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:

In October, I spent two weeks in Germany with a group of university administrators from throughout the United States as part of the Fulbright International Education Administrators Program. Participants were mostly from the international education realm, but nine of the 24 of us were from career services, alumni relations and development.The program is segmented into two sections: the first week is spent as a large group in Berlin learning about the German higher education system from a variety of perspectives; the second week, we were broken into groups by our areas of focus and dispersed throughout the country to visit different schools.

During the first week in Berlin, we met with many people and attended seminars on German culture, the status of lifelong learning in the global education system, the various types of German higher education institutions, student services, various scholar programs, and German immigration and population growth. We also heard from and visited various institutions in Berlin and spent a day at the University of Leipzig where were introduced to the American studies program and met with current students and faculty.

One of the main concepts expressed was how the Bologna Process is affecting the higher education system. To briefly summarize this change, the Bologna process is an European endeavor to standardize the academic degrees granted and to allow for increased mobility between European institutions because of degree compatibility. This is basically the creation of a system that has both a bachelors and masters degree, because in some countries such as Germany, they only had a Diplom (the equivalent of a U.S. masters degree). However, in Germany, because of other related changes, the new systems is actually decreasing mobility as curriculum is more structured and provides less flexibility, so students are studying abroad less. If you are interested in learning more, I suggest checking out the Web site devoted to this topic.

I also learned that student service such as housing, dining, and counseling, are provided to all students, no matter their institution, through an external organization called the “Studentenwerk.” This was a fascinating concept, considering how much administrators such as myself emphasize this part of the educational experience. Also, I was impressed with their services as we ate in several of what are called Mensas (the equivalent of a student cafeteria) and the food was very good. Even the students we met with agreed on this!

During the second week, participants were split up into three groups. The two groups that were focused on International Education visited the University of Dortmund, the University of Jena, the University of Erfurt and the University of Bayreuth. The group that I was part of visited the University of Siegen (U-S) and WHU-The Otto Beisheim School of Management (WHU) in Vallendar (near Koblenz). At U-S, we were briefed on their relatively new career services and alumni relations areas, and learned about their international education programs.

At most universities in Germany, career services and alumni relations are areas of student services that are less than twenty years old and constantly challenged by the hands-off culture of the German education system. For example, because students feel very little loyalty to their university or college (possibly due to the fact that higher education is generally free), alumni relations staff are constantly trying to come up with ideas of how to develop a culture of allegiance and bring alumni back for events and to consider donating.

At WHU, one of the elite business schools in the world, we learned about a school that is less than twenty-five years old, but has a very well developed career services and alumni relations department. This visit was more of one that was “this is how we do it” which was an interesting contrast to our visit to U-S, where they were really looking to us as a model to learn from.

The week wrapped up in Frankfurt where our group reconvened. We visited the Johann Goethe University (confusingly also known as the University of Frankfurt) where we were again briefed on their programs, including international education. It might seem that because we visited so many universities that we would begin to hear the same thing repeatedly, but because the entire German education system is in such transition, each school is really at a different stage and does things quite differently. So, I can say that each visit was enlightening in one way or another.

A few other points I want to mention are ones that most travelers want to know about. We were provided with exceptional hospitality – sometimes more than necessary. The food was excellent; although for vegetarians it might be trying (we did not see anything green for the first week). Accommodations were more than acceptable; everyone had their own room and although we spent very little time there, they were pleasing. The schedule was admittedly rigorous, and I was one of the younger people on the trip but there is time provided in Berlin to do some tourist activities.

If you are interested in participating in this program (and I do highly recommend it!), you can learn more at this Web site. The deadline for the 2010 program in Germany is Feb. 1, 2010. There are also similar programs in Korea and Japan for more experienced administrators; the deadlines for the 2011 programs are Nov. 1, 2010.

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.

With SI Associate Professors Victor Rosenberg and Robert Frost, Assistant Professor Soo Young Rieh, and English Department Lecturer Fritz Swanson — and several master’s and doctoral students — Markey had earlier developed Defense of Hidgeon, another “serious game” aimed at improving information-finding skills among undergraduate students. Colleagues from other University of Michigan academic units also lent expertise to the online board game. The Delmas Foundation provided financial support.

More recently, Markey and her research team were awarded funding for three years from the Institute of Museum and Library Services in Washington, D.C., to develop the new BiblioBouts game that students play while they research a topic for a class project.

BiblioBouts enables students to work together to build a focused and shared online collection of digital readings on a chosen topic, and, using social tagging and rating capabilities, compete with fellow classmates to evaluate the focused collection and choose the very best readings for their final project. The project includes students at Chicago State University, Saginaw Valley State University (who are playing the game right now), Troy University-Montgomery, the University of Baltimore, and U-M.

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.