And, please spread the word! If you know of any non-profit, educational, government, or cultural organizations that would be interested in participating, please pass along this message or send their contact information to kkowatch@umich.edu.

Sincerely,

Kelly A. Kowatch, Assistant Director / ASB Coordinator
University of Michigan School of Information
Career Development Office
734.936.8735
kkowatch@umich.edu
404C West Hall

Mark Your Calendar: The 2010 SI-ASB Interest Meeting will take place on Thursday, November 12, 2009, from 12:00 – 1:00pm in 311 WH.
RSVP on iTrack (An additional info session will be held in January if you can’t make it to the November one.)

ASB Committee Volunteers, Mark Your Calendar – More Information to Come!
a. The ASB Fundraising Committee’s first meeting will take place on Monday, November 9 at noon to 1pm in 405a

b. The ASB Service Committee’s first meeting will take place on Friday, November 13, 2009 at noon to 1pm in 405a

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The School of Information annually hosts a unique Alternative Spring Break Program where MSI candidates get to experience a week-long professional work experience while providing service to non-profit, governmental, educational, or cultural organization in Washington, D.C.; Chicago, and New York. The 2010 ASB will take place Monday, March 1 through Friday, Mary 5, 2009. Students will depart and return the weekend before and the weekend following.

Check out last year’s organizations, projects, pictures, and comments at http://www.si.umich.edu/pep/asb/

The Fall 2010 Interest meeting will be on Thursday, November 12, 2009 at noon to 1pm in 311 WH. We will be serving cake to celebrate the start of the 2010 ASB program!

**Please register for the Interest Session on iTrack so that we know how much cake to order. **

This information session will provide information on what ASB is, the timeline to expect, what the application is like, etc. Students who participated last year will be there to share about their experiences and answer questions. ASB has proven to be a fun and valuable experience for all students who have participated in the past. Benefits include networking contacts, experience to add to your resume, an urban-cultural experience, new friends, and a deeper insight into your perceived career choice.

If you are unable to make this interest meeting, there will be another held in early January. However, cake will not be served then – just be warned!

Don’t forget to RSVP on iTrack!
Kelly

Kelly A. Kowatch, Assistant Director
University of Michigan School of Information
Career Development Office
734.936.8735
kkowatch@umich.edu
404C West Hall

This will be an informal meeting to discuss plans for the coming year. I will provide you with some general background information on the Service Committee and together we can map out our goals for 2009-10.

If you can make it, please let me know!
Kelly

The ASB fundraising has a history of being a very active, engaging, and fun group of students! In the past three years, this group has raised an increasing amount of money to support the unique Alternative Spring Break Program at SI.

This will be an informal meeting to discuss plans for the coming year. Our agenda will include the following:

--Writing thank you notes to last year’s individual supporters (bring your favorite pen!)
--Discussing 2009-10 events:
Book Drive/Book Sale
Donor Letter
Penny Wars
SI Revue
Other Ideas?
--Selecting leadership for events
--Selecting times for future meetings

I will also provide you with some general background information on the Fundraising Committee and together we can map out our goals for 2009-10.

If you can make it, please let me know!
Kelly

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While Ryan Lankton and Katie McCurdy were at Georgetown during this year’s ASB, they helped me prepare work on a web design project.

Ryan and Katie helped me capture images, upload data and they both had good ideas of the kind of information to collect for the report. In addition to their assigned projects, both found time to help collect information for this report. The entire report is online for free download here: www.ll.georgetown.edu/sitesurvey/

If you have any questions or need details, just let me know.

Roger V. Skalbeck
Associate Law Librarian for Electronic Resources & Services
Georgetown University Law Library
Phone 202.662.9158
rvs5@law.georgetown.edu

ARC featured TODAY In the NY Region section of the NY Times, 5/7/09

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/sampling-a-vast-archive-of-musi/#more-30275

David Gonzales, the author, (who is also donating his 400 Flamenco record collection to ARC) said that if it gets e-mailed a lot, or their are a lot of comments, that keeps the story alive, So what are you waiting for?

Thanks

B.

You can view the 2009 ASB site at http://asb.si.umich.edu/2009/index.shtml

Pictures can be viewed on the SI ASB Facebook site at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7606715638 or the SI ASB Flickr site at http://www.flickr.com/photos/siasb_2009/

Photos can always be added, so if you didn't add you pics earlier, please do so now!

