The Diversity Difference: Providing Information Services to Multicultural Audiences
MIX and CIC present: “The Diversity Difference: Providing Information Services to Multicultural Audiences”
Join a panel of information professionals to learn more about directing and implementing access to information and services for broad audiences on Friday, October 16, 2009 in 311 West Hall from 11:30-1:00. Terry Soave, Manager of Outreach and Neighborhood Services; Lucy Roehrig, Access and User Services Librarian; and Eli Neiburger Associate Director of IT and Production, all of the Ann Arbor District Library, and Vivian Schnitzer, U-M’s Hispanic Communications Manager will speak about their roles in providing services to multicultural and diverse users. Lunch will be provided.
Vivian will speak about creating and maintain the University’s Spanish-language website, the Portal en Espanol. The portal provides admissions and academic information to prospective students and their families and distributes press releases, research, and health news, and produces videos for iTunes University. Eli is responsible for AADL's IT, events, and marketing efforts, which include multilingual print brochures and integrated machine translation for AADL's online presence. In addition, AADL runs a Drupal-based international game tournament management website called gtsystem which has built-in support for human translation of terms and data structures. Lucy ensures that Ann Arbor’s increasingly multicultural population has access to library services and resources. The AADL has books in over 20 languages for adults, teens, & children and encourages reading no matter the language. The AADL also provides materials to
learn other languages and to assist people in learning English to broaden our understanding of each other. Terry works to build relationships and facilitate partnerships with trusted community leaders, groups, and individuals from a variety of different cultures in order to raise awareness and access to AADL services and spaces. Having more than seventy different languages represented in our district requires she employ many different methods, both onsite and off, to reach the broadest audience possible.