The new service enables students, lecturers and visitors to map their route to a number of the University’s departments. Multimap delivers step-by-step travel directions and plots the route on a map, from any start point in the country.

Visitors to www.sheffield.ac.uk click on the “Visitor Information” link on the home page, followed by the “Personalised directions for drivers’ link to access Multimap’s “Travel Directions” service. They then enter their postcode, select a university location such as the Law Department or the Octagon Centre, and hit “Get directions”. Multimap delivers clear, user-friendly, step-by-step directions from start to end point; estimated cumulative journey times and distances; and links to detailed maps of each step. An overview map that plots the entire journey also appears, and users click on forward and backward arrows to move between street-level maps of each step of the journey.

Jon Pyle, Head of Communications at the University of Sheffield, said, ““During fresher’s week thousands of new students and their families negotiate their way round the city for the first time. We aim to make them feel really welcome and to make the settling-in process as pleasant, reassuring and straightforward as possible. Clear directions and practical travel advice are an important part of that welcome, and we know how helpful it is for first-time visitors to be able to print up the step-by-step travel directions powered by Multimap.

“But it’s not just about freshers’ week - all year round we have thousands of visitors, to open days, conferences and many other events. We’re very pleased with the results from Multimap and many of our visitors have benefited from the major improvement that the service has made to the Travelling to the University section of our website”, he continued.

Nick Reeve, Multimap, commented, “We work with a number of leading universities in the UK to ensure that finding the way to a particular department doesn’t become an unnecessary source of stress for students, and are delighted to welcome the University of Sheffield on board. Not only are our services easy to follow, but it’s also easy for users of the web site to find their way to them from the homepage.”

About Multimap

Multimap is Europe's leading provider of mapping and location-based services. The company delivers more online maps, point-to-point driving directions and geo-spatial ("where's my nearest?") searches to more companies than any other supplier in Europe. All services are offered on mobile, PDA, kiosk, and interactive TV platforms and in multiple languages.

The public website, www.multimap.com, provides a range of free, useful services to assist with everyday life. Key features include street-level maps of Europe, USA, Canada and Australia; road maps of the world; door-to-door travel directions; aerial photographs; weather forecasts; links to location information; and services such as hotel, restaurant and entertainment booking. The public site attracts over 7.3 million unique users, registers more than 140 million page impressions every month, and is one of the top 10 most visited websites in the UK. Multimap recently featured in The Sunday Times Tech Track 100 league table of fastest-growing, unquoted technology companies for the second consecutive year.

About the University of Sheffield

 The University of Sheffield is one of the UK's leading universities. Teaching quality assessments rate its teaching very highly across a wide range of subjects, and official research assessments confirm its reputation as a centre for world-class research in many disciplines.

 
With more than 23,000 students, from 116 countries, and 5,500 staff, the University is a popular choice with applicants for university places and, once they arrive, its students enjoy the experience so much that many settle in Sheffield after they graduate.