Community Service Projects
The University of Michigan SAA Student Chapter is strongly committed to community service as a way of both helping local organizations and allowing students to gain practical experience. If you have questions, are interested in an opportunity, or want to suggest a possible community service opportunity for students, contact SAA Officer Lori Donovan (lorimd@umich.edu). Some organizations that we have worked with in the past include:
Ann Arbor Civic Theatre
The Ann Arbor Civic Theatre (A2CT) is a primarily volunteer-based organization that has been around for over 78 years. It has archives of posters, announcements, and photographs of its productions ranging back to the 1950s. Students have worked to inventory and arrange and describe collections at A2CT, as well as to digitize selected materials for display on the theatre's website.
Canton Historical Society
The Canton Historical Society is a local organization dedicated to preserving the history of the city of Canton, Michigan. The society has an archive with a plethora of information. This includes paper records, photographs, audio/video oral histories, an interesting collection of historical books, maps, and many other objects dating back from the 1700's. Students have started by arranging and describing the collections at CHS, with some digitization and preservation work possible.
Sindecuse Museum of Dentistry
The Sindecuse Museum of Dentistry is looking for ARM students to help with some of the projects listed below:
1) Research scanners for the Sindecuse Museum to purchase (this could occur off site)
2) Scan the museum's photographs, particularly those that are likely to be chosen for upcoming interactive Dental School wayfinding kiosks and for the Museum's interactive exhibit in the Atrium. Convert TIF files and place them into the museum's Filemaker database/catalog.
3) Find existing digital image files in the museum's working files and convert and move the files into the museum's database/catalog. Add more information as needed.
4) Develop a scanning strategy for the museum's small format advertising collection. Items are located in two places. Working with curator, decide how many pages should be scanned.
5) Scan the museum's 35 mm slide collections for addition to the catalog.
6) Any of these 2-dimensional collections could become the first collection to be launched onto the UMDL's image archive. Work with curator to determine which descriptive fields and associated information should be publicly viewable.
Available work hours for a volunteer must fall between 8:30-5:00 p.m. M-F, and you would be under the direct supervision of the museum's curator. These projects would be great opportunities to get some experience in a museum and working with digital materials.
