School of Information begins 75th anniversary celebrationANN ARBOR—Alumni and friends of the University of Michigan School of Information (SI) are invited to return to Ann Arbor to celebrate the School’s 75th anniversary during a True Blue Alumni Weekend Sept. 28-29.

Among the public events will be a talk at 3 p.m. on Sept. 28 by Rick Weingarten of the American Library Association. Weingarten, who is director of the Office for Information Technology Policy at ALA, will speak on “Riding the Third Wave: Policy Lessons from the Information Revolution.”

The alumni weekend is the first of several events planned during the fall and winter semesters to mark the U-M’s first 75 years of leadership in educating information professionals. The academic program of the School began as a Department of Library Science in 1926. Later, as the department’s mission and the information professions themselves changed to meet society’s needs, the department evolved into what is now the School of Information.

SI is the only program of its kind in the United States whose master’s program is fully accredited by the American Library Association in library science, archives and records management, human-computer interaction, and information economics, management and policy.

The Sept. 28 events are especially geared for alumni and the public and will be in the Founders Room of the Alumni Center at East Washington and Fletcher streets. The program begins at 1 p.m. with a panel discussion, “From the Inner Sanctum: Our Deans Tell All!” Past and present deans will share the highlights—and foibles—of their deanships. In addition, the public
[Central Campus map, Alumni Center #17, near center]

The panel will be followed at 3 p.m. by Weingarten’s talk. Weingarten, who has spoken and written extensively on information technology policy, has served on advisory groups for the National Science Foundation, the State Department and the Defense Department and is an adviser to the Canadian Foundation for Innovation on its information technology research and application funding programs. He also serves on the federal government Computer System Security and Privacy Advisory Board. The Association for Computing Machinery named him an ACM Fellow in recognition of his contributions to information and technology policy.

Additional information about Alumni Weekend activities is available by calling (734) 763-2281 or visiting www.si.umich.edu/75.

School of InformationRick WeingartenCentral Campus mapNational Science Foundationwww.si.umich.edu/75