Talk: “School Librarians as Leaders”

Posted November 29, 2009 by Jay Jackson
Categories: Events, Guest speakers
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Kristin Fontichiaro, who is being considered for a position at SI as a clinical assistant professor, will speak on “School Librarians as Leaders: Meeting K-12 Learning Imperatives” at noon Wednesday, Dec. 2.

The talk will be in the Atkins Conference Room, 1202 SI North, and be videocast to the Ehrlicher Room, 411 West Hall. A light lunch will be served.

Fontichiaro is an elementary media specialist and staff development facilitator with the Birmingham (Michigan) Public Schools and an adjunct lecturer at SI. A member of the inaugural (2007) class of the American Library Association’s Emerging Leaders program, Fontichiaro was named the 2008 Distinguished Alumna of the Wayne State University School of Information and Library Science. Along with Judi Moreillon, she is co-guest editor of the November/December 2009 Knowledge Quest issue on the professional practice of school librarians.

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Yahoo! Speaker Series: “Tagging the Commons”

Posted November 29, 2009 by Jay Jackson
Categories: Events, Guest speakers
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Malcolm McCullough, an associate professor of architecture in the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, will deliver the next lecture in the Yahoo! Speaker Series at the School of Information on “Tagging the Commons.”

His talk will be at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 1 in the Ehrlicher Room, 411 West Hall. A reception will follow.

The speaker says that “some of the cultural shifts made necessary by planetary change may begin with rediscovery of the built environment. Urban computing, one such movement, has explored the impact of pervasive computing technologies on embodied civic participation. Tagging, while not the most daunting of such impacts, is in many ways the most telling, for it asks, as Sennett once did, in the street and not computational sense of these words, whether the tagger even sees the commons.

“But as the forms of situated media now proliferate, has ambient information become such a commons? You might think this would add a vivid new chapter to the ‘environmental history of information,’ but if you search by that phase on Google, there isn’t one.”

McCullough has also served on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon and Harvard. He has written two widely read books on architecture and interaction design: Digital Ground (2004) and Abstracting Craft (1996), and has engaged in speaking and editorial review across a wide range of disciplines, from urbanism to applied arts to interaction design.

The talk is free and open to all.

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Floor 3: Clothing, straight ahead

Posted November 24, 2009 by Jay Jackson
Categories: Events, Students
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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.

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Learn what it takes for Pixar to animate a crowd

Posted November 23, 2009 by Jay Jackson
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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.

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Get ready for ‘Ask the Deans’

Posted November 23, 2009 by Jay Jackson
Categories: Events, Faculty, Students

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.

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Fulbright fellowship rewarding for Kowatch

Posted November 20, 2009 by Jay Jackson
Categories: Career Development, Faculty, Staff, Students
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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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SI ASB Needs Your Books

Posted November 18, 2009 by Shamille Orr
Categories: Events, Faculty, Staff, Students
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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

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Serious Games Expo: Learning is fun

Posted November 16, 2009 by Jay Jackson
Categories: Events, Faculty, Research
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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.

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IPOL Events Series: Policy officers

Posted November 16, 2009 by Jay Jackson
Categories: Events

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.

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Library explores life of director Robert Altman

Posted November 15, 2009 by Jay Jackson
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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.

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