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Youth Community Informatics (YCI)

A Library and Information Science and Institute of Museum and Library Services initiative at the University of Illinois.

Youth Community Informatics

Home > CII Funding > 2007-08 Awards

 

2007-08 Awards

CII Co-directors Ann Bishop and Caroline Haythornthwaite funded proposals with money from the Provost's Office.


Community Networking Director Paul Adams launched a major research initiative on sustainability with $25,000 from CII for “São Tomé Community Networking.


The following faculty received funding from CII for their projects in the Fall of 2007:

  • Dr. Abdul Alkalimat, professor of African American Studies and Library and Information Science, received support for his proposal, "eBlack Illinois: Digital Information on the African American Experience in Illinois for Community Leaders and Scholars"
  • Dr. Christian Sandvig of the Speech Communication Department was awarded a seed grant for his project, "Five Years of the Tribal Digital Village"
  • Dr. Kate Williams, faculty in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, obtained funding to support her study of the TOP data archive.

Dr. Alkalimat, who is also director of the Digital Research Initiative of the National Council of Black Studies, will hire technical assistance to set up a web-enabled database that will anchor his project. The aim is to build a distributed research network throughout the state that will allow people to learn more about African American experiences in Illinois. Dr. Alkalimat presented an overview of his project on October 31, 2007, as part of the CII Speaker Series.

Dr. Sandvig had hoped to assess the outdoor wi-fi network built over the last five years by the Southern California Tribal Chairmans' Association that linked community centers, museums, libraries, schools, health centers, fire stations and homes over a 250-mile area. However, Dr. Sandvig and his research assistant, library science graduate student Emily Shaw, arrived in San Diego in the midst of the 2007 wildfires and had to evacuate, learning later of extensive damage to the network as well as reservation housing. This tragedy and its aftermath was the subject of their presentation in the CII Speaker Series on November 14, 2007.

Dr. Williams will travel to Washington, D.C., as well as hire research assistance for her project on the TOP data archive. The TOP archive is both digital and physical, concerning 600 community technology projects across the US gathered over the last ten years. Her talk in the CII Speaker Series on November 28, 2007, was entitled 'The TOP Data Archive: Early Results from a Collaborative Project to Build the First Shared Dataset for Community Informatics." A workshop on this data early in 2008 will result in a special issue of the Journal of Community Informatics.