See the article at http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/news/2009/20090320news_article_ASB09.html

The Ginsberg Center is home to several community service and learning programs. Undergraduate and graduate students participate in Center programs in Michigan communities and nationwide. They serve meals in soup kitchens, tutor children in schools, rehabilitate abandoned houses, and revitalize urban neighborhoods. They also explore the connections between the service they perform and opportunities to create change through social and political action. As they serve, they learn from the experience and gain skills they will use throughout their lifetime.

Graduates, Sign the Social Responsibility Pledge!

I pledge to actively work toward a more socially and environmentally responsible world. I will continue to honor these words long after graduation in my career, relationships, and all other pursuits, and encourage others to embrace this message as well.

Click here to sign!

See the Addendum to this blog to learn more about these two organizations. I had a pretty brief meet with my two contacts here, but I did get to hear a little bit about the projects that the three SI students were working on.

At the Gotham Gazette, under the fabulous Amanda Hickman, Jeremy Canfield and Nan Chen utilized their web, information architecture, and wiki skills to assist with a project called "Councilpedia." This is an encyclopedia of money in politics in New York City that will invite readers to help Gotham Gazette staffers identify connections between political donors in NYC. These SI students assessed what is available and developed a workable structure for the project that made good use of MediaWiki's capacity for templated content segments.

Carrie Ashendale worked with Sara Stuart at Citizens Union on assessing and strengthening Citizens Union's web site and presence on online networks. She advised the organization on its web communication strategy. This included looking critically at http://www.citizensunion.org its electronic newsletter The Reformer and its participation in online networks also looking at similar and related organizations to understand the range of strategies being used elsewhere; writing a plan for improving functionality establishing greater online interactivity and advancing Citizens Union's communication and internet engagement. Carrie was also slated to look at ways to generate more links and drive traffic to our online communications.

I have to add a note in here that the aforementioned Amanda Hickman hosted students in ASB in 2005 when she worked at the LINC Project. It was inevitable that Amanda and I reconnect this year, as I was hunting her down as part of list of past contacts that had been part of ASB and she was trying to connect with SI to again be part of this program. As a result of this connection, not only did we get Citizens Union and Gotham Gazette on board for ASB, but Amanda also put me in touch with the other new non-profit organizations that participated in ASB this year (including ABC No Rio, Green Map System, Lower East Side Ecology Center, and Tribal Link Foundation). I love how networking can work out to benefit the service-oriented community! So, thank you Amanda!

I then grabbed a cab and headed back over to east lower Manhattan to ABC No Rio. ABC No Rio is a community center for the arts on Manhattan's Lower East Side. ABC No Rio was founded by artists committed to political and social engagement and we retain these values to the present. ABC No Rio is a place where people share resources and ideas to impact society, culture, and community in an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual support. Since founding they've been welcoming and supportive venue for thousands of emerging artists, performers, poets and musicians.

Program activity at ABC No Rio breaks down into two categories: public events programming, and facilities and resources. In addition to exhibitions, public events programming at ABC No Rio includes our weekly hardcore/punk matinee; COMA, our series of experimental and improvisational music; literary readings; performance; and film & video screenings. We also provide space to other cultural and community organizations for meetings, workshops, benefits and forums. ABC No Rio resources and facilities used by artists and the community at large include our zine library, darkroom, computer center and screenprinting shop.

This was my most unusual visit of the day... the environment is very visually stimulating: every two years, artists redesign the entire inside of the building and thus the walls are an array of really amazing and unique art specimens. Definitely not your normal work place with cubicles!

Steven Englander, as director at ABC No Rio, is the only staff member. Everyone else involved to keep the organization running is a volunteer. He was very pleased to have Adrienne Klum spend her week working on their ABC No Rio Archive On-Line project.

Adrieene spent her time working on planning the implementation of the web platform Omeka to "publish" on-line digital files of documents relating to ABC No Rio's founding and early years. ABC No Rio had over 400 scanned documents relating to the Real Estate Show and ABC No Rio' early years that they wanted to make accessible to the public via the web using the web platform Omeka. Omeka will also be used to presented materials and images complementing exhibitions in the gallery space as well as other activity at ABC No Rio. Adrienne helped to test and explore Omeka and helped determine and document the approach that should be used to move forward.

It was awesome to visit Steve, Adreienne, and the ABC No Rio cat, Cookie Puss! The entire day two of my visits was amazing just because it was a unique look (for me at least) into how small non-profits function successfully in NYC on really limited resources. Steve shared with me that without Adrienne's work, the project tht she worked on would have taken months to complete. Because she was able to devote 40 hours to this project, she truly assisted the organization in getting a start on a much-needed project.