ANN ARBOR—From helping to create online neighborhood
photo directories to organizing archives of the Pan Africanist Congress in South Africa, University of Michigan School of Information graduate students are good at finding ways to merge their techno know-how with community service. Prospective graduate students with similar ambitions are invited to apply for travel stipends to attend a special Visiting Day, Jan. 22. Thirty stipends of up to $500 each will be awarded to qualified students to help cover expenses of traveling to and staying in Ann Arbor.

During Visiting Day, prospective students will learn about the Community Information Corps, an interdisciplinary group dedicated to using new technology to help build communities and achieve social change. With the support of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the School of Information recently established the Corps to work with nonprofit organizations. Students from all School of Information master’s degree specializations?Information Economics, Management and Policy; Human-Computer Interaction; Archives and Records Management; and Library and Information Services?can participate in the Corps.

“A growing number of our students engage in projects and explore careers that put information to work for public purposes,” says Prof. Paul Resnick, who coordinates the Community Information Corps. “We welcome students with a proven commitment to community service and activism.”

In the past two years alone, School of Information students have conducted cultural heritage preservation workshops on Native American reservations, developed software to aid data sharing among human service organizations, created digital collections of cultural heritage materials and prototyped software for electronic grocery ordering in low-income neighborhoods.

Resnick envisions students, upon graduation, taking jobs with community technology and media centers, nonprofit technology assistance providers, public libraries, museums, commercial and nonprofit local information providers, government agencies, international development organizations, foundations, and entrepreneurial social ventures.

An online application for the travel stipends is available at http://www.si.umich.edu/cic/visiting-day-2000.htm. The application deadline is Dec. 15. For additional information on Visiting Day, call Jay Jackson, (734) 763-0074, or Kara Goldhamer (734) 615-3152.

More information about the Community Information Corps can be obtained by writing to [email protected] or calling (734) 763-2285.

or

Nancy Ross-Flanigan

http://www.si.umich.edu/cic/visiting-day-2000.htm[email protected]