If you are one of the some 5,000 Cornellians with personal Web pages on CU People, be sure to download your files before June 30 if you want to keep them.

As of that date, CU People, the service of Cornell Information Technologies (CIT) that has provided personal Web page space for Cornell students, faculty and staff, will shut down.

Those who currently maintain personal Web pages on the service -- including 898 staff, 515 faculty and other academics, 1,496 students, 91 retirees, 1,978 alumni and 154 temporary employees and "exceptions" -- were notified of the decision by e-mail April 13. People can arrange to have viewers who come to their CU People URL redirected to a new site. Forwarding will remain in effect for one year.

CU People was created about a decade ago in response to student requests, when there were few other options. Now, CIT says, other campus services get funding priority. Also, CIT notes, technical changes in the login system would leave CU People pages insecure without extensive re-engineering. The decision has been reviewed and supported by the IT Managers Council and the Faculty Advisory Board on Information Technologies.

Students now can create Web pages through Google Apps and soon through Microsoft Live@edu, expected to be available by the start of the fall semester (see story this page). Students, faculty and staff can use Cornell Library's VIVO service and CIT's Confluence to post resumes and academic research information, although these are not full-fledged Web pages. Similar options off campus include Facebook and MySpace. Google Sites and other online services provide free Web pages, but generally ask a fee for more than a limited amount of storage space. Most Internet service providers, including Time Warner and Verizon, offer subscribers optional Web space.

Department systems administrators on campus have reported that some students say the alternatives are insufficient. Graduate students in particular say that services like Google Apps will not provide enough space to post research results, which could include large datasets, images and video. Some departments provide space on department servers for graduate students, alongside their faculty, but policies vary widely across campus.

CIT offers self-service tools to help users download and save their current CU People Web pages and set up forwarding addresses. For more information go to http://www.people.cornell.edu/.