Geoff Lister/The Ubyssey

To efficiently manage over 1000 lost items per month, UBC Campus Security is promoting their ever-growing “Lost and Found” website.

The site was launched on Blogspot and moved to the UBC website in January. It posts no names but provides descriptions of the items brought in, including brands and colours.

“October was the basis of it starting and then we started to develop it a little better after that,” said Emmet Russell, who heads the Campus Security Central Lost and Found.

“It’s certainly surpassed any of my expectations. It’s become a full-time job on its own.”

The site received over 6000 hits in January alone.

Russell said the site is a better system because it allows people to see what has been submitted. “We post everything now. Clothes, books, doesn’t matter. We post a whole lot. And then hopefully people can hone in on it and go, ‘Oh, I think that’s mine,’ and they come in and talk to us.”

Paul Wong, manager of community relations for UBC Security, believes a major upside to the site is that it is accessible at all times. “Two in the morning, you’re studying and you realize something goes missing, you can go online and you can search it.

“Sometimes it’s only an hour between lunch you’ve got some time off, so to have to rush over here and be able to report something or to see if something has been found is sometimes a bit challenging.”

While the site has changed the process for reporting and viewing lost and found items, UBC Campus Security maintains their “common sense” approach in identifying owners. Usually a distinguishing mark is left out of the description to give the identifier the ability to prove that it is their item.

“It’s limited information that gets put down,” said Wong. “So if it’s like a Seiko watch, you may say, ‘Oh, I lost my Seiko watch,’ but you still have to come in and say the strap was brown or it’s a specific model or it’s got this on it.”

First-year student Aileen Moroney has used UBC Campus Security’s Lost and Found for a lost wallet but wasn’t aware of the site. However, she thinks it is a great idea.

“It’ll be good. It’ll be convenient for people to find their stuff and it’ll cause less freak-outs, because people will be like, ‘Oh, my stuff’s online. I’ll just go in and get it.’”

Items that aren’t retrieved are sold at the end of the year, with proceeds going to the United Way.

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