard University Audio Visual Services display.

The University Archives also sealed a time capsule to be opened in 25 years at the Harvard Fair of 2012.

Farther down the line, the Office of Information Technology (OIT) displayed several top-of-the-line Macintoshes with flashing colors and complex graphics.

Exhibitors called the fair a success. "It provides a lot of information and business was brisk," said Judy Walker, a child care advisor with Harvard/Radcliffe Child Care.