As Penn State art and architecture students near graduation, portfolios mean everything. Now, in a rising trend among student-artists, portfolios are starting to go electronic.

Flickr, PureVolume, deviantART, YouTube and MySpace, among others, have all been options for exhibiting student and alumni talent. Now, Penn State is joining the movement with I-START, a free online gallery for students of all majors to display their drawings, graphic art, photography, paintings or literary works. Students do not need any knowledge of Web site development to use the new program.

"I myself am an artist," Creator Joseph Lewis (sophomore-information sciences and technology) said. "I wanted to create I-START because I feel that having a Penn State-supported site where artists of all kinds can post their work in a less competitive environment will open opportunities for all students," he said.

Brit Hostetler, Class of 2003 and owner of 202A Gallery downtown, said she still uses social networking Web sites for her own work.

"It just puts you on a more approachable level," she said. "I have an online site ... a contact page, but people are far more likely to contact me on Facebook than to send me an e-mail."

Chuck Frye, Penn State Sculpture Club vice president, said the club uses MySpace as a meeting place and to help network with current and former students.

"There are famous artists out there who don't even have Web sites anymore -- they just use MySpace pages," Frye said, using the example of David LaChapelle, an artist who has advertised on the MySpace home page.

Frye, who has a lot of his work on his personal MySpace, said other members of the club also put video work on YouTube.

James Thurman, assistant director at the School of Visual Arts, said some art jurors, people who review and select artists for publication or exhibition, still require applicants to follow more traditional conventions, such as sending a hand-written note with a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE).

"Some of my students ask me what a SASE even is," he said. "If you're aware of these conventions, it's an even better way to distinguish yourself from the masses."

Thurman said costs of exhibitions may contribute to the trend of electronic portfolios, since so many Web sites now offer publicity for free, but cautions against sites like Flickr and Friendster.

"These sites tend to be very casual. I don't want family, teachers, employers looking at them," he said. "And if everyone is screaming for attention, how do you raise your volume? I think some student-driven initiatives like this [I-START] are responding to that."

However, some students said they are just looking for a helping hand from the university in matters of portfolio building, which Thurman said is taught on a "faculty-by-faculty" basis.

"[Portfolio building is] a guess-and-check thing you learn from other people," Kathleen Snyder (junior-landscape architecture) said. "What's going to set you apart is your own individuality, but we're young, and it's nice to get help with the little things. It's nice, just logistics-wise, to be guided."

Marielle Russack (senior-art) said with an art degree she has many career options, but those options make professional preparation more difficult. "I have to kind of decide what I want to do before I can even make a choice about how to begin to prepare for it," Russack said.

Russack said Web sites like the Saatchi Gallery are more professional to use as a reference than the more popular choices.

"Some people may not feel comfortable putting MySpace on their résumé," she said.