SAA officers Liz Everson (left) and Sally Vermatten take their turn at the table.
You’ve still got time to get this year’s editions of apparel offered by the SI student chapter of the Society of American Archivists. T-shirts and sweatshirts are available on the third floor landing at West Hall during the lunch hour, through Wednesday, Nov. 25. The chapter will gladly take your order, if you can’t stop by in person.
If you’d like to know more about how the movie industry creates special effects, a talk that the Division of Computer Science and Engineering is sponsoring may be for you. CSE will host Paul Kanyuk, technical director of Pixar Animation Studios, at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 30 in 1670 CSE. His talk will be “Rivers of Rodents, Lots of Bots, and Cavalcades of Canines: Crowd Simulation at Pixar Animation Studios.” Specifically, Kanyuk will describe the processes and software involved in creating crowd simulations for Ratatouille, WALL•E, and Up. The talk is sponsored by CSE and the Software Lab.
You’ve spent most of the semester answering questions, now you take your turn and ask a few. Dean Martha E. Pollack and the associate deans want to know what’s on your mind. At the “Ask the Deans” forum sponsored by the School of Information Student Association, you’ll get your chance to hear from the deans directly about all matters related to SI. The forum will be from noon-1 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 24 in the Ehrlicher Room, 411 West Hall. Dean Pollack will be on hand with Jeff MacKie-Mason, associate dean for academic affairs, and Tom Finholt, associate dean for research and innovation. Cookies and beverages will be provided.
This past spring, Kelly Kowatch, assistant director of the SI Career Development Office, won a Fulbright fellowship to attend a special two-week program in Germany to study higher education issues. The fellowship, awarded through the Fulbright International Education Administrators Program, is aimed at college administrators from international programs, career services, and development. One of the benefits for her participation was gathering information for the School of Information as it studies future directions to with international programs.
Here is her report about her experiences:
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The ASB Book Sale is 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Dec. 2 and 3 this year (in the lobby of West Hall). Over the past two years, we’ve raised a pretty significant amount of money from these sales because of considerable generosity from the SI community. (Last year was especially robust because the Olsons donated their entire duplicate library to us before they departed to California.)
However, this year we’re short on books. We have a fraction of what we’ve had in the past. Although I know that this makes Jim (our facilities manager) quite happy because of storage reasons, it won’t do much for fundraising for the ASB program.
It would be great if everyone could donate just two or three books — that’s all we’re asking. We’ve got a lot of avid readers and researchers here at SI who have great collections of books; if you can just pull out a couple that you know you probably won’t ever look at again, we would love to have them.
I’ve already started to get some books from the SI community, so if you’ve donated, thank you! (I hope that you plan to restock at the sale in two weeks).
Otherwise, you can drop books off to my office (404C West Hall) or in the bins at SI North.
If you have questions, please contact Kelly Kowatch (kkowatch@umich.edu).
Thank you,
SI ASB Fundraising Committee
Two seemingly unrelated facts were the inspiration for an unusual research project by Professor Karen Markey, who devised a computer game called BiblioBouts to build college students’ information-literacy skills.
Many students enter college not knowing the difference between Wikipedia and a citation index. At the same time, according to a study by the Pew Internet and American life project, 97 percent of American teens play electronic games. Putting these two pieces of information together, Markey figured she could use students’ well-developed gaming skills to shore up their information literacy.
“We opted for a game in lieu of other approaches because what people are doing when they are playing good games is good learning,” Markey says.
BiblioBouts will be one of the featured projects at the Serious Games Expo from 5-7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 19 in 265 Chrysler Center on the U-M North Campus. Other projects will explore how serious games are used in medicine, business, education, and industry.
The IPOL Events Series continues this week with a panel discussion on “Policy Officers: Roles, Skills, Career Paths, and Problems with Which They Deal” from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 17 in the Ehrlicher Room, 411 West Hall. This informal panel and open discussion will feature three policy officers describing their roles at the Ponemon Institute, Thomson Reuters, and the Ann Arbor Credit Bureau. Hear which skill sets they feel are most important for policy officers, what career path led them to these positions, and what it is that they do for their organizations. They will discuss current issues they face and answer questions.
Movie director Robert Altman, who had a special affinity for Ann Arbor, will be the subject of a special tribute sponsored by the University Library at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 18 in the Library Gallery, 100 Hatcher.
Altman biographer Mitch Zuckoff and Kathryn Altman will discuss the director’s life and cinematic accomplishments. Altman died on Nov. 20, 2006.
Zuckoff’s book, Robert Altman: The Oral Biography, chronicles Altman’s dynamic life through the words of his family, friends, a few enemies, agents, writers, crew members, producers, and stars who worked with him. Also included are words of Altman himself from his exclusive last interviews.
Altman loved Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan. His long association with U-M began in 1977 when he captivated a packed audience in Hill Auditorium with a Q&A session that resulted in one audience member landing a small role in his next film, A Wedding. Throughout the years, Altman directed an opera (Rake’s Progress) with the School of Music in 1982, taught a mini-course in Angell Hall, shot a film in the Martha Cooke residence hall (Secret Honor) in 1984, held benefit screenings of several films at the Michigan Theater, and regularly offered internships for U-M students at his New York production company.
The Altman archives were recently acquired by the library.
Following the presentation, there will be a book sale and signing with the author and Kathryn Altman.
The Open.Michigan Reading Group invites you to its next session from 1-2:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 18 in the Turkish/American Friendship Room, 4004 Shapiro Library.
This reading and discussion group, convened by members of the Open.Michigan Initiative, is for anyone with an interest in open educational resources, open access and open content initiatives, open source software, open archives and publishing, open data efforts, and open standards.
Selected readings for this session are by James Boyle (“The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain”) and Marc Parry (“Open Courses: Free, but Oh, So Costly”), which appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education on Oct. 11.
In preparation for, or in between meetings, you are encouraged to keep the discussion going on the group’s blog, Twitter stream, or Facebook page, links to which are available.
The SI student chapter of the Society of American Archivists will host a panel of SI doctoral students speaking on their paths to the doctoral program, their research, and their future goals. The brown-bag program, from noon-1 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 18 in 311 West Hall, is open to everyone. Doctoral student panelists will be Magia Krause, Dharma Akmon, Ricky Punzalan, and Devan Donaldson.
