Wednesday, January 16, 2008

NEW YEARS Resolution

Write one blog per week!


Ash :)

Time moves...and moves...and moves...and...

It has been a little while since the last time I wrote a blog. Over a month. The holiday season has come and gone leaving in its wake lots of work to be done. Trina and I have been working on several projects lately.

The first project is the To Mexico with Love project. To Mexico with Love is an organization at IUPUI. This organization revolves around a cultural exchange/community service/ study abroad opportunity in the town of Cuernavaca in Morelos, Mexico. Trina and I both found out about the program through the many fliers posted around the campus. It just so happened that one day Trina came in and saw the flier on my desk and told me that she was also interested in the program.

Neither one of us thought about ways that we could connect the To Mexico with Love program with the Diversity Fellowship. However, later on that week I attended the University Library's Board meeting and was inspired by Dr. Uday Sukhatme (Executive Vice Chancellor and Dean of Faculties at IUPUI) who spoke about IUPUI's vision for diversity, community engagement, service learning and study abroad programs. When I came back from the meeting I talked to Trina about the things he'd said. She and I formulated the idea to combine the skills we are learning at the UL with IUPUI initiatives to promote diversity, service learning, and study abroad programs.

With the help of Michelle Verduzco (Director of To Mexico with Love) and Kristi Palmer (Advisor for the UL Diversity Fellowship) we formulated a plan that would allow Trina and I to use our acquired librarianship skills to serve in an elementary school in Cuernavaca. It actually worked out that Michelle Verduzco and her colleagues from To Mexico with Love were already planning to work on collecting books, and building a library for the elementary school.

With some much needed support from Dean Lewis (Dean of UL) we have been able to move forward with this project.

But that is not even the half of it! Today we are meeting with the library's External Relations team to talk about a book fair project that we will be working on, and last week I was able to meet with the Special Collections team about working on an oral history project. We also are working on an ongoing project with Digitization. With so much to do the 7 months before our term as the University Library's Diversity Fellows will be over before we know it...But I won't think about that just yet. Now I am going to get back to work...there is always a lot to be done.

Carry On,
Ash