Projects
The focus on practical engagement and community participation is something that sets the Community Information Corps apart from other student groups at SI. It is our belief that the best way to learn about the community is to get to know it - to get involved. With this in mind, members of the Community Information Corps have developed two focus projects, each providing participants with opportunities to engage community members. In addition to these focus projects, the Community Information Corps continually encourages participants to come up with new project ideas and suggest ways we might get involved. We realize that the possibilities for involvement are endless. But, if you have a project you want to see happen, CiC can make it happen.
Topic - "Profit at the Base of the Pyramid (BOP)"
Week 11 - Citizenship & Democracy (part 2)
Reading:
1. Boyte, H.C. and N.N. Kari. Building America: The Democratic Promise of Public Work, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1996. (pp. 1-32, 164-178).
2. Resnick, Paul. A Preliminary Classification Scheme for Public Information Work. 1999. (Inspired by p. 164-178 of Boyte and Kari).
Reading #1 available as handout in class before and in 406 WH, ask Peter.
Once upon a time in 1999, the Community Information Corps (CIC), a program at the University of Michigan School of Information, was founded. CIC has a mission to prepare information professionals for leadership careers in community and public interest work. CIC accomplishes this mission through academic inquiry seminars, practical engagement opportunities and professional development connections. There's a lot more to say and show about CIC, but this will suffice as the introduction to CIC - The Book.
This is some text for Chapter 1 of CIC - The Book.
prepared by Peter Keller-Transburg - June 2004
Introduction
This short write-up presents an accounting of CIC electronic resources, an overview of the current systems used to manage these resources and a brief description of how a web content management system (CMS) would enhance the organization and dissemination of these resources. It is suggested that an effective CMS would be relative cheap and easy to deploy and maintain, and that the right system would facilitate the maintenance of internal CIC resources while providing a robust yet simple mechanism for maintaining the CIC website. Finally, employing an open source CMS will help reduce deployment and enhancement costs, provide a technical support community and allow for inexpensive scalability.
So, is Drupal the best option for an open source, community-driven CIC website? I think so. And, to put it bluntly, I am God Admin, so... Kidding.
Although the decision to go with Drupal is done (finally!!), the decisions about the look, feel, features, content, structure, permissions, etc. remain to be made. This site is of, by and for CIC.
Please look and play around this site and post your comments about it in reply to this forum topic.
The process to select an appropriate CMS for CIC took place over the course of May-Oct 2004 and involved, in addition to myself, Sadanori Horiguchi and Renju Jacob -- two very fine and generous CIC participants and 2004 SI grads. The three of us began by identifying CMS features that we felt were essential and desirable for CIC. We largely drew our information from the extremely helpful CMS Matrix, which helps compare CMSs, feature-for-feature. At the time, there were about 40 CMSs in their list; now there are 100+ and growing. You can see our list of CMS characteristics and some of the rationale we used to choose them in the below attached doc "CIC CMS Characteristics."
Welcome to the new CICweb!
This Community Information Corps (CIC) website, powered by the open source content management system Drupal, is the new online home of the CIC. The CICweb displays information to the general public about CIC and related programs at the University of Michigan School of Information. It also provides robust mechanisms for interactions between members of the growing CIC Network.
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