KU Info has a pulse again.

“We’re back,” director Curtis Marsh said.

It’s been nearly a year since the popular information service at Kansas University staged a comeback. And organizers say the service is back to its old ways: helping KU students, alumni and the community with questions that need answers.

The service started in 1970 for rumor control during the Vietnam War. It morphed into an information service that answered any and all questions and for many years operated around the clock from an office in the Kansas Union.

But in 2005, some students lamented changes to the service after its hours were scaled back and it moved to the libraries.

After a period of reshuffling, the service was revived in April. Now it answers nearly 200 questions a day by phone, e-mail or at a walk-up desk in the union. Half of the questions come from people stopping by the desk, with about 40 percent coming from phone calls and another 10 percent by e-mail, Marsh said.

KU Info in the spring will begin offering the training it provides for its own employees to KU staff members across campus. The aim is to share the tools for answering students’ general questions, Marsh said.

Sadie Robb, a student assistant, works to update winter break voice messages for KU Info with program director Curtis Marsh, at the reception desk in the Kansas Union lobby. With the new reception desk, KU Info assistants can answer walk-in questions in addition to calls and e-mails.

And KU Info will begin offering a tip of the day on its Web site – kuinfo.ku.edu – and on the Kyou portal, which is the computer network for employees and students.

“Things have been going really well,” KU Info staff member Sadie Robb said. “We’re helping a wide variety of people.”

Robb said she had fielded calls from across the country – some from alumni and some from people who’d heard about the service from others.

“It’s fascinating,” she said. “I sometimes wonder just how it got to be so popular. Not only do people know about KU Info, but they remember KU Info.”

The number – 864-3506 – sticks with people, she said.

“I think people remember us before they remember a lot of university numbers,” she said. “Somehow our number proliferates.”