Pages for Prisoners... intrigues me

Got extra books around the house and don't want to sell them to a resale shop?
Help a prisoner better themselves.

I found a great reason to clean off my book shelf!
http://www.pagestoprisoners.org/donate

What They Don't Need

• Romance Novels
• Popular Fiction geared only to a female audience (the majority of the people who request books from our project are men)
• Books about popular culture that are older than 10-15 years old
• Reader's Digest condensed versions of books
• "Gift" books
• Very advanced/specialized textbooks or other academic books
• Multivolume Encyclopedias
• Books for young children
• Travel guidebooks
• True crime (many facilities prohibit these books)
• GRE test prep books
• Legal theory books, property, business law

Note: As many prisons and jails prohibit hardcover books, they are much less useful to our project than paperback ones.

What They Always Need

These are books that are often requested but not often donated.

• New or like new books
• Mystery/thriller/suspense/horror/adventure
• Sci-fi/Fantasy
• Westerns
• African-American studies or fiction with African-American characters
• "Life skills" - personal finance, job skills, etc.
• Entrepreneurship/Real Estate/Small Business
• Spanish language books
• Technical and Vocational Skills (carpentr, auto mechanics, electronics, HVAC, etc.)
• Basic high school level textbooks for math and science
• Criminal and civil-rights law books, criminal case law, self-help legal books
• GED test prep books

There's a drop off location in Bloomington called Box Car Books (.com).
Let me know if you want to participate. I'm thinking of a creating great event for AIGA Indy to partner with the com

Publish Post

munity. God knows designers have tons of books they've collected that aren't necessarily something they do much with anymore...

That is all. The spirit of the season is finally settling into my soul for a stay :-)
Cait

Design Inspiration: Link-a-holic

Classic, Modern, Reliable
http://designarchives.aiga.org/

Fresh, Unique, Eye Candy
http://abduzeedo.com
http://abduzeedo.com/awesome-paintings-adam-haynes



Quantitative, Resourceful, Original (similar to this blog entry)
http://justcreativedesign.com
http://justcreativedesign.com/2007/12/12/101-places-to-get-design-inspiration/










Detailed, Categorized, Indulgent
http://www.danielnelson.se/


























Raw, Spontaneous, Young
http://deviantart.com
http://irrel.deviantart.com/art/Looking-Glass-Alice-Hatter-146920555
























Design-y, Thoughtful, Job Postings
http://designerscouch.org/
http://designerscouch.org/show_design/6492/no-18-winterfest.html

Where do you like to find inspiration?
Add a link in a comment!

Being Diversity Sensitive in 2010

Current conundrum: Required Diversity

Our department has hosted student-written blogs for the past year and a half. Students detail in words and photography all the campus life that a student experiences (save a few select genres including late night beverage consumption.) We get real information directly from the students piped directly to the public (prospective students, parents, university officials) and get content that a professional adult would not be able to, due to the change in student behavior when present. This is students in their natural habitat.

Our coaching and education of our selected photographers was stepped up this year. We had a thorough interview process and portfolio review. We only had 15 people apply for the 5 spots and about 8 of them were aptly qualified for the job. As an equal opportunity institution, we examined the portfolios for content quality. The hired students consisted of 4 females and a male from varied years in school and several diverse states. They were all caucasian.

The blogs were of such quality and interest that our main University web page picked them up for the month to run as content with a link to our department's page and all the blogger biographies. Within 4 days, the Provost communicates to us that we need to include 2 racially diverse bloggers as soon as possible.

We're now in the awkward situation of having to interview, locate and hire 2 additional racially diverse bloggers. Besides the fact that only one non-caucasian person interviewed for the position, only 4 were male. There are many other factors that are not being acknowledged in the process of adding 2 student employees:
- Going over budget: we were able to afford payment for 5, not 7.
- Bloggers have a day of the week to blog, M-F. Do we add a Saturday and Sunday post?
- We will have to train new employees mid year and assist them in the process of executing the blog.
- The other photographers may feel reverse discrimination. We don't want them to think "My work is good but I'm caucasian." They worked hard to get to this job.
- How will the new photographers feel, being brought in mid-year?

We have to decide whether we're willing to make a choice that may potentially compromise quality in order to represent diversity on our campus. If students that represent minority ethnicities on campus are not interested in the position, we can't force someone to do the job. At the same time, if we leave our current content untouched, we're being accused of only selecting caucasian students: last time I checked, if we did not discriminate by choosing talented individuals over equally talented minority individuals, we've not done anything wrong.

If only caucasian people run for congress, the citizens do not nominate someone unprepared and elect them just to be a minority voice.

Yes, we'll evaluate how we advertise the position next year. Campus wide television ads, Facebook, Twitter and student newspaper are as equal opportunity as I can think of.

Thoughts and comments will be appreciated.

-Workin' Girl-

Honesty and a shared office fridge

I am happy to report that my delicious local pizzeria leftovers survived 24 hours in the shared office fridge without so much as a nudge to move them out of the way of others' lunches this morning.

*WOW*

A year ago, I recall blogging about Who Stole My Lunch. I was much more peeved after a shorter fridge stay then. Food nibbled away anonymously to practically nothing.

Some hope in humanity is restored (and I hear that the common culprit of lunches going AWOL was my predecessor...)

Happy lunch from the fridge!
CM

Rain, I'mma let you finish, but....

...Hurricane Katrina was one of the worst storms ever.
How rude of you to attempt to ruin my day with too much sogginess.
Please don't wash out any roads, ok?! I want to get home tonight to watch Pam marry Jim after all this time!